"Balloon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to make sure, and a little blue ball puffed out like a child's balloon, burst, and dissipated itself in a thin, trailing ribbon, which the wind caught and swept to nothing. At the same time something spatted into the trail ahead of him, sending up a little ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... tear it away from some town or arsenal it has covered. And a factor of primary importance in this warfare, because of the importance of seeing the board, a factor which will be enormously stimulated to develop in the future, will be the aerial factor. Already we have seen the captive balloon as an incidental accessory of considerable importance even in the wild country warfare of South Africa. In the warfare that will go on in the highly-organized European States of the opening century, the special military balloon used in conjunction with guns, conceivably of small calibre but ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... new act in the Sparling show that season. A huge balloon had been rigged, but in place of the usual basket, was a broad platform. Onto this, as the closing act of the show, a woman rode a horse, then the balloon was allowed to rise slowly to the very dome of the big tent, carrying the rider ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... it. You had one and he was a lunatic or a epileptic or an epizootic or somethin', and lived in a hospital or a palace or a jail, and he was worth four millions or forty, I forget which, and fell out of an automobile or out of a balloon or out of bed—anyhow, it ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Ocean and the Colorado Desert, infinitely diversified in minor particulars by the exceedingly broken character of the region—a jumble of bare mountains, fruitful foot-hills, and rich valleys. It would be only from a balloon that one could get an adequate idea of ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... she was pretty, she was plump, she was fair. She was not the least embarrassed by her prominent position. She was dressed in the height of the fashion. A hat, like a cheese-plate, was tilted over her forehead. A balloon of light brown hair soared, fully inflated, from the crown of her head. A cataract of beads poured over her bosom. A pair of cock-chafers in enamel (frightfully like the living originals) hung at her ears. Her scanty skirts shone splendid with the blue of heaven. Her ankles twinkled ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... all an' ye know," said Mr. Dooley. "But I tell ye he's gone back. D'ye mind th' time we wint down to th' Coleesyum an' he come out in a black alapaca coat an' pushed into th' air th' finest wurruds ye iver heerd spoke in all ye'er bor-rn days? 'Twas a balloon ascinsion an' th' las' days iv Pompey an' a blast on th' canal all in wan. I had to hold on to me chair to keep fr'm goin' up in th' air, an' I mind that if it hadn't been f'r a crack on th' head ye got fr'm a dillygate fr'm Westconsin ye'd 've been in th' hair iv Gin'ral Bragg. Dear me, will ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... I need not tell you how it is: you stay at home and send your eyes and ears abroad to see and hear for you. Wherever the electric connection is carried—and there need be no human habitation however remote from social centers, be it the mid-air balloon or mid-ocean float of the weather watchman, or the ice-crusted hut of the polar observer, where it may not reach—it is possible in slippers and dressing gown for the dweller to take his choice of the public entertainments given that day in every city of the earth. ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... cutting up one another. The Bishop of EDINBURGH, denouncing the morality of the Bishop of MANCHESTER and of Bishop BARRY, was a rare sight. His Lordship said that the morality of these two Bishops was "up in a balloon." Well, surely this is morality of the most elevated description. These Bishops are not ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... blue, above the smoke. The sunlight struck it and it became a beautiful iridescent bubble, large as the moon. "Oh, oh!" cried the boy. "Look at the balloon!" ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... all eyes were directed to a ball of fire, which, rising majestically upward, soared amid the tall elm trees. For a moment, the balloon became entangled in the boughs, revealing by its transparent light the green buds of spring, which variegated and cheered the scathed bark. It broke loose from their embrace—hovered irresolutely above them—then swept rapidly before the wind, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Thorwald the very trouble that the doctor and I had encountered with our balloon, and he asked Foedric if we could get away again after we had dropped to ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... and time, must have been unknown;" and that "if L500 had been offered to any individual to perform a solo, fewer candidates would have entered the lists than if the like premium had been offered for flying from Salisbury steeple over Old Sarum without a balloon." For ourselves, we do not hesitate to acknowledge that, in our opinion, the services of these patriarchs of the English school surpass the great majority of similar productions by our later masters. They may, indeed, suffer when compared with the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... keener freshness in the air high above the beechwoods, and it was rather to satisfy that desire than as any legitimate development of my proper work that presently I turned a part of my energies and the bulk of my private income to the problem of the navigable balloon. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... of middle age from India, who offered to do his "bit," refused a post at home in keeping with his physical limitations. His eyes were all right, he said, when he nominated himself as a balloon observer, and he never suffered from sea-sickness which sausage balloons most wickedly induce. Many a man who has ascended in one not only could see nothing, but wanted to see nothing, and turning spinach lopping over the basket rail prayed only that ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... though never unkindly, dragged me with him, even to make the balloon ascent at the Porte Maillot on a windy evening. Without embarrassment I confess that I was terrified, that I clung to the ropes with a clutch which frayed my gloves, while Poor Jr. leaned back against the side of the basket and gazed upward at the ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... functions. The sight of a flower, the note of a bird, will often move him deeply; yet he looks unconcerned on the impassable distances and portentous bonfires of the universe. He comprehends, he designs, he tames nature, rides the sea, ploughs, climbs the air in a balloon, makes vast inquiries, begins interminable labours, joins himself into federations and populous cities, spends his days to deliver the ends of the earth or to benefit unborn