"Toughness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of young shoots of the mulberry and certain other plants of similar fibre is beyond all others the best for wood-block printing. It is in itself a very remarkable material, and is used in Japan for a great variety of purposes, on account of the strength and toughness due to its long ...
— Wood-Block Printing - A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice • F. Morley Fletcher
... conversation—consisting chiefly of a succession of commonplace remarks, expressed with frigid formality: but this might be more my fault than hers, for I really could NOT converse. In fact, my attention was almost wholly absorbed in my dinner: not from ravenous appetite, but from distress at the toughness of the beefsteaks, and the numbness of my hands, almost palsied by their five-hours' exposure to the bitter wind. I would gladly have eaten the potatoes and let the meat alone, but having got a large piece of the latter on to my plate, I could not be so impolite as to leave it; ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... in accordance with his historical character; his niggardliness is shown in the saying, 'The Meo will not give his daughter in marriage till he gets a mortar full of silver'; his pugnacity is expressed in, 'The Meo's son begins to avenge his feuds when he is twelve years old'; and his toughness in, 'Never be sure that a Meo is dead till you see the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... going away that stretched the heart out till the strings grew. The tragedy of sin revealed the toughness and tenderness of love. For that heart never let go of the man whom it borned. Man tried to pull away, poor thing. In his foolish misunderstanding and heady wilfulness he tried to cut loose. If he had known God better he would never have tried that. He'd never have started ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... bird on its back, and expose the plucked breast from which he was to dispense a delicate slice to each of the honourable company, unless any one should be of so independent a mind as to decline that expensive toughness and prefer the vulgar digestibility ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... looking to God to preserve you. Now, do you not see how these two sayings go together, and make each other plain. You seamen and fishermen are in continual danger; your lives are in your hands every moment—the belaying of a sheet, the strength of a bit of canvas, the toughness of a deal board, may settle your fate in a moment, and make all the difference between life and death. If they are sound, you may go back to a happy home, and see wife and children coming to meet you when you run on shore at morning from your honest labour; and if they fail—if that weak ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... separate pieces, had all the flexibility, though formed of solid lime, of a drift of nets, and yet were so nicely jointed, tooth fitting into tooth in all their numerous parts, and the whole so bound together by ligament, that, with all the flexibility, they had also all the toughness and tenacity, of pieces of thread network. Human ingenuity, with the same purposes to effect, that is, the sweeping of shoals of swimming animals into a central receptacle, would probably construct a somewhat similar ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... tough, but wot'll toughness do for a feller agin iron shot. I feels just now as if a red-hot skewer wos rumblin' about among the marrow of my back-bone, an' I've got no feelin' in my leg at all. Depend upon it, messmates, it's ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... of alcohol, he was never positively drunk during the whole voyage. The evil spirits seemed to make no impression upon the iron fibres of his stubborn brain and heart. He judged his morality by the toughness of his constitution, and congratulated himself on being a sober man, while he complained of his second mate, and stigmatised him as a drunken, worthless fellow, because one glass of punch made him intoxicated. This is by no means an uncommon thing both at ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... all his body began to tremble and totter to such a degree that he had to sink hurriedly into his great arm-chair. It seemed as if he were about to refute Bodoeri's good opinion as to the strength and toughness of his eighty summers. Bodoeri, in fact, could not keep back the peculiar smile that darted across his lips; innocent, un* sophisticated Annunciata observed nothing; and happily no one else was present Finally it was resolved for some reason—either because old Falieri felt in ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... rigorous demands of Mr. Tubbs. With a righteous joy, I saw the fabric of Aunt Jane's illusions shaken by the rude blast of reality. Would it be riven quite in twain? I was dubious, for Aunt Jane's illusions have a toughness in striking contrast to the uncertain nature of her ideas in general. Darker and darker disclosures of Mr. Tubbs's perfidy would be required. But judging from his present recklessness, they would be forthcoming. For where was the Tubbs of yesterday—the honey-tongued, the suave, the anxiously ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... mixture of nickel, such as our five-cent piece is made of, and that steel made from such a mixture is harder and tougher than any other kind. Bicycle-makers have found this out for themselves, and know the reason of the toughness, but it was a great ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... surprises us by the great simplicity which characterises it. The first stage is getting the liquid mass of glass about to be operated upon into a thorough state of toughness and pliability: one should be able to pull it like rosin or sealing-wax. The colouring of the mass is done while it is still in the furnace, by adding various chemicals, the principal of which are arsenic, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Annealing. Toughness and Elasticity. The Process. Tempering. Tempering Contrasted with Annealing. Materials Used. Gradual Tempering. Fluxing. Uniting Metals. Alloying Method. Welding. Sweating. Welding Compounds. Oxidation. Soldering. Soft Solder. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... in the morning David came out of the distillery; he had been careful to leave no sign of his occupation behind him; but he brought out some thirty sheets of paper that left nothing to be desired in fineness, whiteness, toughness, and strength, all of them bearing by way of water-mark the impress of the uneven hairs of the sieve. The old man took up the samples and put his tongue to them, the lifelong habit of the pressman, who tests papers in this way. He felt it ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Champleve enamel was often used on copper, for such things as pastoral staves, reliquaries, and larger bits of church furniture. The enamel used on copper is usually opaque, and somewhat coarser in texture than that employed on gold or silver. Owing to their additional toughness, these specimens are usually in perfect preservation. In 1327, Guillaume de Harie, in his will, bequeathed 800 francs to make two high tombs, to be covered with Limoges enamel, one for himself, and the other for ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... who rotted with me through the years of darkness, I was considered the most dangerous prisoner in San Quentin. On the other hand I was considered the toughest—tougher even than Oppenheimer and Morrell. Of course by toughness I mean enduringness. Terrible as were the attempts to break them in body and in spirit, more terrible were the attempts to break me. And I endured. Dynamite or curtains had been Warden Atherton's ultimatum. And in the end it was neither. I could not produce the dynamite, and Warden ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... "Levant morocco," which is the skin of the mountain goat, and reckoned superior to all other leathers. The characteristics of the genuine morocco, sometimes called Turkey morocco, having a pebbled grain, distinguishing it from the smooth morocco, are its toughness and durability, combined with softness and flexibility. It has a very tenacious fibre, and I have never found a real morocco binding broken at the hinges. The old proverb—"there is nothing like leather"—is pregnant with meaning, and especially applies to the best morocco. