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Barometer   Listen
noun
Barometer  n.  An instrument for determining the weight or pressure of the atmosphere, and hence for judging of the probable changes of weather, or for ascertaining the height of any ascent. Note: The barometer was invented by Torricelli at Florence about 1643. It is made in its simplest form by filling a graduated glass tube about 34 inches long with mercury and inverting it in a cup containing mercury. The column of mercury in the tube descends until balanced by the weight of the atmosphere, and its rise or fall under varying conditions is a measure of the change in the atmospheric pressure. At the sea level its ordinary height is about 30 inches (760 millimeters). See Sympiesometer.
Aneroid barometer. See Aneroid barometer, under Aneroid.
Marine barometer, a barometer with tube contracted at bottom to prevent rapid oscillations of the mercury, and suspended in gimbals from an arm or support on shipboard.
Mountain barometer, a portable mercurial barometer with tripod support, and long scale, for measuring heights.
Siphon barometer, a barometer having a tube bent like a hook with the longer leg closed at the top. The height of the mercury in the longer leg shows the pressure of the atmosphere.
Wheel barometer, a barometer with recurved tube, and a float, from which a cord passes over a pulley and moves an index.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Barometer" Quotes from Famous Books



... act as a barometer of their mother's moods. So when I had finished and little Maxie slipped up close to me and tactily invited me to fondle him I knew that I had made a favorable ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... clay that seemed utterly incapable of any expression whatever, save in the slight facial contortion consequent to the mechanical movement of his lower jaw—the skipper sat, with barometer in hand, eyeing the fatal finger that pointed to our doom: the rest of us were lashed to the legs of the centre-table, glad of any object to fix our eyes upon, and nervously awaiting a turn in the state of affairs, that was then by no ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... his attention to wander from Hilma Tree, he found that he had been staring fixedly at a thermometer upon the wall opposite, and this made him think that it had long been his intention to buy a fine barometer, an instrument that could be accurately depended on. But the barometer suggested the present condition of the weather and the likelihood of rain. In such case, much was to be done in the way of getting the seed ready and overhauling his ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... how in our lives there are long stretches of uneventful days, and then, generally without warning, some crisis is sprung on us, which demands quite a different order of qualities to cope with it. Our typhoons generally come without any warning from a falling barometer. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... his head when he swept his eye round at all this loveliness; then he turned on his heel and took a look at the aneroid fastened to the wall of the sitting-room of the Life-Saving Station. The arrow showed a steady shrinkage. The barometer had ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... of exchange originated thereby, it must be remembered, is not confined to the amount actually drawn against bonds sold but includes also all the exchange which other bankers, in their anticipation of lower rates, hasten to draw. The exchange market is, indeed, a sensitive barometer, from which those who understand it can read all sorts of coming developments. It often happens that buying or selling movements in our securities by the foreigners are so clearly forecasted by the action of the exchange market that bankers here are able ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher

... inserting a little touch of gum. It is the smaller, colored kinds of seaweed that one treats in this way; and it is well to leave them for a day in the sun before washing and preparing, as this brings out their color. The ordinary large kind of seaweed is useful as a barometer. A piece hung by the door will tell when rain is coming by growing ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... whole history of those trying days had to come out in open court, and the postmaster's daughter was given a descriptive and pictorial boom which many an actress envied. Peters was restored to grace when he showed plainly that his articles had kept the fickle barometer of public opinion at "set fair," in so far as ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy

... ridicules the highest motives, and degrades the most heroic achievements. It is fed with emotions and spectacles: it cries, laughs, and condemns without knowledge and without enthusiasm. Pitiable indeed is the politician who makes society his moral barometer." ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... pains. The whole place was turned upside down, drawers burst open, and presses ransacked, with the result that an odd volume of Pope's 'Homer,' two plated candlesticks, an ivory letter-weight, a small oak barometer, and a ball of twine ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... you may state— Much rain. The Woodpecker of which fools sing Ne'er tapped Half so persistently. Since Spring I've rapped Your fair false dial day by day, And yet The end—whatever you may say Is wet! 'Twas wet in June, and in July Wet too; In August it is wetter. Why, Trust you? Barometer, you false old chap, You bore! I'm no Woodpecker, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various

... Mr. Pike's reply as he lifted his glance across the smooth swell of sea to the sky. "This ain't the first time she's been on the North Atlantic in winter." He debated a moment, as he studied the sea and sky. "I should say, considering the high barometer, we ought to get a mild gale from the north-east or a calm, with the chances in ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... compass; the variation of the needle has been reduced to rules, and some anomalies arising from the metallic attraction of the ship itself, have been corrected by Professor Barlow's experiments. The use of the marine barometer and thermometer have also largely assisted to give notice of tempests; and some ingenious theories have been lately formed, which, promising to give a knowledge of the origin and nature of tempests, are obviously not unlikely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... of June, 1784, the thermometer in the morning being at 64, and at noon at 70, the barometer at 29.6 1/2, and the wind north, I observed a blue mist, smelling strongly of sulphur, hang along our sloping woods, and seeming to indicate that thunder was at hand. I was called in about two in the afternoon, and so missed seeing the gathering ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... attended by a boat from the floating light, again stood towards the Bell Rock. The weather felt extremely cold this morning, the thermometer being at 34 degrees, with the wind at east, accompanied by occasional showers of snow, and the marine barometer indicated 29.80. At half-past seven the sea ran with such force upon the rock that it seemed doubtful if a landing could be effected. At half-past eight, when it was fairly above water, the writer took his place in the floating ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was a man of penetration and soon realized the state of the social barometer. His hosts, who did not look at all like quiet boys, were eating their blackfish in perfect silence, save for polite requests for bread or pepper, or the occasional courteous remark, ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... Front, and particularly the gallant officers. Wrist watches of every shape are to be seen, each thoughtfully provided with its strap—for Mr. Jones forgets nothing. In addition to wrist watches are wrist compasses for the other arm, and for the ankles a speedometer and barometer. Thus fitted, the officer knows practically all that can be learned. I need not say that all are in gold; but a few special sets in radium can be obtained. Even these, however, are not ruinous, for with Mr. Luke Jones ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 23, 1914 • Various