posterity; and yet knows ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seconds to do all this. Ned stopped the main motor, which had the effect of causing the propellers to cease revolving. Then the airship would have gone down but for the fact that she was now a balloon, Mr. Damon having started the generating machine which sent the powerful lifting gas into the big ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... concise nothing ginger faraway kettle shadow next mercy scrub hilltop internal recite shoestring narrative thunder seldom harbor jury eagle windy occupy squirm hobby balloon multiply necktie unlikely supple westbound obey inch broken relish ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... Paris during the siege was probably mental, suffering from the want of news; but by the middle of November the balloon and pigeon postal service was organized. Balloons were manufactured in Paris, and sent out whenever the wind was favorable. It was found necessary, however, to send them off by night, lest they should be fired into by the ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... you see de big round moon Comin' up like a balloon, Dis nigger skips fur to kiss de lips Ob his ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... town is all astir. Fishermen shake themselves up out of their mid-day snooze, to admire the beauty, as she slips on and on through water smooth as glass, her hull hidden by the vast curve of the balloon-jib, and her broad wings boomed out alow and aloft, till it seems marvellous how that vast screen does not topple headlong, instead of floating (as it seems) self-supporting above its image in the mirror. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... glare of life, and who are consequently too apt to associate in their conceptions things which, in reality, have no connection—splendour and happiness. The mind is naturally gratified by a sense of elevation above the usual level of mankind, as persons ascending in an air-balloon become elevated, even amidst their dangers, in consequence of attaining a height impossible to others, and attracting the idle gaze of spectators on the ground. It is supposed also, that wealth will furnish some covert from the storms of adversity, if not a perfect ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... enters into the matter, why not imagine a miraculous method of flying which does not demand wings—by so doing you would avoid the necessity of making the angels look like ill-constructed birds. Something "smart" might be done in the way of a "dirigible balloon" species of angel! Fiends are modelled as flying-machines on the lines of the bat—this may be taken from the latest Mephisto. The contrivers of stage effects are not to be blamed because they cannot overcome the difficulties offered by the playwrights. Yet they have ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... ball-room a sight to see? Seats piled on seats, all cushioned with red velvet, and one end curving round like a great red horseshoe, with flags and flowers and shields running below the bottommost tier; a great swinging balloon of sparkling glass poured its light, like July sunshine, down on a crowd of people, that looked more like born angels than human creatures. It fairly made me dizzy to look at 'em from Cousin Dempster's box-seat, which was right in the end ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... now stood under the mysterious power of a spell, or that she was urged by an invincible curiosity. Enough: she placed her feet in the quaking gondola, which swelled aloft like an air-balloon until it reached the maiden's shoulders. Now the ground sank away, and Matilda's senses failed her in the dizzy speed with which she was hurried down into the bowels of the earth. At this precise moment Albert reached the top of the hill. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... any more questions, I should undoubtedly have betrayed myself, for I was even then on the point of mentioning that there was a balloon in the yard, and should have hazarded the statement but for my invention being divided between that phenomenon and a bear in the brewery. They were so much occupied, however, in discussing the marvels I ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... opened the door of the big shed. It was built to house a dirigible balloon, or airship of some sort. Ned could easily tell that from his knowledge of Tom's ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... reader, in a flying cloud or balloon (pardon the figure), driven by the wind, and knowing not where I should land—whether in slavery or in freedom—it is proper that I should remove, at once, all anxiety, by frankly making known where ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... formed in my mind than an extra fierce blast caught the light fabric, shook it as a Newfoundland dog would shake a small terrier it had picked up in its mouth, and then, before we knew what had happened, the wind had whirled the tent away like a child's balloon, leaving us standing bareheaded, shivering and exposed to all the force of the elements. I left Moira with Cumshaw and groped about in the darkness, hoping to find our missing tent, but I might as well have been hunting for ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... don't like to wash dishes, but we use far more than we really need to use, and anyway I had rather decided that I wouldn't wash them. As to the bed-spring, I could have an air mattress, for while it's a little like sleeping on a captive balloon, it doesn't irritate your bones like ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... Cloud-bursts come usually in the hottest weather and almost with the suddenness of an explosion. A swiftly moving black cloud tipped with fiery streaks and growing rapidly appears above the crest of the mountains. Then it sinks like a monster balloon turned sidewise until it strikes a ridge or peak; the flood is then let loose and ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... doctors catch them, or He leaves them on the sidewalk, or brings them down a wooden ladder backwards and pulls it up again, or mamma or the doctor or the nurse go up and fetch them, sometimes in a balloon, or they fly down and lose off their wings in some place or other and forget it, and jump down to Jesus, who gives them around. They were also often said to be found in flour-barrels, and the flour sticks ever so long, you know, or they ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... husband is dead, and you've got a state of mind, and nonsense of that sort.... And your steward's gone away somewhere, devil take him, what do you want me to do? Do you think I can fly away from my creditors in a balloon, or what? Or do you expect me to go and run my head into a brick wall? I go to Grusdev and he isn't at home, Yaroshevitch has hidden himself, I had a violent row with Kuritsin and nearly threw him out of the window, Mazugo has something ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... in his arms, lest his grasp should be eluded, while he