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... moved on in its orbit toward the thin wall of infinite strength and infinite toughness. Already Thessian battleships were tearing at that wall with rays of all types, and the wall sputtered back little gouts of light, and remained. The meters on the Thought were no longer registering. The wall was built, and now Arcot had all ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... an attitude apparently relaxed. His face was still white. It could not acquire color in that close cell, but he had never felt stronger. A powerful heart pumped vigorous blood through every artery and vein. His muscles had regained their toughness and flexibility, and above all, the intense desire for freedom had keyed him to ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Billy knew the fortunes of the Cary family far too well to mourn over the probable toughness of his booty, and as he rose up from the seat and meandered toward the kitchen, his old, wrinkled face broke into a broad smile of satisfaction over the surprise he had in store. "Well—after I done parbile you, I reckon Miss Hallie be mighty ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... soon become 'une quantite negligeable.' The prospects of the Church in Italy and Spain do not seem very much better. In fact the only comfort which we can suggest to those who regret the decline of an august institution, is that decadent autocracies have often shown an astonishing toughness. But as head of the universal Church, in any true sense of the word, Rome has ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... The toughness of the sheets made them preferable to the softer and more yielding blankets, and the youth decided to use them exclusively. Each, of course, had been put together by deft hands and spinning-wheel, and was of firm, strong texture. Jethro was so familiar with where these were stowed, ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... visits to the "Blue Boar," losing flesh and gaining toughness with every lesson. The more he saw of Joe Bevan the more he liked him, and appreciated his strong, simple outlook on life. Shakespeare was a great bond between them. Sheen had always been a student of the Bard, and he and Joe would ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... his life, purloined dead bodies that he might dissect them and learn anatomy, so all disciples of the art of religion need the discipline of intellectual analysis and of knowledge of the facts of the religious experience if they are to be leaders in faith. There is a toughness of fiber needed in religious people that can only come through such mental discipline. But anatomists are not sculptors. Michael Angelo was the genius, the creative artist, not because he understood anatomy, but chiefly because of those as yet indefinable and secret processes ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... sometimes occupied myself with attempts to analyze the sources of their intimacy. I remember stating to one of my young acquaintances that Vibbard probably had a secret longing to be feminine and ideal, and that Silverthorn felt himself at fault in masculine toughness and hardihood, so that each sought the companionship of the other, hoping to gain some of the qualities which he himself lacked; and my young acquaintance offended me by replying, as if it had all been ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... they make use of another material which they call cinder, it being nothing else but the refuse of the ore after the melting hath been extracted, which, being melted with the other in due quantity, gives it that excellent temper of toughness for which this iron is preferred before any other that is brought from foreign parts. But it is to be noted that in former times, when their works were few and their vents small, they made use of no other bellows but such as were ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... the refreshing sounds of the running waters, cascades, and fountains; and that the effect on the mind of these beautiful harmonies may not be disturbed, the wheels of our chariots as well as the horses' hoofs are bound with a peculiar hide which, besides possessing great toughness and durability, has the property of deadening sound. Thus none but the most agreeable sounds reach the ear, whilst the senses are charmed with aromatic odours and the eye is pleased with beauty ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... resemble the common wrack to which they are oftenest fastened; and as they wave up and down in the water with the dark mass around them, they must be almost indistinguishable from the wrack itself by the keenest-sighted of their enemies. This protective resemblance, coupled with the toughness and slipperiness of their leathery envelope or egg-shell, renders them almost perfectly secure from all evil-minded intruders. As a consequence, the dog-fish lay but very few eggs each season, and those few, large and well provided with nutriment for their ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... appeared to Marcia the finest that ever was; she laughed and laughed again; when he made fun of the conjecturable toughness of the elderly aristocrat, she implored him to stop if he did not want to kill her. Marcia was not in the state in which woman best convinces her enemies of her fitness for empire, though she was charming in her silly happiness, and Bartley felt very glad that he had not yielded ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... were at one time placed in a product prepared from linseed oil. It was found that a material could be produced from it which would to a certain extent equal India rubber compositions in elasticity and toughness. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... good school for a boy with any toughness of mind or originality; but it tended in the case of normal and unreflective boys to develop a conventional type; good-mannered, sensible, with plenty of savoir faire, but with a wrong set of values. It ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... considerations and definitions Tensile strength Compressive or crushing strength Shearing strength Transverse or bending strength: Beams Toughness: ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... succeeded in lifting up their heads above water in an open sea. Why were they not swept away during storms into some adjoining abysses, the highest parts of each shoal being always planed off down to the depth of a few fathoms? The hardness and toughness of some rocks already exposed to windward and acting as breakwaters may perhaps have assisted; nor must we forget the protection afforded by a dense and unbroken covering of barnacles, limpets, and other creatures which flourish most between high and low water ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... a number of firms have devoted their efforts to producing special fabrics (felts or papers) and special cementing compounds designed to be used with the fabrics for waterproofing concrete. These fabrics and cements are in most cases superior in toughness, flexibility, ease of application, etc., to the ordinary roofing and waterproofing fabrics designed originally for general ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... forest life is in it All its mystery and its magic, All the tightness of the birch-tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews. And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in autumn, Like ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... and chaise wheels, of the most beautiful make, of hickory, which is as durable as metal-spokes, not thicker than the middle finger, but strong enough for any required weight, and with great flexibility; and from its extreme toughness, calculated for the woodwork of implements. The apartment on the ground-floor was entirely occupied by machines in motion, and each was attended by a person who explained, with the greatest civility and intelligence, the uses of the various parts of the machine, setting it going, or ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... any rate, the matter seemed to these husky young recruits, who were learning to march in the mud and sleep in the rain and chew up carpet-tacks and grind Huns into leber-wurst. They were putting through the job—with a fierce and terrifying gaiety; they exulted in their toughness, they called themselves "grizzlies" and "mountain cats" and what not; they sang wild songs about their irritability, their motto was "Treat 'em rough!" It was a scary atmosphere for a dreamer and utopian; ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... "unhand me villain!" the authority of law. So we shall make again the old experiment, discredited by a thousand failures, of preventing crime by tenderness to caught criminals. And the criminal uncaught will treat us to a quality of toughness notably augmented by the Christian ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Are straight presented with credentials, 820 And in their way attended on By magistrates of ev'ry town; And, all respect and charges paid, They're to their ancient seats convey'd. Now if you'll venture, for my sake, 825 To try the toughness of your back, And suffer (as the rest have done) The laying of a whipping on, (And may you prosper in your suit, As you with equal vigour do't,) 830 I here engage myself to loose ye, And free your heels from Caperdewsie. But since our sex's modesty Will not allow ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... be supposed that they understood the tonic properties of the plant had not the same decoction been used by the women as a hair wash, and by the ball players to bathe their limbs, under the impression that the toughness of the roots would thus be communicated to the hair or muscles. From this fact and from the name of the plant, which means at once hard, tough, or strong, it is quite probable that its roots are believed to give strength to the patient ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... nevertheless, of my toughness. Send him the L500 without a word,—or make Warburton do so, or Mr. Moreton. Make no secret of it. Then if the papers talk ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... shape of an isosceles triangle. This breach in the sheet iron was so perfectly formed, no punch could have done a cleaner job of it. Consequently, it must have been produced by a perforating tool of uncommon toughness— plus, after being launched with prodigious power and then piercing four centimeters of sheet iron, this tool had needed to withdraw itself by a backward ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... is the homage that strength pays to weakness. He talks foolishly and yet very finely about his own city that has never deserted him. He wears a flaming and fantastic flower, like a decadent minor poet. As for his bluffness and toughness and appeals to common sense, all that is, of course, simply the first trick of rhetoric. He fronts his audiences with the venerable affectation ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... how beautiful and desirable a substance it was, for work of that kind. In oil painting its unctious quality is to be delighted in; in fresco, its chalky quality; in glass, its transparency; in wood, its grain; in marble, its softness; in porphyry, its hardness; in iron, its toughness. In a flint country, one should feel the delightfulness of having flints to pick up, and fasten together into rugged walls. In a marble country one should be always more and more astonished at the exquisite colour and structure of marble; in a slate country one ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... is a well-known law, which in the case of the female criminal seems almost exaggerated, so remarkable is her longevity and the toughness with which she endures the hardships, even the prolonged hardships, of prison life.... I know some denizens of female prisons who have reached the age of 90, having lived within those walls since they were 29 without any ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... established tree is more valuable on this account. In some places hickories are quite subject to disease or to the attacks of borers. Like the walnuts, hickories which produce edible nuts are subject to the attacks of boys, but, on account of the toughness of the wood and the roughness of the bark, they are usually quite able to withstand these attacks. Hickories are suitable for use in all landscape work so far as their appearance is concerned. The fact that they are not so used is due to the difficulty of transplanting them. In the fall when ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... his shoulders with an air of hard toughness, but deep inside he felt small and cheap. He was used to wrangling and boisterous striving for what he wanted. Yet, for all of his roughness, a finer streak of his nature could, on occasion, respond to fair dealing. Squareness—being white—was something he ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... (euphemistically called cosmopolitanism), even where the West has given them a full share in civil and political rights. A people with oriental sunlight in their blood, yet capable of being everywhere acclimatised, they have a force and toughness which enables them to carry off the best prizes; and their wealth is likely to put half the seats ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... threw up his commission and returned to Europe, trusting, he told me, that after five years' absence, the governor's bowels would yearn towards his youngest-born. In this he was entirely mistaken; he greatly underrated the toughness of paternal viscera. Far from killing the fatted calf on the prodigal's return, the incensed old Hollander refused him the smallest cutlet, and shutting the door in his face, consigned him, with more energy than affection, to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... witness to the character of the people of America, who have shown calm in times of danger, compassion for one another, and toughness for the long haul. All of us have been partners in a great enterprise. And even some of the youngest understand that we are living in historic times. Last month a girl in Lincoln, Rhode Island, sent me a letter. It began, "Dear George W. Bush. If there's anything you ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... blood, of abounding life, and of vigorous strength. I cannot remember when I have felt so crisp, so springy, and so gloriously unconscious of lungs." During these intervals of good health he was mentally alert, — a prodigious worker, feeling "an immortal and unconquerable toughness of fibre" in the strings of his heart. There was something more than the cheerfulness that attends the disease to which he was subject. There was an ardor, an exuberance that comes only from "a lordly, large compass ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... which the air boats were constructed was either wood or metal. The earlier ones were built of wood—the boards used being exceedingly thin, but the injection of some substance which did not add materially to the weight while it gave leather-like toughness, provided the necessary combination of lightness and strength. When metal was used it was generally an alloy—two white-coloured metals and one red one entering into its composition. The resultant was white-coloured, like aluminium, and even lighter in weight. Over the rough framework ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... was found that the use of fat in the "butter cakes" made the framework tender and easily broken, so in pastry the same means may be employed. Fat of some kind is mixed with the flour to act on the gluten and destroy its toughness. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... weak-eyed boy with a chronic headache, had a deal of whipcord fiber in his make-up. He stood the test and grubbed at his books every night until the clock tolled twelve. He was born at a peculiar time, being a child of the Reformation married to the Renaissance. The toughness and grimness of Calvin were united in him with the tenderness of Erasmus. From out of the Universal Energy, of which we are particles, he had called into his being qualities so diverse that they seemed never to have been before or since united in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... a face of contempt. "The match o' that good soul's pastry for hardness an' toughness isn't found this side of the ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... but with no better result: the growths seemed brittle, and incapable of bearing a great strain when tested separately. It was the twisted network of the withes and twigs which gave the climbing plants inside the pit sufficient toughness to support his weight. Taken singly, they had very ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... our own type of walnut, and it is quite the exception to find among any Persian walnuts growing on the Atlantic Coast or the Pacific Coast or in the middle of the country walnuts that are free from this tendency to astringency, to insipidity, and to toughness. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... power, might, hardihood, potency, puissance, stamina; tenacity, toughness, durability; impregnability, invincibility; security, validity, conclusiveness, cogency, efficacy; support, stay; intensity, vividness; virility; vehemence, violence, force, impetuosity; fortitude; robustness, lustiness, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... cheese, of pies and jack-knives and "squrruls," of domestic Bible-reading and attendance at "evening lecture," of the fear of parental discipline and the cultivated art of dodging it, combined with great personal toughness and hardihood, an almost envied liability to warts on hard brown hands, a familiarity with garments domestically wrought, a brave rusticity in short that yet hadn't prevented the annexation of ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... Dublin to the Parliament of Westminster. Kitchener was sixty-four when he turned his face westward to the problem of his own country. There clung to him already all the traditional attributes of the oak—its toughness, its angularity, its closeness of grain and ruggedness of outline—when he was uprooted from the Arabian sands and replanted in the remote western island. Yet the oak not only grew green again and put forth new leaves; it was almost as if, as in a legend, ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... good fellow," said the doctor, with his great coarse laugh. "I rather suspect that you have already got beyond the age when the great medicine could do you good; that speech indicates a great toughness and hardness and bitterness about the heart that does not accumulate in ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of. It was not like death at all; it was like a statue carven in ivory by the hand of a Praxiteles. There was nothing of that horrible shrinkage which death seems to effect in a moment. There was none of the wrinkled toughness which seems to be a leading characteristic of most mummies. There was not the shrunken attenuation of a body dried in the sand, as I had seen before in museums. All the pores of the body seemed to have been preserved in some wonderful way. The flesh was ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... 10,000 lbs. weight, true to pattern, sound and solid, of unequaled strength, toughness and durability. An invaluable substitute for forgings or cast-iron requiring three-fold strength. Send ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... Should toughness be desired, without extreme hardness, the steel may be cooled in a bath of lard oil, neatsfoot oil or fish oil. To secure a result between water and oil, it is customary to place a thick layer of oil on top of water. In cooling, the piece will pass through the oil first, thus avoiding ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... say, been in the service of the Empress for, perhaps, four years. He will leave in another two years. He has no inherited morals, and four years are not sufficient to drive toughness into his fibre, or to teach him how holy a thing is his Regiment. He wants to drink, he wants to enjoy himself - in India he wants to save money - and he does not in the least like getting hurt. He has received just sufficient education to ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... candle box which was admired by every one. He then ordered a bureau of the same material, and when it was finished invited his friends to see the new work; amongst others, the Duchess of Buckingham begged a small piece of the precious wood, and it soon became the fashion. On account of its toughness, and peculiarity of grain, it was capable of treatment impossible with oak, and the high polish it took by oil and rubbing (not French polish, a later invention), caused it to come into great request. The term "putting one's knees under a friend's mahogany," probably dates ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... reduced. It had no Maori troubles worth speaking of, but the hills that beset its site, rugged and bush-covered, were troublesome to clear and settle, the winter climate is bleaker than that of northern or central New Zealand, and a good deal of Scottish endurance and toughness was needed before the colonists won their way through to the more fertile and open territory which lay waiting for them, both on their right hand and on their left, in the broad province of Otago. Like General Grant in his last campaign, they had to keep on "pegging away," and ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... thanks to the amazing toughness of his skin, and its looseness, the ratel managed to, as it were, slide the bone of his leg between the jaws of the trap, leaving the skin and fur in, and the rest was mainly determined tugging ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... strong persistence the traditional beliefs and ideas which they obtained from their fathers, and to acquire other traditional beliefs and ideas which they obtain from neighbours. One often wonders at the "amazing toughness" of tradition, and in the psychological conditions which have been indicated will be found one ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... does, to the Ashburnham family, who are said to have derived great wealth from the manufacture of guns at their works, which were among the last carried on in Sussex. The Ashburnham iron was distinguished for its toughness, and was said to be equal to the best Spanish ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... impudent, considering it's not an hour since the Sarpent stood within a hundred feet of you, and would have tried the toughness of your skin with a rifle bullet, when I pointed you out to him, hadn't I laid the weight of a little judgment on his hand. You may take in timorsome gals in the settlements, with your catamount whine, but the ears of a man ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... and the morning burgeoned like a rose, my spirits mounted invincibly. It was the joy of the open road and the care-free heart. Like some hideous nightmare was the memory of the tunnel and the gravel pit. The bright blood in me rejoiced; my muscles tensed with pride in their toughness; I ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... her husband by this appellation, on account, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitae having been his old regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in compliment to the extreme hardness and toughness of his physiognomy—"just looked in, we have, to make it all correct as usual about that security. Give him the new bill to sign, George, and he'll sign ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... is often combined chromium, increases the strength, springiness and toughness and helps ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... the course of nature that he should be long kept out of these desirable possessions, for the present baronet was his grandfather, and had long passed the ordinary limits of old age. The old man had outlived his own immediate natural heir, Ferdinand's father, and now, in spite of an extraordinary toughness of constitution, was showing signs of frailty which increased almost day by day. And apart from his own personal advantages, and the future baronetcy and the estates thereto appertaining, the young man felt that, ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... rural labourer's outlook, and