... is only a place where the weather is always and uniformly fine. The sand is there merely as what the logicians call, in their cheerful way, 'a separable accident'; the essential of a desert, as such, is the absence of vegetation, due to drought. The barometer in those happy, too happy, regions, always stands at Set Fair. At least, it would, if barometers commonly grew in the desert, where, however, in the present condition of science, they are rarely found. It is this dryness of the air, and this alone, that ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... there's a cloud," said Joe, "we'll never get back to Camden. There isn't any wind and the barometer says fair." ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour

... me that there must be clouds—as though the weather were going to change. It's very odd when one is ill, it seems as if the sky were much nearer. Oh, I'm a capital barometer now." And she went on reading the book she had laid down while ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... Curtis himself how long he reckoned we should be obliged to re- main upon the reef; but he merely replied, that it must de- pend upon circumstances, and that he hoped the weather would continue favorable. Fortunately the barometer is rising steadily, and there is every sign of ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... of draughts, is the consequence of a "wrong move" by the player!—And poor Matthew's accusation of Fate put me in mind of the school-boy, who, during a wet vacation, rushed vindictively at the barometer, and struck it in the face, exclaiming—"Only three holidays left, and still this plaguey glass says 'very wet;'—I can't bear ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... fossil fishes as soon as I return from an excursion I wish to make in July and August to the glacier of the Aar, where I hope, by a last visit this year, to conclude my labors on this subject. You will be glad to learn that the beautiful barometer you gave me has been my faithful companion in the Alps. . .I have the pleasure to tell you that the King of Prussia has made me a handsome gift of nearly 200 pounds for the continuance of my glacial work. I feel, therefore, the greater certainty of completing ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... walking-sticks, which you will find in ten thousand British homes. A stack of neatly folded coats and waterproofs covered the top of an old oak chest; there was a grandfather clock ticking; and some polished brass warming-pans on the walls, and a barometer, and a print of Chiltern winning the St Leger. The place was as orthodox as an Anglican church. When the maid asked me for my name I gave it automatically, and was shown into the smoking-room, on the ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan

... the incoming waves seemed to fill the room. Even while they stood there a little shower of pebbles and spray were dashed against the windows. Andrew looked anxiously across the estuary and tapped the barometer by his side. ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... would have called it abracadabrant and they would not have been far wrong. There was necromancy in the air. I felt it, as I followed the nurse across the threshold. I anticipated something odd, some grotesque development. In the atmosphere of those I loved in those days I was as sensitive as a barometer. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... which ships are sighted and entered into dock: the Kaiser was not there: and with prone outlook he went seeking an assistant superintendent; but, sighting a fellow-operator, come, as usual, to digest the world, from barometer-reports to coffee-quotations at Rio, Charles P. Stickney cried to him: "Funny ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... worthless wild cat mines there were in that part of the country. Assessments did the business for me there. There were a hundred and seventeen assessments to one dividend, and the proportion of income to outlay was a little against me. My financial barometer went down to 32 Fahrenheit, and the subscriber was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... optical focus is another proof of the illusion of material sense. On the eye's retina, sky and tree-tops apparently join hands, clouds and ocean meet 122:18 and mingle. The barometer, - that little prophet of storm and sunshine, denying the testimony of the senses, - points to fair weather in the midst of murky 122:21 clouds and drenching rain. Experience is full of instances of similar illusions, which every ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... months, to be precise, as the year dies and the sap sinks in my old veins, my physical and psychologic—isn't that the new-fangled way of putting it?—barometer sinks; in sympathy with Nature I suppose. My corns ache, I get gouty, and my ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... the others of the party could see that the strangers were showing him the instrument, and apparently explaining it to him. Pretty soon Rollo returned and reported that the two young men were students, and that the instrument which they had was a metallic barometer, and that they were measuring the height of the ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott

... The barometer has risen, the sunshine of pardon breaks through the clouds. If only it were all over! Such excitement is infectious! (To IDA.) You see you do not yet have to think of entering ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... column of air above the earth's surface had become reduced by one-third of its altitude. The identical phenomenon would have occurred at the summit of a mountain 35,000 feet high; and had Servadac been in possession of a barometer, he would have immediately discovered the fact that only now for the first time, as the result of experiment, revealed itself to him—a fact, moreover, which accounted for the compression of the blood-vessels which both he and Ben Zoof had ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... long been a desideratum. All kinds of portable gauges are, either not to be depended upon, or subject to frequent repairs; so much so, that by law every steam-engine used in France is provided with a gauge on the barometer principle, that is 10 feet, 15 feet, 20 feet high for a steam pressure of 60 pounds, 90 pounds or 120 pounds to the square inch. Mr. Bourdon, chief engineer at the Creusot works, where the engines of the frigate Mogador, were built, has devised a gauge, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... arc of parabola, Problem of Sound, Tides, Refraction of Lens, including thickness, &c., Ivory's paper on Equations, Achromatism of microscope, Capillary Attraction, Motions of Fluids, Euler's principal axes, Spherical pendulum, Equation b squared(d squaredy/dx squared)(d squaredy/dt squared), barometer, Lunar Theory well worked out, ordinary differential equations, Calculus of Variations, Interpolations like Laplace's for Comets, Kepler's theorem. In September I had my old telescope mounted on a short tripod stand, and made experiments on its adjustments. I was possessed ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... to the sandy floor are speedily frozen there. In the Dog-days, the frost is so intense that a small icicle becomes in one day a huge mass of ice; but a cool day promptly brings a thaw, and the cave is looked upon as a barometer, not merely feeling, but also presaging, the changes of weather. The people of the neighbourhood, when employed in field-work, arrange their labour so that the mid-day meal may be taken near the cave, when they either ice the water they have brought with them, ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... in this place, as favourable to this hypothesis, a most curious discovery made very lately by Mr. Walsh, who being assisted by Mr. De Luc to make a more perfect vacuum in the double or arched barometer, by boiling the quicksilver in the tube, found that the electric spark or shock would no more pass through it, than through a stick of solid glass. He has also noted several circumstances that affect ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley

... clear, but the wind had changed to the east and the barometer threatened more bad weather to come. When Seth came in to breakfast he found his helper sound asleep in a kitchen chair, his head on the table. The young man was pretty well worn out. Atkins insisted upon his going to bed ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln

... probably Italian. Miss Mapp's opinion of the Contessa fluctuated violently like a barometer before ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... noble lines that live forever in our memory, we realize that Wordsworth is the greatest poet of nature that our literature has produced. If we go further, and study the poems that impress us, we shall find four remarkable characteristics: (1) Wordsworth is sensitive as a barometer to every subtle change in the world about him. In The Prelude he compares himself to an aeolian harp, which answers with harmony to every touch of the wind; and the figure is strikingly accurate, as well as interesting, for there is hardly ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... glories so openly before the world, instead of shrinking in modest reserve beneath their own green leaves, like the Puritan primrose and the retiring violet? The answer is, Because of the extreme rarity of the mountain air. It's the barometer that does it. At first sight, I will readily admit, this explanation seems as fanciful as the traditional connection between Goodwin Sands and Tenterden Steeple. But, like the amateur stories in country papers, it is 'founded on fact,' ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... a deep-sea cable exaggerates in an instructive manner the phenomena of telegraphy over long aerial lines. The two ends of a cable may be in regions of widely diverse electrical potential, or pressure, just as the readings of the barometer at these two places may differ much. If a copper wire were allowed to offer itself as a gateless conductor it would equalize these variations of potential with serious injury to itself. Accordingly the rule is adopted of working the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... their histories. He could detect at a glance whether they were unhappy or merely depressed by the rain, whether they drank champagne from happiness or desperation. Notwithstanding his dreamy disposition his temperament was ardent; his was an unspoiled soul; he felt himself a sort of moral barometer for the magnificent and feline women who treated him as if he were a wooden post when they were gossiping, harried him like an animal when they were thirsty. He noted that they were always thirsty. They smoked more than they ate, and whispered more, if no men were present, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... or for reasons best known to themselves, the Tejadas had given Mr. Hinckley a very spirited saddle-mule. The first thing I knew, her rider, carrying a heavy camera, a package of plate-holders, and a large mercurial barometer, borrowed from the Harvard Observatory, was pitched headlong into the sand. Fortunately no damage was done, and after a lively chase the runaway mule was brought back by Corporal Gamarra. After Mr. Hinckley was remounted on his dangerous mule we rode ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... beyond the circumference established by the rotary motion. The primary cause of these tornadoes is probably due to a low barometric condition of the atmosphere accompanied by a high temperature, and spreading over an area of very irregular shape. An area of high barometer, accompanied by a low temperature, encroaches upon the former, and then comes the mighty effort to equalize these two different conditions of the atmosphere and restore the equilibrium, which is the constant effort of nature. The more diverse ...
— A Full Description of the Great Tornado in Chester County, Pa. • Richard Darlington

... all sat in the cabin, Capt. Noah remarked: "I'm getting a trifle worried. You see, I can't tell by the barometer whether the Ark is floating or wheeling. Now, that is rather important. If we keep on in this way I shall have to get a speedometer. It wouldn't be very nice to be arrested for breaking the speed laws and ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory

... got into its pace. There are the steam and water "gauges," to tell the "driver" and fireman when the steam is at proper pressure, and when the water is high enough in the boiler. The steam gauge is like a clock, or an Aneroid barometer, right before the driver. Those other handles near it are the whistle-handles. One whistle is small, and very shrill, to warn people on the line, and to tell people the train is coming. The other is a deep-toned booming whistle which tells ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... horizontally out of the water, and you feel it burdened by a great weight; air is therefore heavy. Put air in equilibrium with other bodies, and you can measure its weight. From these observations were constructed the barometer, the siphon, the air-gun, and the air-pump. All the laws of statics and hydrostatics were discovered by experiments as simple as these. I would not have my pupil study them in a laboratory of experimental physics. I dislike ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... one tack, one taste one bottle, one taste one fish, one taste one barometer. This shows no distinguishing sign when there ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein

... it, then, my dear girl! Stick to your plan. Don't let me spoil your afternoon! Gracious heaven! I—I—why, I can quite well take Madame Frabelle myself.' He looked at the barometer. 'The glass is going up,' he said, giving it first a tap and then a slight shake to encourage it to go up higher and to look sharp about it. 'So that's settled, then, dear. That's fixed up. I'll take her on the river. I don't mind in the very least. I ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson

... so good. Now, in addition to observations of the clouds, the sea and the air at the surface, it helps—more, it is all-important—to check these observations by some scientific instrument which cannot lie. For this, we must use the barometer, which, as you probably know, is merely an instrument for weighing the air. When the air is heavier the barometer rises, when the air grows ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... of St. Ambrose, "Non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum;"—I had a great dislike of paper logic. For myself, it was not logic that carried me on; as well might one say that the quicksilver in the barometer changes the weather. It is the concrete being that reasons; pass a number of years, and I find my mind in a new place; how? the whole man moves; paper logic is but the record of it. All the logic in the world would not have made me move faster ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... in the province of Moray during the summer of 1829 was unusually great. In May the drought was so excessive, as to kill many of the recently planted shrubs and trees. As the season advanced, the variations in the barometer became so remarkable, that observers began to lose ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous

... down the word, thought, or mental, picture which has been transmitted to him by the sender; and for the sender to write down the name or picture of the thing the idea of which he has transmitted. These memoranda serve not only as scientific proof of the experiment, but also serve as a barometer of progress ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... in number, are among the most wonderful and useful productions of the human mind. One of them combined the result of 1,159,353 separate observations on the force and direction of the wind, and upward of 100,000 observations on the height of the barometer, at sea. As the value of such observations was recognized, more of them were made. Through the genius and devotion of one man, Commander Maury, every ship became a floating observatory, keeping careful ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... ceased on the 16th, and then followed heavy discharges of ashes, violent shocks of earthquakes, thunder and lightning in the columns of vapors and ashes, and finally heavy rains, lasting till the 3d of July. The barometer during all ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... the brink of the descent before any of the rest. They unconsciously kept their eyes on Fritz. He would serve as a barometer, and from his actions they could tell pretty well the conditions existing down below. If Fritz exhibited any symptoms of horror, then it would afford them a chance to steel their nerves against the sight, ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... ANEROID. A portable barometer or instrument for showing variations of the weather by the pressure of the atmosphere upon a metallic box ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... finally mounted thoughtfully to the bridge, considerably to the surprise of his subordinates, and spent the whole evening there, pacing slowly back and forth with an appearance of restlessness the other officers could not understand, for the weather was very fine and the barometer high and steady. ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... dear Edith, except as a weather barometer,' said her father. 'In that point of view ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... Livingstone's canoe, meanwhile, which had distracted the men's attention, was saved by the cavity in the whirlpool filling up as the frightful eddy was reached. A few of the things in Dr. Kirk's canoe were left; but all that was valuable, including a chronometer, a barometer, and, to our great sorrow, his notes of the journey and botanical drawings of the ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... London winter's ended in July— Sometimes a little later. I don't err In this: whatever other blunders lie Upon my shoulders, here I must aver My Muse a glass of Weatherology; For Parliament is our barometer: Let Radicals its other acts attack, Its sessions form our ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... sweep of the hurricane, before which trees went flying like straws, huts disappeared like autumn leaves, and your Mission House, if left standing at all, was probably swept bare alike of roof and thatch at a single stroke! Well for you at such times if you have a good barometer indicating the approach of the storm; and better still, a large cellar like ours, four-and-twenty feet by sixteen, built round with solid coral blocks,—where goods may be stored, and whereinto ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... restless, was disposed by circumstances and by nature, or by second nature, to the vigilance of a dependent's life; accustomed to watch and consult daily the barometer of court favour, he soon felt the coming storm; and the moment he saw prognostics of the change, he trembled, and considered how he should best provide for his own safety before the hour of danger arrived. Numerous libels against the minister appeared, which Lord ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... The knowledge that had come upon her in the car that Saturday afternoon made her voice grim. "He's gone elsewhere," she said; "I feel it; I know it. A wife can sense these things as a barometer senses rain." ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... piece of metal felt as if just taken from the furnace. The seams of the deck spluttered and hissed, and as we walked about the pitch stuck to our feet. There was nothing, however, in the sky which betokened a hurricane, while the barometer continued ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston

... I do. The barometer has fallen lower, all of a sadden, than I ever saw it fall before. You may depend upon it, we shall have to look out for squalls before long. Just cast your eyes on the horizon over the weather bows there; it's not much ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... button in the row and the bright light concentered at a particular place on the concrete wall, illuminating, in a row, a clock, a barometer, and centigrade and Fahrenheit thermometers. Almost in a sweep of glance he read the messages of the dials: time 4:30; air pressure, 29:80, which was normal at that altitude and season; and temperature, Fahrenheit, 36. With another press, the gauges of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... refracting telescope, of three and a half feet, and triple object glass, made by Mr Dollond. 8. A Hadley's sextant, by ditto. 9. Another, by Mr Ramsden. 10. An azimuth compass, by Mr Adams. 11. A pair of globes, by ditto. 12. A dipping needle, by Mr Nairne. I3. A marine barometer, by ditto. 14. A wind gage, invented by Dr Lind of Edinburgh, and made by Mr Nairne. 15. Two portable barometers, made by Mr Burton. 16. Six thermometers, by ditto. 17. A theodolite, with a level, and a Gunter's chain, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... man who, by the same careful system of observation, was known to deceive persons for more than two years into the belief that he kept a barometer by stealth, so exactly did he foretell all changes in the weather by the braying of his ass and the temper of ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... summit of Mount Ararat, looking out of the window and exclaiming, "Why, it's been raining!" Then imagine Mrs. Noah, catching an odd syllable of her husband's remark, writing a love story to prove that the barometer portended showers. Finally, picture the world looking in alarm for its umbrella, and you have an image of the inception and effect of the modern ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... pitch was no sooner holy-stoned than it oozed forth again to smear their purity. Though stout awnings defied the direct fury of the sun they could not shut out its glare and furnace heat. And the human barometer showed the stress of life. Stump was a caldron in himself, Tagg a bewhiskered malediction in damp linen. The temper of the crew, stifling in crowded quarters, suggested—that they were suffering ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... ever conscious of pressure. The air is heavy; there is a corresponding lack of the buoyancy of mind which is the normal American condition. Perhaps, if German troops occupied New England and New York, our own mental barometer might be lower. It is difficult to say. At any rate, after an ocean voyage of nine days one's spirits rise perceptibly as the ship nears Nantucket; and the icy-bright sunlight of New York harbour, the sight of the buildings aspiring to blue skies restore the throbbing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... marked the outset of our new stage. Challenger had from the moment of joining us issued directions to the whole party, much to the evident discontent of Summerlee. Now, upon his assigning some duty to his fellow-Professor (it was only the carrying of an aneroid barometer), the matter ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... stand by being broken instead of balanced, as though the business in question were to make it stand rather than to balance it. In this respect the State is like the man who thinks that he can produce fine weather by making the barometer go up. ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... tingling than some fair soul that looks almost spotless to all eyes but its own. One little stain of rust will be conspicuous on a brightly polished blade, but if it be all dirty and dull, a dozen more or fewer will make little difference. As men grow better they become like that glycerine barometer recently introduced, on which a fall or a rise that would have been invisible with mercury to record it takes up inches, and is glaringly conspicuous. Good people sometimes wonder, and sometimes are made doubtful and sad about themselves, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... affairs by a progress from one conflict, desperate and tragic, between two of the leading nations of the West, to another and still more terrible which swept the whole world into the maelstrom; and marked in thought by a certain dispersion and depression of mind, a falling in the barometer of temperament and imagination, but also by a grappling with realities at closer quarters. No wonder that some have seen here a 'tragedy of hope' and the 'bankruptcy ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... Russian Black Sea fleet shall be permitted in times of peace to sail through the Dardanelles and to show itself on their shores. If, however, it shows itself there, I should infer Peace, like good weather from the barometer; when it withdraws and carefully secludes itself, then it is time to suspect that clouds are gathering. The question, therefore, whether men-of-war shall be permitted to pass the Dardanelles in times of peace, although ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... The barometer dropped to 28.5 inches and the wind remained high. We were struck with the singular fact that, even in the height of some of these hurricanes, the sky remained serene and the sun shone brightly. It had been very different when the ship was amongst the pack a few miles to the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... is exposed to the atmosphere. The absolute pressure in a vessel containing gas at an effective pressure of 12 inches of water is 7 oz. plus the normal, insensible pressure of the atmosphere itself—say 15-1/4 lb. per square inch. The liquid in a barometer which measures the pressure of the atmosphere stands at a height of 30 inches only, because that liquid is mercury, 13.6 times as heavy as water. Were it filled with water the barometer would stand at (30 X 13.6) 408 inches, or 34 feet, approximately. Gas pressures are always ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... then to proceed only as far as Brownsville, Texas, where he should compel the debarkation of the fugitive. The captain, who was a good sport as well as a good officer, promptly threw himself into the part and told Bracken and Kaffenburgh that it was evident from the barometer that a severe storm was approaching (which must have had a sinister implication to these two unfortunate gentlemen), and that he could not think of putting to sea. Once the "storm" had blown over, the tug started out across the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. But now Bracken ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... tropical land, when the sun stings your skin through your shirt and the sand blisters your feet through your boot-soles, when you butter your bread with a soup-ladle and the mercury boils merrily in the barometer, then, vainly pawing the air for mosquitoes with one hand and reaching for the siphon with the other, you gasp, "Gad! it must be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various

... conventional angle; but he loved her, and had too much sense not to see that she was often right and Cowfold was wrong. Moreover, he enjoyed her antagonism to the Cattles, of whose intellect he had not, as a clock and barometer maker, a very high ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... manometer worked by compressed air, an instrument used to ascertain the upper atmospheric pressure on the level of the ocean. Perhaps a common barometer would not have done as well, the atmospheric pressure being likely to increase in proportion as we descended below ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... much talk of icebergs, of which wandering islands an unusual number had been seen by the vessels that had come into New York a day or two before we left that port, and of whose dangerous neighbourhood we were warned by the sudden coldness of the weather, and the sinking of the mercury in the barometer. While these tokens lasted, a double look-out was kept, and many dismal tales were whispered after dark, of ships that had struck upon the ice and gone down in the night; but the wind obliging us to hold a southward course, we saw none of them, and the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... heterogeneous *Homos same homonym, homeopathy *Hydor water hydraulics, hydrophobia, hydrant *Isos equal isosceles, isotherm *Lithos stone monolith, chrysolite Logos word, study theology, dialogue Metron measure barometer, diameter *Micros small microscope, microbe Monos one, alone monoplane, monotone *Morphe form metamorphosis, amorphous *Neos new, young neolithic, neophyte *Neuron nerve neuralgia, neurotic Nomos law, science, astronomy, gastronomy, economy management ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... misfortune to lose a limb after the middle age. HIS LORDSHIP usually predicted an alteration in the weather with as much certainty from feeling transient pains in this stump, as he could by his marine barometer; from the indications of which latter he kept a diary of the atmospheric changes, which was ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty

... and there. I might have known better. The pale schoolmistress, in her mourning dress, was looking at me, as I noticed, with a wild sort of expression. All at once the blood dropped out of her cheeks as the mercury drops from a broken barometer-tube, and she melted away from her seat like an image of snow; a slung-shot could not have brought her down better. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... emigration movement, which had begun during the storm and stress of the first pogrom year, this passive but only effective protest against the new Egyptian oppression proceeded at a slow pace. The Jewish emigration from Russia to the United States served as a barometer of the persecutions endured by the Jews in the land of bondage. During the first three years of the eighties the new movement showed violent fluctuations. In 1881 there were 8193 emigrants; in 1882, 17,497; ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... first of May Wore winter coats and hose, Began to say, the first of June, "Good Lord! how hot it grows!" At last two Fahrenheits blew up, And killed two children small, And one barometer shot dead ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the pioneer as a huge barometer to forecast the weather. "How is the mountain this morning?" the farmer asked in harvest time. "Has the mountain got his nightcap on?" the housewife inquired before her wash was hung on the line. The Indian would watch the mountain ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... name of the substance out of which we make our windows and some of our drinking vessels, etc., and this was at one time its only use; but we now use the name glass for several special articles—for example, a drinking-vessel, a telescope, a barometer, a mirror (or "looking-glass"), and so on. Copper is another word the meaning of which has become specialized in this way as time has gone on. From being merely the name of a metal it has come to be used for a copper coin and for a large cauldron especially used in ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill

... ruled by the wheat-crop within his own horizon, and the wheat-crop by the weather. Thus in person, he became a sort of flesh-barometer, with feelers always directed to the sky and wind around him. The local atmosphere was everything to him; the atmospheres of other countries a matter of indifference. The people, too, who were not farmers, the rural multitude, saw in the god of the weather a more important ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... dear; you'll spoil your eyes. Come and look at the sunset. Come along!" For a blood-red forecast of storm in the west, surer than the surest human barometer, is blazing through the window that cannot be opened for the blow, and turning the shell-work rabbit and the story of Goliath into gold and jewels. The sun is glancing through a rift in the cloud-bank, to say good-night ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... through which you can barely force your way by daylight, then you realize suddenly that the most wonderful part of a deer's education shows itself, not in keen eyes or trumpet ears, or in his finely trained nose, more sensitive a hundred times than any barometer, but in his forgotten feet, which seem to have eyes and nerves and brains packed into their hard shells instead of the senseless ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... great bright eyes with as vivid and immediate an irradiation as if the brilliant procession which she pictured deployed even now, chiefly in ox-wagons, before them. She caught off her bonnet from her head,—it seemed a sort of moral barometer; she never wore it when the indications of the inner atmosphere set fair. She swung it gayly by one string as she walked and talked; now and again she held the string to her lips and bit it with her strong, even teeth, reckless of the havoc in the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... for tillers of the soil. Years before he had written: "Generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any State to that of its husbandmen is the proportion of its sound to its healthy parts, and is a good enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption." He rejoiced in the agricultural possibilities of America. Could he have had his way, he would have made the republic, in the apt phrase of Mr. Henry Adams, "an enlarged Virginia—a society to be kept pure and free ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... the door—the hearse. The whole party had assembled to see him go. Good-bye, good-bye. Mechanically he tapped the barometer that hung in the porch; the needle stirred perceptibly to the left. A sudden smile lighted up his ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... tree is known by its fruit, so is the state of a man's heart known by his desires. The desires of the righteous are the touchstone or standard of Christian sincerity—the evidence of the new birth—the spiritual barometer of faith and grace—and the springs of obedience. Christ and him crucified is the ground of all our hopes—the foundation upon which all our desires after God and holiness are built—and the root by which they are nourished. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... critical point. I recognized the man's voice, and as it was that of Eagle March, I knew as well as if I had already seen her that the girl must be Diana. I knew also that she would never forgive me if I popped out at this moment, like the wrong figure on a barometer. Nothing on earth would make her believe that I hadn't been "spying"; for though Di didn't realize how much and in what way I cared for Eagle, she often teased me about being jealous because my great "chum" had forsaken me for her. If at any time she could call ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... an old barometer of the banjo type in the parlour of the White House, which, whatever might have been its character for veracity in former days, had now become such an inveterate story-teller, that it was pretty safe to accept as true, ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... rampage through the general offices here, I've seen the bond-room clerks grip their desks like they expected to be blown through the windows; and the sickly green tinge on Piddie's face when he comes out from a hectic ten minutes with the big boss is as good a trouble barometer as you'd want. ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... readily settle down in a new home, and for a week I ignored the barometer. This may have seemed unfriendly to a newcomer, yet surely it was kind not to observe any faults it might display during its novitiate. When on the Saturday morning I scrutinised it for the first time I saw it pointed to "Stormy." I hastened over breakfast in order ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various

... over a wide area. The O.C.'s of A and D Companies would be hauled over the coals.... There was the nucleus of the farce. The men pinched and the officers stood the racket. The very thought sent the whole ranks chuckling and up soared the high spirit barometer. There was, too, in these repeated silent visits to the dump a possibility of discovery that appealed to that venturesome spirit so characteristically a trait of the Ten Hundred. They chuckled gleefully ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq

... who stated how miserable he had been at the supposition of my loss, and his delight at my escape. He stated that on going down into the cabin, after I had shoved off, he, by chance, cast his eyes on the barometer, and, to his surprise, found that it had fallen two inches, which he had been told was the case previous to a hurricane. This, combined with the peculiar state of the atmosphere, had induced him to make every preparation, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... of a fly, or vane, suggests the principle of an instrument for measuring the altitude of mountains, which perhaps deserves a trial, since, if it succeed only tolerably, it will form a much more portable instrument than the barometer. It is well known that the barometer indicates the weight of a column of the atmosphere above it, whose base is equal to the bore of the tube. It is also known that the density of the air adjacent to the instrument will depend both on the weight of air above it, and on ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... he protested, "you are very young and probably don't know what sciatica means. When I was your age, I could have slept upon a board and risen therefrom refreshed. At fifty it is otherwise. We study the barometer then and dust before we sit. This great glass house is Mr. Gessner's winter temple. It is here that he plans and conceives so many of those vast schemes by ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... for one of the sudden September gales," warned Captain Tom Halstead, as, after the second short sleep of the night, he came up on deck, yawning and stretching. He stepped over to read the barometer, then turned quickly ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock

... The commissary of the party proceeded as speedily as possible to Oldtown, in order to procure boats and engage men. Professor Renwick passed by land through Brunswick, Gardiner, and Augusta. At the former place barometer No. 1 was compared with that of Professor Cleaveland, at Gardiner with that of Hallowel Gardiner, esq.; and arrangements were made with them to keep registers, to be used as corresponding observations with those of the expedition. At Augusta some additional articles of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... Teddy: I hear him tapping the new barometer. He can't have anything serious on his mind or he wouldn't do that. Perhaps Georgina hasn't said anything. [She steals back to the hearth]. Try and look as if there was nothing the matter. Give me my gloves, ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw

... barely felt as a remote presence in the upper air, had not yet reached the depths of the valley. A silence as of death reigned everywhere; it floated up from the dim blue crevasses, it filled the air, it vibrated on the senses as with a vague endeavor to be heard. Jake, carrying a barometer, a surveyor's transit, and a multitude of smaller instruments, followed cautiously in his master's footsteps, and a young lad, Tharald Ormgrass's son, who had been engaged as a guide, ran nimbly over the glazed surface, at every step thrusting his steel-shod heels vindictively into the ice. ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... tendencies. To say the truth, literature seems to me to be a kind of by-product. It occupies far too small a part in the whole activity of a nation, even of its intellectual activity, to serve as a complete indication of the many forces which are at work, or as an adequate moral barometer of the general moral state. The attempt to establish such a condition too closely, seems to me to lead to a good many very edifying but not the less ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... cornet, compass, and barometer were condemned as being the work of malevolent spirits. Instances might be multiplied indefinitely, but the general conclusion is that anything that suggests the unintelligible, the unusual, the suspected, the gloomy, is at once attributed to inimical powers. Hence a crow that caws at ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... is scattered. In the worsted rosettes of the bell-ropes, in the plaster picture-frames, in the painted tea-tray and on the cups, in the pediment of the sideboard, in the ornament that crowns the barometer, in the finials of sofa and arm-chair, in the finger-plates of the "grained" door, is to be seen the ineffectual portrait or to be traced the stale inspiration of the flower. And what is this bossiness around ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... The walk will take us through the Seven Dials, and can scarcely fail to be suggestive. It is now one o'clock, the traditional hour of dinner; and in Broad Street, St. Giles's, I see, for the first time to-day, the human barometer evidently standing at "much wet." A gentleman in a grey coat and red comforter, who bears palpable signs of having been more than once on his back, has just reached that perplexing point of inebriety when he can walk quickly ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... age-worn and long before relegated to the use of Sunday fishing-parties "down the bay," had for barometer only a broken affair that had been issued to advertise the virtues of a certain baking-powder. It was roiled permanently to the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... trousers. There was a table in the 'body' for writing, and pockets up and down devised to hold documents, also two arm-chairs, and a suspended contrivance which showed the hour, the temperature, and the fluctuations of the barometer; there was also a speaking-tube. One felt that if the machine had been connected by wireless telegraphy with the Stock Exchange, the leading studios and the Houses of Parliament, and if a little restaurant had been constructed in the rear, Mr. Oxford ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... any tidings of their approach, and another night had closed over us before I heard the distant calls of the bullock-drivers; but I had the satisfaction soon after of seeing the whole party and equipment again united on the banks of this promising stream. The barometer was rising, the spring advancing, and the approaching warmth might be expected to harden the ground. The cattle would be refreshed by a week's rest in the midst of the rich pasture around us, while our labours to all appearance were on the eve ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... be noticed that the measurements are independent of the actual height of the barometer, and if several readings are taken continuously, the result will not be sensibly affected by a simultaneous change of the barometer. Almost all the readings were taken at a temperature of about 20 C., and in the present ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... went forward, and, seating himself on a forecastle carronade, appeared to fall into a deep reverie. Montague paced the quarter-deck impatiently, glancing from time to time down the skylight at the barometer which hung in the cabin, and at the vane which drooped motionless from the masthead. He acted with the air of a man who was deeply dissatisfied with the existing state of things, and who felt inclined to take the laws of nature into his own hands. ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... what the barometer tells you—not the thermometer; you must keep the thermometer out of this. Suppose it is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various

... five boys entered the lighthouse, Teddy happened to glance at the barometer that was fastened to ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport

... entered his house to deprive him of it. "I know," said he, "that Monsieur l'Abbe Hauy comes to see me; our conversation is an exchange; but I do not want a man to come and tell me whether it is hot or cold, raining or sunshine. My barometer and thermometer know more than all possible visitors; and in my studies in natural history," added he, "I have not found in the whole animal kingdom a species, or class, or family, who frighten me so much as ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... on January 30, when soon afterwards the mercury in the barometer fell, and a furious gale began to blow from the south. At the same time the heat became almost insupportable, the mercury in the thermometer rising from 70 degrees to near 90 degrees. This high temperature, ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

... the storm held steadily; steadily and rapidly the barometer kept counting backward; and we took the river's width in wind and sea for half the night. We could not sleep, and sat bolstered up in our chairs. The Commodore quite likely did breathe audibly now and then; but Nautica ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... and a little later the achromatic microscope placed before his eyes the world of the infinitely small. The air-balloon carried him above the clouds, the diving-bell to the bottom of the sea. The thermometer gave him true measures of the variations of heat; the barometer, of the pressure of the air. The introduction of the balance imparted exactness to chemistry, it proved the indestructibility of matter. The discovery of oxygen, hydrogen, and many other gases, the isolation of aluminum, calcium, and other metals, showed that earth ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... neglect of the use of the barometer has led to the loss of many ships. From a want of attention to the barometer, they have either closed the land (if at sea), or have put to sea (being in harbour in safety) at improper times; and in consequence of such want of precaution the ships have been lost, owing to bad weather ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy

... West, or about half-way to Jamaica, the wind fell light; the sky, which had hitherto been clear, became overcast, heavy masses of dark, thunderous cloud slowly gathering in the south-western quarter and gradually spreading athwart the sky until the whole of the visible heavens were obscured. The barometer dropped slightly, indicating, in conjunction with the aspect of the sky, a probable change of wind and a consequent interruption to ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... the time the huge steamer tore on over the oily sea through a great heat which rivalled that of the engine-room, and the captain and first and second mates held consultations twice over in connection with barometer and chart, by the light of the ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... looking at me, 'Isn't she lucky?' Little fools! I'd like to see them in my place. They live, they do. Their pleasures are not all alike. They have anxieties and hopes, ups and downs, hours of rain and hours of sunshine; whilst I—always dead calm! the barometer always at 'Set fair.' What a bore! Do you know what I did to-day? Exactly the same thing as yesterday; and to-morrow I'll do the same thing ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... "since the rascal Mr. B. it is who gets the prize rather than Pamela," has its pertinency from our later and more enlightened view. But such was the eighteenth century. The exposure of an earlier time is one of the benefits of literature, always a sort of ethical barometer of an age—all the more trustworthy in reporting spiritual ideals because it has no intention of ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... walked arm in arm. They spoke but little, but they were very glad of each other. A few words were enough to call up all their tender memories of the intimate past. They stopped in front of a mairie to look at the barometer, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... sit here all day an lissen to a fello tell you how if you multiply something by enuff other things you can hit a Fritz in the stummick three miles away. Everythings tricky about this gun. Insted of shootin where you want to hit like a man you look at a thermometer an a barometer, add em together an look up the result in a little pink almanak. That tells you where to shoot. I dont like this mystick stuff. Frank and straitforward. Thats ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter

... situation I lately advised about two pounds of crude quicksilver to be poured down a glass tube, which was part of a barometer tube, drawn less at one end, and about two feet long, into the urethra, as the patient lay on his back; which I had previously performed upon a horse; this easily passed, as was supposed, into the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... variety—a Norte! I knew it was coming on, only by the face of the first lieutenant when he looked at the barometer. His countenance fell as many degrees as the instrument. It is very slight, but our entry into port will be delayed, for, on the coast, these winds are most devoutly dreaded. It has rained all day, and, notwithstanding ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... drunk the simplest and most effective expedient for acquainting the powers that be with the fact that he has a grievance. Formerly, the morning list of "drunks" merely reflected the nearness or remoteness of payday. Now, it is a most reliable and invaluable barometer of ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... front of him critically, with her head on one side. Without knowing it, the child had come to look upon the state of the poor king's hat as emblematical of his state of mind. When it shut up like a closed concertina his barometer ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various

... and with a significant wink he pulled a barometer out of his pocket and carefully noted ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... are ever wont to come on us suddenly; they are heralded by no storm signals and no falling barometer. We may be like soldiers sitting securely round their camp fire, till all at once bullets begin to fall among them. The tiger's roar is the first signal of its leap from the jungle. Our position in the world, our ignorance of the future, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... fifteen knots higher. At midnight,' continues Andy, 'the restaurants closed. Sitting on a cake of ice we ate seven hot dogs. All around us was snow and ice. Six times a night the boatswain rose up and tore a leaf off the calendar, so we could keep time with the barometer. At 12,' says Andy, with a lot of anguish on his face, 'three huge polar bears sprang down the hatchway, into ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry

... good," said Seth Allport, his countenance, which had previously been grimmer than ever, beaming over its whole expanse, as if the sun was trying to shine through overhanging clouds and fog. Seth's phiz was as expressive as a barometer any clay. ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... interest thus shown is not confined to the hundreds of attendants, but must be shared by your great public, is shown by the unfailing barometer of journalism. Here we have a field in which the non-survival of the unfit is the rule in its most ruthless form. The journals that we see and read are merely the fortunate few of a countless number, dead and forgotten, that did not know what the public wanted to read about. ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb



Words linked to "Barometer" :   aneroid barometer, aneroid, barograph, barometrical, measuring device, barometric, measuring instrument



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