displayed some picture or some prospect.' In that humourous piece, Probationary Odes for the Laureateship (p. xliii), Dr. Joseph is made to hug his brother in his arms, when he sees him descend safely from the balloon in which he had composed his Ode. Thomas Warton is described in the same piece (p. 116) as 'a little, thick, squat, red-faced man.' There was for some time a coolness between Johnson and Dr. Warton. Warton, writing on Jan. 22, 1766, says:—'I only dined with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... threescore, we are children still. The little listener on his father's knee, With wandering Sindbad ploughs the stormy sea, With Gotham's sages hears the billows roll (Illustrious trio of the venturous bowl, Too early shipwrecked, for they died too soon To see their offspring launch the great balloon); Tracks the dark brigand to his mountain lair, Slays the grim giant, saves the lady fair, Fights all his country's battles o'er again From Bunker's blazing height to Lundy's Lane; Floats with the mighty captains as they sailed, Before whose flag the flaming red-cross ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... congratulate me, my boy. She's mine, and I'm hers—which are two ways of stating the same delightful fact. I'm up in a balloon, Renny. I'm engaged to the prettiest, sweetest, and most delightful girl there is from the Atlantic to the Pacific. What d'ye think of that? Say, Renmark, there's nothing on earth like it. You ought to reform and go in for being in love. It would ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... of the "balancing" has been brought home to us during the past hundred years very vividly by the progress of aerial navigation. Balloons are objects too familiar even to our children to cause them any surprise, and every one knows how instantly a balloon, when in the air, rises up higher if a few pounds of ballast are thrown out, or sinks if a little of the gas is allowed to escape. We know of no balancing more delicate than this, of a ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... table, always wanted to travel and see the world, but he did not know how to start. Until, all of a sudden, a diamond ring was hidden in his leg and a balloon carried ...
— The Story of a Plush Bear • Laura Lee Hope
... transitively associated by any links whatever, but immanently intertwisted, indwelling in the idea. Therefore it happened that a man, however heartsick of this tumid, bladdery delusion, although to him it was a balloon, by science punctured, lacerated, collapsing, trailed through ditch and mud under the rough handling and the fearful realities of life, yet he durst not avow his private feelings. That would have been even worse than with us: it would have been to proclaim ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... as are sold from the dead-house, staggered along holding each other's arms, propped one against another. Every reach-me-down that had been hanging these twenty years flapped about their limbs, hindering their progress. Trousers with baggy ankles or with gaiter tops, balloon-shaped or close-fitting, made of loose-woven stuff or so shrunk that they would not meet the boot, displaying feet where the elastic sides wriggled like living vermin, and ankles covered with vermicelli dipped in ink; then the most impossibly threadbare and discoloured coats, made, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... he who forgives has divested himself of envy and resentment, of all that oppressed and fettered the spirit, making it powerless to rise. This is why we must forgive: that so we may burst the bonds which impede our free movement, our ascent. When we cut the cable of a balloon, we do not consider whether this is just towards the earth, and whether the cable deserves it; we do it because it is necessary, to enable the balloon to rise. He who ascends, moreover, enjoys the marvels of a spectacle which cannot be enjoyed on earth. ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... noon, when they were to meet the Wendells in the shadow of Industrial Hall and eat their picnic lunch together. The two parties arrived together from different directions, having seen very different sides of the Fair. The children were full of the merry-go-rounds, the balloon-seller, the toy- venders, and the pop-corn stands, while the Wendells exchanged views on the shortness of a hog's legs, the dip in a cow's back, and the thickness of a sheep's wool. The Wendells, it seemed, had met some cousins they didn't ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... to be 'Up in a balloon,'" continued Proteus (now looking rather like the Ancient Mariner,) "long and lean and brown, but letters written to the Times even from the utmost height lately attained by the French Aeronauts—to say nothing of the top of the tallest Lightning Conductor—would, I fear, be hot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... took from his pocket—with his tobacco and cigarette papers—a series of bottles labelled: cholera, yellow fever, typhus fever, smallpox, etc., and proposed as a very simple thing to go and spread these epidemics in all the German camps, by the aid of a navigable balloon, which he had just invented the night before upon going to bed. Amedee soon became tired of these braggarts and lunatics, and no longer went to the Cafe de Seville. He lived alone and shut himself up in his discouragement, and he had never ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... then covered with a blanket, the corners of which were held so closely to the ground as to almost completely confine and cut off the column of smoke. Waiting a few moments, until the smoke was beginning to escape from beneath, the blanket was suddenly thrown aside, when a beautiful balloon-shaped column puffed up ward like the white cloud of smoke which attends the discharge of a field-piece. Again casting the blanket on the pile of grass, the column was interrupted as before, and again in due time released, so that ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... Bush McTaggart's fire was burning brightly again. In the glow of it Baree lay trussed up like an Indian papoose, tied into a balloon-shaped ball with babiche thong, his head alone showing where his captor had cut a hole for it in the blanket. He was hopelessly caught—so closely imprisoned in the blanket that he could scarcely move a muscle of his body. A few feet away ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... balloons.' p. 12. Horace Walpole wrote on Sept. 30 (Letters, viii. 505):—'I cannot fill my paper, as the newspapers do, with air-balloons; which though ranked with the invention of navigation, appear to me as childish as the flying kites of school-boys.' 'Do not write about the balloon,' wrote Johnson to Reynolds (post, p. 368), 'whatever else you may think proper to say.' In the beginning of the year he had written:—'It is very seriously true that a subscription of L800 has been raised for the wire and workmanship of iron wings.