instructed him through his days and years. It was hardly reduced to thoughts in his consciousness, but it always swayed him. And it was consistent with—nay, it implied—many strong virtues: toughness to endure long labour, handiness, frugality, habits of early rising. It was consistent too—that must be admitted—with considerable hardness and "coarseness" of feeling; a man might be avaricious, loose, ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... deciduous tree of its height to be found in the forest. It is often seventy or eighty feet tall, with a trunk not more than a foot around. The color of the trunk is a dark granite-gray and the bark is rough. The wood is remarkable for its toughness, and for making baskets the Indians prefer it to any other, except the trunk of ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... allowing him to speak much, lest he should lose ground and be in danger again. It seemed to her at that time that Taquisara was learning to be another friend to her, less in most ways than Gianluca had been, but having much that Gianluca had not—the strength, the decision, the toughness. She did not miss those things in Gianluca. She would not have had him otherwise than he was, but she saw them all, and felt their influence, and admired ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... of the cellular tissue as contrasted with the woody framework of the plant. We see marked instances of it in cultivated carrots and turnips, the normal condition of the roots or root-stocks in these plants being one of considerable hardness and toughness, and their form slender, tapering, and ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has a virtue in it; and accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan toughness. All things beside seem to be called in for shelter, and what stays out must be part of the original frame of the universe, and of such valor as God himself. It is invigorating to breathe the cleansed air. Its greater fineness and purity are ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... abused term. Under it one may purchase jadeite, nephrite, bowenite, amazonite, or frequently simply green glass. The use of the word ought to be confined to the first two minerals mentioned, namely, jadeite and nephrite, for they only possess the extreme toughness together with considerable hardness that we expect of jade. Bowenite, while tough, is relatively soft and amazonite is brittle and also easily cleavable, while glass is both soft ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... through his Prayer-Book: not a word could he discover authorising captains in the navy to perform the rite. He pulled down all the books on his shelves and hunted them over; there were not many, certainly, but they made up by their quality and toughness for their want of number: not a word on the subject in question could he find. For many an hour and for many a day did he search, for he was not a man to be baffled by a knotty point or by an enemy for want of exertion on his part, though at last he had to confess that in this matter he was ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... talkative, and the cats the most shaggy and presuming, I have ever met with. Even here, however, all was not unmitigated darkness; for they ground the coffee while the water was boiling, and the consequent decoction was admirable. Moreover, the bread had a skin of such thickness and impervious toughness, that ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... by the psychic nature, the emotional and mental powers; and as unable to come to clear consciousness, unable to stand and see clearly, because of the psychic veils of the personality. Nine of these are enumerated, and they go pretty thoroughly into the brute toughness of ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... defended himself very frankly at the dinner of a county fair in this State when he said: "The Lord made horses to go, and I like to see them do it." This question of trotting or no trotting at the fair is not a new one; but with age it seems to acquire toughness,—like ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... ridiculous than that, I should like to know where you can find it. Athletics should not be too severe, however, yet, the boy ought not to have century runs and long halves of football, especially if the heart is still weak. The tissues of the body have not yet gained the toughness that they will gain at a later time. Every commander in the field dreads to have boys of eighteen, nineteen, or twenty sent to him, because, as Napoleon said of his young recruits, "they die off like flies." The hard bed, with light covering, the cold room, the cold ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... purposing to overwhelm me, the Black Colonel's foot appeared to catch an uprising tuft that had been left unnibbled by the sheep, possibly on account of the coarse toughness of its grass. He lost his balance and shot heavily at me, holding his sword straight out, as if to drive it through me. Here was my chance, for he could not, in this act of falling, change the position of his weapon. I did that for him by a mere touch, ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... west and the shortest route from Philadelphia to New Orleans. You grow by slow stages into the new attitude; at Malta you are still regretting Europe; after Aden, your mind dwells most on the hire of punkah-wallahs and the proverbial toughness of ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... together, provide at his own expense for their food and transportation, and take them back to Tennessee in good order. He accomplished this, putting sick men on his own three horses, and himself marching on foot with the men, who, enthusiastic over his elastic toughness, dubbed him "Old Hickory,"—a title of affection that is familiar to this day. The government afterwards reimbursed him for his outlay in this matter, but his generosity, self-denial, energy, and masterly force added immensely ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... even to Tarzan of the Apes, but hunger served as a most efficacious disguise to toughness and rank taste, and ere long, with well-filled stomach, the ape-man was ready to sleep again. First, however, he must remove the hide, for it was as much for this as for any other purpose that he ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... winds, however violent. The other alpine conifers—the Needle Pine, Mountain Pine, Two-leaved Pine, and Hemlock Spruce—are never thinned out by this agent to any destructive extent, on account of their admirable toughness and the closeness of their growth. In general the same is true of the giants of the lower zones. The kingly Sugar Pine, towering aloft to a height of more than two hundred feet, offers a fine mark to storm-winds; but it is not densely foliaged, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... a barb, being supplied by a small piece lashed horizontally across the top of the end of the curve. These peculiar wooden hooks are grown; the roots of a tree called ngiia, whose wood is of great toughness, are watched when they protrude from a bank, and trained into the desired shape; specimens of these hooks may be seen in almost any ethnographical museum. To sink the line, coral stones of three or four pounds weight are used, ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... being accommodated with a body so tender and indisposed, as eternally leans and presses upon her; and often in my reading perceive that our masters, in their writings, make examples pass for magnanimity and fortitude of mind, which really are rather toughness of skin and hardness of bones; for I have seen men, women, and children, naturally born of so hard and insensible a constitution of body, that a sound cudgelling has been less to them than a flirt with a finger would have been to me, and that would neither cry out, wince, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Come, be a man: drown thyself! drown cats and blind puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness; I could never better stead thee than now. Put money in thy purse; follow thou the wars; defeat thy favour with an usurped beard; I say, put money in thy purse. It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... way," Desmond remarked, as he dissected a fowl, cooked—by the mercy of the gods—in that elusive interval between toughness and putrescence, the pursuit of which gives to hot-weather housekeeping an excitement peculiarly its own, "there's bad news from the Infantry camp this morning. Poor old Buckley. A cramp seizure at midnight. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... prove to be complexes of two or more materials, and the patterns showing the distribution of these materials throughout the alloy are of a most varied character. It is certain that the structure existing in the alloy is closely connected with the mechanical properties, such as hardness, toughness, rigidity, and so on, that make particular alloys valuable in the arts, and many efforts have been made to trace this connexion. These efforts have, in some cases, been very successful; for example, in the case of steel, which is an alloy of iron and carbon, a microscopical examination gives ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Maryland, in 1927, for example, was then seventeen feet in circumference at breast-height, one hundred twenty-five feet in height and having a spread of one hundred fifty feet. The wood of the pecan is similar to that of the hickory in both toughness and specific gravity, although for practical purposes, such as being used for tool handles, the shagbark hickory is enough harder and tougher to make it the superior of ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... down the forms give an appearance of great strength and toughness, a tense look. And this quality is very useful in suggesting such things as joints and sinews, rocks, hard ground, or gnarled tree-trunks, &c. In figure drawing it is an interesting quality to use sparingly, with the shading done on the across-the-form ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... fat man's hand and though it makes a dent that dent puffs back quickly. Do the same to the Muscular and you will find a firmness and toughness of fiber that resists but stays there longer once ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... of fur or the coolness of marble. One of the profound philosophical truths which are almost confined to infants is this love of things, not for their use or origin, but for their own inherent characteristics, the child's love of the toughness of wood, the wetness of water, the magnificent soapiness of soap. So it was with Scott, who had so much of the child in him. Human beings were perhaps the principal characters in his stories, but they were certainly not the only characters. A battle-axe ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... thoroughly. I am not ungrateful nor unfaithful to Harbury; in your turn you will go there, you will have to live your life in this British world of ours and you must learn its language and manners, acquire its reserves and develop the approved toughness and patterning of cuticle. Afterwards if you please you may quarrel with it. But don't when the time comes quarrel with the present conditions of human association and think it is only with Harbury you quarrel. What man has ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... with walking, and he repeatedly passed his handkerchief over his forehead, with a somewhat wearied gesture. And yet he was evidently not a man to whom fatigue was familiar; long, lean, and muscular, he suggested the sort of vigor that is commonly known as "toughness." But his exertions on this particular day had been of an unwonted sort, and he had performed great physical feats which left him less jaded than his tranquil stroll through the Louvre. He had ...
— The American • Henry James
... Turnus, when his steeds he join'd, Hurrying to war, disorder'd in his mind, Snatch'd the first weapon which his haste could find. 'T was not the fated sword his father bore, But that his charioteer Metiscus wore. This, while the Trojans fled, the toughness held; But, vain against the great Vulcanian shield, The mortal-temper'd steel deceiv'd his hand: The shiver'd ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... it is lined with cotton, and the cotton has a lining of fine white silk. You at once observe that it is intended to protect some delicate and precious article of jewelry, and that the maker of this box must have been acquainted with the strength of wood, the toughness of leather, the adhesiveness of glue, the softness and elasticity of cotton, the tenacity of silk, and the mode of spinning and weaving it, the form of the jewel to be placed in it, and the danger against which this box would protect it—ten ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... acres of splendid sheep pasture in search of roots. The only good they do is to dig up the Spaniards for the sake of their delicious white fibres, and the fact of their being able to do this will give a better idea of the toughness of a wild pig's snout than anything else I ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... good and gay is their raiment, and their spears are sharp and sheen, And they crown themselves with the oak-leaves, and sit, both most and least, And there on the forest venison and the ancient wine they feast; Then they wattle the twigs of the thicket to bear their spoil away, And the toughness of the beech-boughs with the woodbine overlay: With the voice of their merry labour the hall of the oakwood rings, For fair they are and joyous as ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... the mental control they had asserted. Then the battle had gone to him. But from it he had brought another scar—the unease of that old terror when Ross Murdock, fighter, rebel, outlaw by the conventions of his own era, Ross Murdock who considered himself an exceedingly tough individual, that toughness steeled by the training for Time Agent sorties, had come up against a power he did not understand, instinctively hated ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... hint from what foreigners think of us ultra-modernized Americans. Wandering journalists, of an ethnological turn of mind, who visit these shores, profess to be struck with the slenderness, the apparent lack of toughness, the dyspeptic look, of the American physique. And from such observations it has been seriously argued that the stalwart English race is suffering inevitable degeneracy in this foreign climate. I have even seen ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... report by substituting Mr. Harvey Davis of Oregon for Mr. Messick. It may be urged by gentlemen that the hardships and privations of a frontier life have rendered Mr. Davis tough; but, gentlemen, is this a time to cavil at toughness? Is this a time to be fastidious concerning trifles? Is this a time to dispute about matters of paltry significance? No, gentlemen, bulk is what we desire—substance, weight, bulk—these are the supreme requisites now—not talent, not genius, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... companions "left him to sing psalms in his cart whilst they were engaged at a distance over some pressing business. When they returned they found a pack of wolves round the old man, but whether his sanctity, or toughness, kept them from eating him is left undecided." Surely it must have been his sanctity. His name attaches to the Breock Downs, a high-lying moorland rising to about 700 feet, thickly strewn with prehistoric remains. Wadebridge has suffered by the opening of the railway to Padstow, but it can boast ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... 2: Horns and claws, which are the weapons of some animals, and toughness of hide and quantity of hair or feathers, which are the clothing of animals, are signs of an abundance of the earthly element; which does not agree with the equability and softness of the human temperament. Therefore such things ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... savoury breakfast; in the winter-time the only thing in the valley that defies the ice-king's chloroform. I watched the water twisting black and solemn through the snow, the ragged ice on its edge proof of the toughness of the struggle with the frost, from which it has, after all, crept only half victorious. A bare wild rosebush on the further bank was violently agitated, and then there ran from its root a black-headed rat with wings. Such was the general effect. ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... it an object of spoliation to the would-be invaders from Spain in 1588. At this date, wire, drawn by strength of hand, is said to have been made at Sowdley. For such kind of manufacture the Forest iron, from its toughness and ductility, was admirably fitted, without requiring any essential change in the mode of reducing the ore, although improved methods of doing so were being adopted in other parts of the kingdom, particularly in Sussex. That the old way of working lingered long in the northern ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... However, his mother mended them as long as she was able. She was a thrifty woman, although she was a semi-invalid, and sat all day long in a high-backed rocking-chair. She was not young either; she had been old when she married and her children were born, but there was a strange element of toughness in her—a fibre either of body or spirit that kept her in being, like the fibre of ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... are sown on sod land for the purpose of renewing pastures, disking them will prepare them for receiving the seed. The extent of the disking will depend on such conditions as the toughness of the sod and the nature of the soil. Usually disking once when the frost is out a little way from the surface, and then disking across at an angle will suffice, and in some instances disking one way only will be sufficient. On newly ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... watch the skill with which they performed their tasks. It was a stupid or unwilling dog indeed who could not learn much from the agile Tolmans, or the gentle Irish Setters, in whom the fierce strong blood of some huskie grandparent would never be suspected except for a certain toughness that manifested ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... crystals of rutile. The red coloration which these specimens possess is due to thin films of hematite. The rock is therefore fibrolite schist, and from a lithological standpoint it is very interesting. The fibrolite imparts the toughness to the rock, which, I should judge, would increase its value for the purposes to which the ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... surrounding the amrita and Indra also of great prowess, the wielder of the thunder, stood with them. And the gods wore curious breastplates of gold, of great value, and set with gems, and bright leathern armour of great toughness. And the mighty deities wielded various sharp-edged weapons of terrible shapes, countless in number, emitting, even all of them, sparks of fire with smoke. And they were also armed with many a discus and iron mace furnished with spikes, and trident, battle-axe, and various kinds of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... horizon, to seem perhaps the only reality. I don't mean just the love of a man for a woman, but the great throbbing bond of human affection and sympathy; and of all the kinds of affection, there is none that has the strength and toughness that belong to the love of husband and wife. I wish you to marry, Winifred,—I have always wished it,—only let it be to a true man, my dear,—let it be to ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... superfluous. Rather ought we, in Michelangelo's case, to dwell upon the remarkable sobriety of his life, his sustained industry under very trying circumstances, his prolonged intellectual activity into extreme old age, the toughness of his constitution, and the elasticity of that nerve-fibre which continued to be sound and sane under the enormous and varied pressure put upon it over a period of seventy-five ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... "I'll answer for the toughness of the handle at any rate," cried Peterkin; "my arms are nearly pulled out of the sockets. But see here, our luck is great. There is iron on the blade." He pointed to a piece of hoop iron, as he spoke, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... a far greater change takes place in the nature of the tissues than that which is visible: the petiole of the unclasped leaf is flexible and can be snapped easily, whereas the clasped one acquires an extraordinary degree of toughness and rigidity, so that considerable force is required to pull it into pieces. With this change, great durability is probably acquired; at least this is the case with the clasped petioles of Clematis vitalba. The meaning of these changes ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... silly little sacks and the succession of blackened, half-naked men that ran to and fro with these along a plank over a thirty-foot drop into filth and mud, I was first seized with admiration of their courage and toughness and then, "But after all, WHY—?" and the stupid ugliness of all this waste of muscle and endurance came home to me. Among other things it obviously wasted and deteriorated the coal.... And I had imagined ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... "and with unmingled pleasure, to every link which each ensuing week has added to the chain of our attachment. It shall go hard I hope ere anything but death impairs the toughness of a bond now so firmly riveted. That beautiful passage you were so kind and considerate as to send to me has given me the only feeling akin to pleasure, sorrowful pleasure it is, that I have yet had connected with the loss of my dear young friend and companion, ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... with a hope forlorn,— I knew what toughness meant, And sighed that ever I was born To die ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... of periodicity; and her best work, both as to quality and amount, is accomplished when the order of her labor partakes of the rhythmic order of her constitution. Still the fact remains, that she can do more than before; her fibre has acquired toughness; the system is consolidated; its fountains are less easily stirred. It should be mentioned in this connection, what has been previously adverted to, that the toughness and power of after life are largely in proportion to the normality of sexual development. If there is error then, the organization ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... or stone is in the crushed form for road building, railway embankments, and concrete, and the prospect is for largely increased demands for such uses in the future. For the purpose of road building, it is necessary to consider a stone's resistance to abrasion, hardness, toughness, cementing value, absorption, and specific gravity. Limestone cements well, but in other qualities it is not desirable for heavy traffic. Shales are soft and clayey, and grind down to a mass which is dry and ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... the toughness of Sir Pertinax consistently to the end, Macklin remained true to the tradition of critical, satiric comedy that he had been bred in but that by this time had almost disappeared. Protesting against the refusal of a license for his ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... had money left in your keeping and swore and swore it wasn't; item, repeatedly exhausted by your toughness eight strong lictors equipped with pliant elm rods. (pause) Have I celebrated my colleague highly enough ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... that animal food should be hung up in the open air, till its fibres have lost some degree of their toughness; yet, let us be clearly understood also to warn you, that if kept till it loses its natural sweetness, it is as detrimental to health, as it is disagreeable ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... were spread so thin upon the crust that they were better fitted to draw out hunger than to satisfy it. They used to be made up by the great oven-full and kept in the dry cellar, where they hardened and dried to a toughness you would hardly believe. This was a long time ago, and they make the pumpkin-pie in the country better now, or the race of boys would have been so discouraged that I think they would have stopped coming into ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of dirt that can be washed with a hydraulic pipe depends upon various circumstances—such as the supply of water, the height of its fall, the toughness of the dirt, and the amount of moisture in it. More can be washed in winter than in summer, because the dirt is then moister, and requires less water to loosen and dissolve it. The quantity of water used in a hydraulic claim is from forty to two hundred inches. With one hundred ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... the other, by contrast, scarce his proverbial fraction of manhood. At a year or two short of fifty, Mr. Daffy began to be old; he was shoulder-bent, knee-shaky, and had a pallid, wrinkled visage, with watery, pathetic eye. At fifty turned, Mr. Lott showed a vigour and a toughness such as few men of any age could rival. For a score of years the measure of Mr. Lott's robust person had been taken by Mr. Daffy's professional tape, and, without intimacy, there existed kindly relations between ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... without issue, as commonly he does, for none but a ropemaker's widow will marry him, this then inherits. His habit is a long gown, made at first to cover his knavery, but that growing too monstrous, he now goes in buff; his conscience and that being both cut out of one hide, and are of one toughness. The Counter-gate is his kennel, the whole city his Paris gardens; the misery of a poor man, but especially a bad liver, is the offals on which he feeds. The devil calls him his white son; he is so like him ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... numerous, in terminal corymbs. Calyx 5-lobed; 5 spreading petals inserted in its throat numerous stamens; styles 3 to 5. Stem: A shrub or small tree, rarely attaining 30 ft. in height (Kratos strength, in reference to hardness and toughness of the wood); branches spreading, and beset with stout spines (thorns) nearly 2 in. long. Leaves: Alternate, petioled, 2 to 3 in. long, ovate, very sharply cut or lobed, the teeth glandular-tipped. Fruit: Coral red, round or oval; not edible. Preferred Habitat - Thickets, fence-rows, woodland ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... ground; it is then well scrubbed with a rough stone, and fresh mimosa bark well bruised, with water, is rubbed in by the friction. About four days are sufficient to tan the thin skin of a gazelle, which is much valued for its toughness and durability; the aperture at the hind quarters is sewn together, and the opening of the neck is closed, when required, by tying. A good water-skin should be porous, to allow the water to exude sufficiently to moisten the exterior: ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... is a heavy metal (den. 11.33) which has a brilliant silvery luster on a freshly cut surface, but which soon tarnishes to a dull blue-gray color. It is soft, easily fused (melting at 327 deg.), and quite malleable, but has little toughness or strength. ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... honest, working-class householders. But his ideals had changed. He glanced about him at the well-bred, well-dressed men and women, and breathed into his lungs the atmosphere of culture and refinement, and at the same moment the ghost of his early youth, in stiff- rim and square-cut, with swagger and toughness, stalked across the room. This figure, of the corner hoodlum, he saw merge into himself, sitting and talking ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... value of motionlessness as a concealment the animal never moved; and only an eye trained to the jungle would have detected it. Dermot noted it, but let it remain unscathed; for he knew well the exceeding toughness of its flesh. What he sought was a kakur, or barking deer, a much smaller but infinitely ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... sat themselves complacently astride of the trench, and swept it in both directions and all the ground beyond with their machine guns. Against strong points they were invaluable, because they could thrust themselves, secure in the toughness of their hide, in close quarters where unprotected infantry could never get. In woods they trampled their way through the undergrowth and climbed over or broke down barricades, contemptuous of the machine guns and rifle ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... these structures, he will notice many plates of superior iron from the rolling-mills of Baltimore, combining the toughness and strength and other excellences of the best Pennsylvania iron; he will notice, too, immense ribs and beams of iron, and hear the incessant din of hammers riveting the sides ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... its hardness and durability; the hackea for its toughness; the ducalabali surpassing mahogany; the ebony and letter-wood vying with the choicest woods of the old world; the locust-tree yielding copal; and the hayawa- and olou-trees furnishing a sweet-smelling resin, are all to be met ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... etiquette. All that etiquette has to say on the subject is that you must not stand up to carve; you must not pursue the bird, joint or whatever the meat may be, all round the dish; nor should you comment upon the age of the fowl, the toughness of the meat or your own awkwardness in carving. If you really do not understand it, do not attempt it; say so and let the waiter cut ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... trace," Barnard said. They bunked together in one of the old cabins and Tom enjoyed the isolation and the pioneer character of their task. Relieved of the tremendous strain of lifting the logs alone, his shoulder regained some of its former strength and toughness, and the confidence of success in time cheered him no less than did the amusing and sprightly ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... with the mixture, pressing it in form, then drop it into boiling water for three minutes. Open the quenelle and taste it; if it is creamy, light, and well flavored, it is right, but if there is the least toughness, add a little more cream to the mixture. Notice also the seasoning; if more salt is needed, add it carefully, and try again, till you have the quenelle mixture just right, that is to say, creamy, light, very tender, yet keeping its form. At present quenelles ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... contain any carbonate of lime; hence the concretions have probably been formed, as is so often the case, by the aggregation of this substance. I have not met with any account of similar concretions; and considering their great toughness and compactness, their occurrence in a bed, which probably has been subjected only to ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... truly sorry if, after this letter, you decide not to come to us. I like your company; and I shall not get tired of it. But to be more frank still, I think you are one of those charming and sympathetic people who is tough inside, with a toughness which is based on the determination to find things amusing and interesting—and that is not the sort of toughness I can do anything with. People like yourself are incapable as a rule of suffering, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... visits in the stronghold to which I was reconducted. It was found to be entirely useless to attack the sympathy of the tribunal, either to procure a rehearing of the cause or mitigation of the judgment. Presently, a generous friend introduced a saw suitable to discuss the toughness of iron bars, and hinted that on the night when my window gratings were severed, a boat might be found waiting to transport me to the opposite shore of the river, whence an independent chief would convey ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... that he had put in his oar, as the vulgar say, with unbecoming and irreverent haste; 'IF, sir, Natur has fixed upon me the gift of argeyment, why should I not own to it, and rather glory in the same? Yes, sir, I AM a tough customer that way. You are right, sir. My toughness has been proved, sir, in this room many and many a time, as I think you know; and if you don't know,' added John, putting his pipe in his mouth again, 'so much the better, for I an't proud and am not going to ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens |