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... question; a great change had come over him since she went upstairs; his bead now wobbled on his shoulders like a little balloon that wanted to cut its ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... sprinkled over them lent them an air of great animation. The great chain of the Apennines, with rolling masses of cloud on its summits, ran along on the east, and formed the bounding wall of the prospect. Below us there floated on the surface of the mist an immense dome, looking like a balloon of huge size about to ascend into the air. It did not ascend, however; but, surrounded by several tall shafts and towers which rose silently out of the mist, it remained suspended over the same spot. Like a buoy at sea affixed to the place where some noble vessel lies entombed, this dome ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... I am at last, ready to tell you the adventures of our young lives. Right away I have trouble with Pee-wee Harris. He's about as easy to keep down as a balloon full of gas. We call him the young dirigible because he's always going up in the air. Even at the start he must stick in his ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... us another prize," Ramos laughed, touching the crinkly substance of their first bubb, hanging like a deflated balloon over the ceiling pole. ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... the group of men at Washington who nowadays direct the industries of the entire nation. All this merely shows, my dear fellow, how much easier it is to do things the right way than the wrong. It is easier for a general up in a balloon, with perfect survey of the field, to manoeuvre a million men to victory than for a sergeant to manage ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... grinned a little over that, and I went on talking. Said we'd bother 'em as little as possible; of course we had to put up the trestles in their property, because we couldn't hold the thing up with a balloon. ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... speaking, only used by women— are of two kinds. The first is in the shape of a balloon, finely painted and gilt, and furnished with high wheels. On each side is an opening, to enter which the passenger mounts on a wooden stool, placed there by the coachman every time he ascends or descends. The windows or openings can be closed with Venetian ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... characteristic triad in the first phase of the disease; less rapidly does meteorism appear. This depends upon whether the inflammation of the serosa quickly spreads or remains local. Peritoneal meteorism is peculiar. The abdomen is uniformly distended, balloon-like; the muscles as well as the rest of the abdominal walls are tense. It must be added, how ever, that in spite of the excruciating pain upon touch there is no sign of contraction of the abdominal muscles, of the "muscular resistance" (defense musculaire) which is so common on pressure in ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... had taken a year's trip into the interior, with a train of a hundred and thirty natives, and had brought out the heads of forty different species, including a bongo—which the Baron did not get! He met another who had helped to organize a balloon club, and two twenty-four-hour trips in the clouds. (This, by the way, was the latest sport—at Tuxedo they had races between balloons and automobiles; and Montague met one young lady who boasted that she had been up five times.) There was another young millionaire who sat ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... was just thinking of how Whitely exploded our little balloon of hopes when he took us over to size up the prospects at Soledad. I wonder if Perez has no white help at all around that place. We did not even see ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... passed through their midst. As the ship sailed on, the sea-gulls of the northern ocean were succeeded by the high towering tropic-birds, several of which were seen; appearing at first like mere specks in the blue sky, where, with the wonderful balloon apparatus with which they are furnished, they floated calmly at their ease, then suddenly descending like bolts from the skies, they pounced down upon the nether world, to seize some hapless fish swimming unconscious ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... came the leathern tones of one unseen announcer, "one hour before the big show begins in the main tent we will give a grand free balloon ascension!" ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... the spirits of the people are bound to be dashed down to the depths within a few days, it is unsound statesmanship surely so to engineer the Press that you raise those selfsame spirits sky high in the meantime. To climb up and up is a funny way to prepare for a fall! If you know that your balloon must burst in five minutes you use that time in letting out gas, not in throwing away ballast. If you want to spoil a man's legacy of L500 tell him the previous evening he has ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... Iron Duck's Bureau Drawer.—Merglitz, who has up till this time held his peace, now descends from a balloon and demands the release of Betty. It has been the will of Wotan that Merglitz and Betty should meet on earth and hate each other like poison, but Zweiback, the druggist of the gods, has disobeyed and concocted ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... tots. Country bumpkin's queries. Dear Mr Editor, what is a good cure for flatulence? I'd like that part. Learn a lot teaching others. The personal note. M. A. P. Mainly all pictures. Shapely bathers on golden strand. World's biggest balloon. Double marriage of sisters celebrated. Two bridegrooms laughing heartily at each other. Cuprani too, printer. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... philosophers who go up in a balloon to think are always discussin' the question: "Why Reform Administrations Never Succeed Themselves!" The reason is plain to anybody who has learned the a, b, ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... and then it swelled and took form and glowed brighter and came rushing toward us, as large as a moon, as large as a barrel, and then we saw its outlines, and it came swooping over us, a great beautiful golden thing and the whole deck burst into cheers. It was our convoy, a dirigible balloon—vivid golden yellow, trimmed with blue! How fair it seemed. How graceful and how surely and how powerfully it circled about the ship like a great hovering bird, and how safe we felt; and as we cheered and cheered the swirling, glowing, beautiful thing, we knew how badly frightened ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... They knew that she loved them, not for what she imagined, but for what she saw, though she saw it only in the germ. But as the Greeks beheld a Persephone and Athene in the passing stranger, and ennobled humanity into ideal beauty, Margaret saw all her friends thus idealized. She was a balloon of sufficient power to take us all up with her into the serene depth of heaven, where she loved to float, far above the low details of earthly life. Earth lay beneath us as a lovely picture,—its sounds came ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the paradox of the presentation of the character of space which I have elaborated is greatly mitigated. If there is no absolute position, a point must cease to be a simple entity. What is a point to one man in a balloon with his eyes fixed on an instrument is a track of points to an observer on the earth who is watching the balloon through a telescope, and is another track of points to an observer in the sun who is watching the ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... I am rather afraid to swim under there. The balloon may sink and carry me under. But if I were certain in exactly what spot the man is imprisoned, I'd have a try ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... rattling about with unusual alacrity. By half-past nine dressed-up children were flitting along the side streets hurrying their seniors. On the main thoroughfare flags were flying, and the streams of strangers that had been flowing into town were eddying at the street corners. The balloon-vender wormed his way through the buzzing crowd, leaving his wares in a red and blue trail behind him. The bark of the fakir rasped the tightening nerves of the town. Everywhere was hubbub; everywhere was the dusty, heated air of the festival; everywhere were men and ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... shops of prey are not proportioned nor balanced; this is probably in some way connected with the circumstance that they are made to sell, not fly. The monster kite, constructed by the light of Euclid, rose steadily into the air like a balloon, and eventually, being attached to the chair, drew Mr. Arthur at a reasonable pace about half a mile over a narrow but level piece of turf that was on the top of the downs. Q.E.D. This done, these two patient creatures had to wind the struggling monster in, and go back again to the starting ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... flirtation in the verandah; nay, even under the pine-tree beyond the Gurkha sentinel, whence many-twinkling Jakko may be admired, it is compatible with a certain shadow of human sympathy and weakness. An A.D.C. in tail-coat and gold buttons is no longer a star; he is only a fire-balloon; though he may twinkle in heaven, he can descend to earth. But in the quiet disguises of private life he is the mere stick of a rocket. He is quite of the earth. This scheme of clothing is compatible with the tenderest offices of ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... and, pausing in the lee of the granite ledge to gain breath, returned to the camp, where we found that the gale had snapped all the fastenings of the tent but one. Held by this, the puffed-out canvas swayed in the wind like a balloon. It was a task of some difficulty to secure it, which we did by beating down the canvas ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Piazza di Arni, built by the French, is dedicated to the populace for their open-air amusements, such as balloon ascents, rope-dancing, fire-works, races, shows, etc.: it contains seats for some 30,000 spectators. The Arc de Triomphe is considered the best of ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... this capacity she continued to make the public stare for a series of years. We say stare, for we can find no more appropriate word for expressing the feelings which her fictions are calculated to excite. With plots of almost incomprehensible absurdity, they combine a style more inflated than any balloon in which Madame Blanchard ever sailed through the regions of air—a language, or rather jargon, composed of the pickings of nearly every idiom that ever did live, or is at present in existence, and sentiments which would ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... hain't none o' them signs ez likely to strike anywhar in our bailiwick ez lightnin' is to kill a crow roostin' on the North Pole. Thuz one thing I've alluz wanted to see," continued the Squire, "but natur' has ben agin me an' I hain't never seen it, an' that thing is the h'istin' of a balloon. Th' can't be no balloons h'isted nowhar, I'm told, 'nless thuz gas to h'ist it with. I s'pose if we'd ha' had gas here, a good many fellers with balloons 'd ha' kim 'round this way an' showed us a balloon ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... the atmospheric column varies, there is a corresponding variation in the weight of the mercurial column,—shown by change of height. Moreover, having previously supposed that he understood the ascent of a balloon when he ascribed it to relative lightness, he now sees that he did not truly understand it. For he did not recognize it as a result of that upward pressure caused by the difference between the weight of the mass formed by the gas ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Drury-Lane play-house was soon after converted into a barrack for soldiers, which it has continued to be ever since. Sheridan was arrested, and, it was imagined, would have suffered the rack, if he had not escaped from his guard by a stratagem, and gone over to Ireland in a balloon with which his friend Fox furnished him. Immediately on his arrival in Ireland, he put himself at the head of a party of the most violent Reformers, commanded a regiment of Volunteers at the siege of Dublin in 1791, and was supposed to be the person who planned the scheme ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... music-kite—the car of the music-balloon rather, having thus descended near enough to the earth to be a temptation to some of the walkers afoot, they must catch at it! The moment the last-mentioned song was ended, almost before its death-note had ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... force of character consists in overcoming our sudden weaknesses, Schomberg displayed plenty of that quality. At the mention of the fly, he re-enforced the severe dignity of his attitude as one inflates a collapsing toy balloon with a great effort of breath. The easy-going, relaxed attitude ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... slats carrying above the body nine long superposed flat blades spaced about one-third of their width apart. When this apparatus was properly set at an angle to the longitudinal axis of the body and dropped from a balloon, it travelled back against the wind for a considerable distance before alighting. The course could be varied by a rudder. No practical application seems to have been made of this device by the French War Department, but Mr. J. P. Holland, ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... like a pricked balloon, and the remainder of the ride was made in silence. The information that she would go to friends in the city was a shock: it meant an earlier separation than I had planned for. But my arm was beginning again. In putting her into a cab I ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... their kind; and above all there was a miniature copy of Shelley, whose verse did much for the music of Donal's, while yet he could not quite appreciate the truth for the iridescence of it: he said it seemed to him to have been all composed in a balloon. I have mentioned only works of imagination, but it must not be supposed they had not a relish for stronger food: the books more severe came afterwards, when they had liberty to choose their own labours; now they had plenty of the harder work ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... from the battery on the hill, and, looking west, he saw the war-balloon hung high above the trees and moving toward Santiago. The advance had begun over there; there was the main attack—the big battle. It was interesting and horrible enough where he was, but Caney was not Santiago; and Grafton, too, mounted his ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... Alice. "It seems as if some one had thrown a ball up there. Surely it cannot be a balloon such as I have read of, ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... their escorts with one hand, a firm grip on hat or bonnet with the other. Thus sheltered, and more at ease, they slowly drank in the glorious vision which greeted the eye on every hand. Looking down as from a balloon, at the foot of the mountain, on the north side, the eye was charmed by the length and beauty of the Rondout Valley, through which ran the Delaware and Hudson Canal, and the Rondout River. For miles on either side of canal and river ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... ground, with the land sloping away from it, and no height above it from whence the boulders could have rolled down. Relics of an early ice-drift, perhaps. They are noble boulders. One of them has the size and smoothness and plump sphericity of a balloon ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... larks and primroses, but my thoughts were dragged back to thick, half-drawn red curtains, black woolen shawls and silver photograph frames. Then I had an idea. "I will buy a balloon," I thought. My spirits rose and my heart leapt. Should I buy a green one like a bad emerald, or a red one like wine and water, or a thick bright yellow one? White was charming too, and sailed up into the sky like a ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... continued Challenger—"I put it in the third person rather than appear to be too self-complacent—the ideal scientific mind should be capable of thinking out a point of abstract knowledge in the interval between its owner falling from a balloon and reaching the earth. Men of this strong fibre are needed to form the conquerors of nature ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... we watched his figure shaking and quivering, we heard, like groans, from beneath the handkerchief, "Oh ur-rh-ha—ar—uh! Bless me!" When he took down his handkerchief and happened to see Juno rising from her knees, he swelled up again like a balloon, and then eased off gradually in splutterings and moans as a dying porpoise. After which, he went and pacified Juno, and tried to explain to her what a wicked trick we had been guilty of, and that the band of smugglers, after all, were only the boys she knew so well, and he proceeded ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... his name tells us, is one of these. He is a small fish, living in warm seas. No doubt he has many enemies, eager to meet him and eat him. But, when they see this little fish puff out his sides like a balloon, and when pointed spines rise up all over the balloon, they think better of it! They leave him alone; and the Porcupine-fish goes back to his usual shape, the spines lying flat until wanted again. He is sometimes called the Sea-hedgehog or Urchin-fish, ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... having a balloonist in readiness to make an ascension at the proper moment, and of his making careful observations upon what is going on below, whilst floating at the mercy of the winds above, has led to the abandonment of this method of gaining information. By giving the balloon no great elevation, sending up with it an officer capable of forming correct opinions as to the enemy's movements, and perfecting a system of signals to be used in connection with the balloon, considerable advantages might be expected from its use. Sometimes the smoke of the battle, and the ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... can't hit twice in the same place. The boy is living on green corn alone and has already thrown down over four bushels of cobs. Even if the corn holds out there is still danger that the boy will reach a height where he will be frozen to death. There is some talk of attempting his rescue with a balloon.—Topeka Capital. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... that you found a dead bird on the top of a cathedral tower, and were asked how you thought it had got there. You would say, "Of course, it died up here." But if a friend said, "Not so; it dropped from a balloon, or from the clouds;" and told you the prettiest tale of how the bird came to so strange an end, you would answer, "No, no; I must reason from what I know. I know that birds haunt the cathedral tower; ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... Jean lay . . . of asking whether or not the girl was still alive . . . then the great weariness overpowered him. He sank down on the sand beside Jean, and Lollie's glad shout, as he was clasped in his mother's arms, floated through his mental numbness like a clear toy balloon drifting up ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... one's books in and one's spring-sofas in; but the charm of a home is a home to come back to. Do you understand? No, not you! You have as much comprehension of the pleasure of 'that sort of thing' as in the peculiar taste of the three ladies who hung themselves in a French balloon the other day, operatically nude, in order, I conjecture, to the ultimate perfection of French delicacy ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... occasionally determined in him the clutching instinct we have glanced at; very much as if he had said to her, in default of her breaking silence first: "Everything is remarkably pleasant, isn't it?—but WHERE, for it, after all, are we? up in a balloon and whirling through space, or down in the depths of the earth, in the glimmering passages of a gold-mine?" The equilibrium, the precious condition, lasted in spite of rearrangement; there had been a fresh distribution of the different weights, but the balance persisted and triumphed: ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... man with the double chin—the one drinking champagne, to the left of the table? That is Mr. Scrymser, a gentleman who has made several aeronautic excursions, and talked about a balloon voyage to Europe last year. You may remember his portrait, and plans of his air ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... step rendered the walk fatiguing. I did not cease to wonder at these ravines and precipices: when viewing the country from one of the knife-edged ridges, the point of support was so small that the effect was nearly the same as it must be from a balloon. In this descent we had occasion to use the ropes only once, at the point where we entered the main valley. We slept under the same ledge of rock where we had dined the day before: the night was fine, but from the depth and narrowness of the gorge, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... a Ducal Palace,—in which I beg you to observe all the felicity and dexterity of modern cheap engraving; finally, over the Ducal Palace there is something, I know not in the least what meant for, like an umbrella dropping out of a balloon, which is the ornamental letter T. Opposite this ornamental design, there is an engraving of two young ladies and a parasol, between two trunks of trees. The white face and black feet of the principal young lady, being the points of the design, are done with as much care,—not with as much dexterity,—as ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... have seen, which are filled with light gas, and are held by a string to keep them from running off in aeronautic voyages on their own account. This little boy had a naughty brother, who said to him, one day,—Brother, pull down your balloon, so that I can look at it and take hold of it. Then the little boy pulled it down. Now the naughty brother had a sharp pin in his hand, and he thrust it into the balloon, and all the gas oozed out, so that there was nothing ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... complexion, and said: "Hulloh! Guv., what priced head have you this morning?" I told him he might just as well speak to me in Dutch. He added: "When I woke this morning, my head was as big as Baldwin's balloon." On the spur of the moment I said the cleverest thing I think I have ever said; viz.: "Perhaps that accounts for the paraSHOOTING ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... when there was really nothing to laugh at and he tried to make Stephen talk, but Stephen was very silent. On the whole the conversation was dull, Peter thought, and once he nodded and was very nearly asleep, and fancied that the gentleman from London was spreading like a balloon and filling all the room. There was no ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... enough to win it to my side. I ought to have secured the emigres when they returned. The aristocracy would have soon adored me; and I needed it; it is the true, the only support of a monarchy, its moderator, its lever, its resisting point; without it, the state is like a ship without a rudder, a balloon in mid-air. Now, the strength, the charm of the aristocracy lies in its antiquity, the only thing I could not create." It must be confessed that from an old Republican general, for the man who had sent Augereau ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... you, ma'am, a great many good things here. There is a balloon hanging up, and another going to be put on the stocks: there is soap made, and making from a receipt in Nicholson's Chemistry: there is excellent ink made, and to be made by the same book: there is a cake of roses just squeezed in a vice, by my father, according to the ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... earth-banked yurts whose windows of ice were irradiated with a warm glow by the open fires within; past columns of luminous smoke rising from the wide chimneys of Yakut houses; past a red stuccoed church upon whose green, balloon-shaped domes golden stars glittered in the frosty moonlight; past a lonely graveyard on the outskirts of the city; and finally down a gentle decline to the snow-covered river, which had a width of nearly ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... philosophy, literature, and language, and so would come to appreciate more fully what education really is. In contemplating the expansion of the word, one might easily visualize the ever widening circle produced by throwing a pebble into a pool; but a better conception would be the expansion of a balloon when it is being inflated. This comparison enables one to realize that education enlarges as a sphere ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... like a knapsack; his nickel-plated scout whistle jangled against the saucepan and in his trousers pockets were a magnifying glass, three jaw breakers, a chocolate bar, a few inches of electric wiring, and a rubber balloon ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... make the first ascent in a balloon, which had been witnessed in England. It was from the Artillery ground. Fox was there with his brother, General F. The crowd was immense. Fox, happening to put his hand down to his watch, found another hand upon it, which he ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... look on his face, I said to myself: "Kitty Canary, it is all over. A pin has been stuck in your balloon and the air is out." And I got up and went in and danced with every man dancer in the room, and hardly knew who they were, the breaks were so often. I had a good time, but also I had a right sinky feeling, for it's pretty wabbly to ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... you it's a balloon. Are the Yankees smart enough to catch the stars?" It is enough to say the man carried the name of "balloon" during the rest ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... "Five Weeks in a Balloon" is, in a measure, a satire on modern books of African travel. So far as the geography, the inhabitants, the animals, and the features of the countries the travellers pass over are described, it is entirely ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... all somewhat excited over this new experience. There had been many balloon ascensions at the State Fair, and once a dirigible airship had sailed over the town of Oakdale. But to see a real flying machine with all its grace and elegance and lightness was like stepping onto another planet where progress had advanced ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... weeks of careful planning by members of MIT's Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. The device consisted of a weather balloon, a hydraulic ram powered by Freon gas to lift it out of the ground, and a vacuum-cleaner motor to inflate it. They made eight separate expeditions to Harvard Stadium between 1 and 5 A.M., locating an unused 110-volt circuit in the stadium and running buried ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... "But as there doesn't seem to be a balloon handy, what's the matter with trying to climb up?" ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... are going to build what is called a "balloon frame"; and, first, we put down the sills, which will be a course of 2" x 6", or 2" x 8" joists, as in ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... and heavy, eh? Well, I may be large, but I ain't heavy! A balloon is large, but it is light! I am also large, but I am light—on my feet! You ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... or was it a toy balloon?" Chief Hadfield was not a man to disappoint his audience, and the laugh that thanked him for this quip set Sandy twirling and chewing more vigorously ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... A balloon slowly rose from the Federal lines and hung in the scarlet clouds that circled the sun. The signal was given to the artillery that the enemy lay in the deep woods within range and a storm of shot and shell suddenly ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... is, you cannot see the formation very well from the sea, Dick. If one were in a balloon it would be different. You must remember that there are many hundreds of islands scattered in ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... all things!" cried Mrs. No-Tail. "That chocolate must have disappeared. It must have gone up like a balloon. I will have to buy some more of you, and put that on." Then she went over and looked at the cake, and she wondered at the queer scratches in the top, just as if a cat had clawed off the chocolate. But ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... that he was going up in a Balloon to hemstitch a couple of Clouds, it would have sounded just as plausible to Mr. Pallzey ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... amounted to much. She was always in trouble of some sort—couldn't get her hair braided, or her shoes on the right feet. Consequently, her dream book was very monotonous. The only thing worth mentioning in the way of dreams that Sara Ray ever achieved was when she dreamed that she went up in a balloon ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... she sees three of them, but too far off to attack, and later, as the light is failing, a fourth destroyer towards which she manoeuvres. "Depth-keeping," she notes, "very difficult owing to heavy swell." An observation balloon on a gusty day is almost as stable as a submarine "pumping" in a heavy swell, and since the Baltic is shallow, the submarine runs the chance of being let down with a whack on the bottom. None the less, E9 works her way to within 600 yards of the quarry; ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... the stage coaches, and the railroads; the forts, and the ships-of-many-big-guns, and the tremendous "council-house" at Washington; and the patent office (great-medicine-place, filled with curious machines); and the war parade of American soldiers, and the balloon—a huge ball which carried a man to the Great Spirit in the sky; and the beautiful white ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... the workmen passing grin, While his mouth-organ changed to a rascally Bacchanal dance "Over the hills and far away." This and his glance Outlasted all the fair, farmer and auctioneer, Cheap-jack, balloon-man, drover with crooked stick, and steer, Pig, turkey, goose, and duck, Christmas Corpses to be. Not even the kneeling ox had eyes like the Romany. That night he peopled for me the hollow wooded ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... process of invention The human race the true inventor Obscure origin of many inventions Inventions born before their time "Nothing new under the sun" The power of steam known to the ancients Passage from Roger Bacon Old inventions revived Printing Atmospheric locomotion The balloon The reaping machine Tunnels Gunpowder Ancient firearms The steam gun The Congreve rocket Coal-gas Hydropathy Anaesthetic agents The Daguerreotype anticipated The electric telegraph not new Forgotten inventors Disputed inventions Simultaneous ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... flame. Lowin, lowing, flaming, burning. Lown, v. loon. Lowp, v. loup. Lowse, louse, to untie, let loose. Lucky, a grandmother, an old woman; an ale wife. Lug, the ear. Lugget, having ears. Luggie, a porringer. Lum, the chimney. Lume, a loom. Lunardi, a balloon bonnet. Lunches, full portions. Lunt, a column of smoke or steam. Luntin, smoking. Luve, love. Lyart, gray in general; discolored by decay or ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... defer the examination of regions like those around the Pole, beset, as they are, with so many difficulties, till new means of transport have been discovered. I have heard it intimated that one fine day we shall be able to reach the Pole by a balloon, and that it is only waste of time to seek to get there before that day comes. It need scarcely be shown that this line of reasoning is untenable. Even if one could really suppose that in the near or distant ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... particular holding, one sees the boundless prospect before; while the nearest objects and ornaments conceal the church, and every thing upon and above which one stands. It is exactly as if one saw one's self carried up into the air in a balloon. Such troublesome and painful sensations I repeated until the impression became quite indifferent to me; and I have since then derived great advantage from this training, in mountain travels and geological studies, and on great buildings, where I have vied with the carpenters ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... living-room combined. A porch might be placed over the rear door, or better still, at a small additional expense, a summer-kitchen and wood-house might be added. A house of this accommodation is usually the first one put up by settlers on the western prairies. They are built of wood, balloon frame, with a plain pitch ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... health. At considerable elevations the diminished pressure frequently causes a great feeling of malaise, giddiness, loss of strength, palpitation, and even nausea; and at greater heights, as was noticed by Mr. Glaisher in a very lofty balloon ascent, loss of sight, feeling, and consciousness. These were caused by a want of a sufficient supply of oxygen to remove effete matters from the system, and to carry on the organic functions necessary for the maintenance of life. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... was an Old Man of the Hague, Whose ideas were excessively vague; He built a balloon to examine the moon, That deluded Old ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... School, Paris, his abilities attracted the attention of BERTHOLLET (q. v.), who appointed him his assistant in the government chemical works at Arcueil; here he assiduously employed himself in chemical and physical research, in connection with which he made two balloon ascents; in 1809 he became professor of Chemistry at the Paris Polytechnic School; in 1832 was elected to a similar chair at the Jardin des Plantes; seven years later was created a peer of France, while in 1829 he became chief assayer ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... silent figure on the sofa. Rush, in and out of his chair a dozen times, to flip the ash from his cigarette, to light one for Mary, to hand the strawberries round again, was tugging at his moorings like a captive balloon. When he answered a question it was with the air of interrupting an inaudible tune he was whistling. John still planted before the fireplace, taking, automatically, a small part in the talk just as he went through the minimum of business with his tea, seemed ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster |
