"Contracting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... service, the price according to such valuation is to be allowed and paid. 4. Seven days' pay is to be advanced and paid in hand by me to the owner of each waggon and team, or horse, at the time of contracting, if required, and the remainder to be paid by General Braddock, or by the paymaster of the army, at the time of their discharge, or from time to time, as it shall be demanded. 5. No drivers of waggons, or persons taking care of the hired ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Temple, a cool, prudent man, to form, in a famous five days' negotiation, the defensive treaty with Holland, which, after Sweden had joined it, became known as the Triple Alliance (1668). This alliance had for its objects mutual promises between the contracting parties to come to each other's assistance by sea and land if attacked by any power (France being here intended), to force Spain to make peace with France on the terms already offered, and to compel France to keep those terms ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... 4. The high contracting parties shall found the colony of Lucifer in common, and shall permit persons of any other ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... peradventure have Of its own fiery exhalations. The more, then, the telluric ground is drained Of heat, the colder grows the water hid Within the earth. Further, when all the earth Is by the cold compressed, and thus contracts And, so to say, concretes, it happens, lo, That by contracting it expresses then Into the wells what heat it ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... and whether she would ever awake seemed to depend upon an accident. The slumber that towered above her brain was like that fluctuating silvery column which stands in scientific tubes sinking, rising, deepening, lightening, contracting, expanding; or like the mist that sits, through sultry afternoons, upon the river of the American St. Peter, sometimes rarefying for minutes into sunny gauze, sometimes condensing for hours into palls of funeral darkness. You fancy that, after ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... his back to him; the priest could see the black hair, longer than Court fashion allowed now, the brown sinewy neck beneath; and one arm outlined over his hip beneath the piled clothes. The fingers were moving a little, contracting and loosening, contracting and loosening; and he could hear the ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... Venetians carried on the commerce of the Levant; the Florentines were manufacturers and bankers: the one town sent her sons forth on the seas to barter and exchange; the other was full of speculators, calculating rates of interest and discount, and contracting with princes for the conduct of expensive wars. The mercantile character of these Italian republics is so essential to their history that it will not be out of place to enlarge a little on the topic. We have seen that the Florentines rendered commerce a condition of burghership. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... I was of enough importance to be the subject of Mrs. Latimer's strictures," replied Danvers, his brow contracting. "But I believe I do have that reputation," he added, and smiled into ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... knew anything about his own appearance; for when he looked in his glass for reasons connected with cleanliness— putting his hair straight, smoothing over his curliness, and playing at shaving away, or, rather, scraping off, some very smooth down—he had a habit of contracting his nerves and muscles so that a pretty good display of wrinkles came into view all over his forehead and at the corners of his lips and eyes, presenting to him quite a different-looking sort of fellow from the one known to ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... anger and envy and untruth and cruelty? O thou who knowest no deterioration, all the Rishis, coming unto thee seated in thy glory on the sacrificial ground, seek protection of thee! And, O slayer of Madhu, thou stayest at the end of the Yuga, contracting all things and withdrawing this universe into thy own self, thou repressor of all foes! O thou of the Vrishni race, at the beginning of the Yuga, there sprang from thy lotus-like navel, Brahma himself, and lord of all mobile and immobile things, and whose is this ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... manner as sounds are produced on a saxophone or clarinet, by forcing a current of air through an aperture over which is a reed which vibrates with the sounds. The low tones produced by the saxophone or clarinet result from the enlargement of the aperture, while the higher tones are produced by contracting the opening. Variations of pitch in the human voice are also effected by elongation and contraction of the vocal cords with comparative slackness or tension, as in ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... small, He sees his little lot the lot of all; Sees no contiguous palace rear its head To shame the meanness of his humble shed; 180 No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal To make him loathe his vegetable meal; But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil, Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil. Cheerful at morn he wakes from short repose, 185 Breasts the keen air, and carols as he goes; With patient angle trolls the finny deep, Or drives his vent'rous plough-share to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... of a preacher. I didn't buy that, nor don't want it. 'Taint worth seven coppers in picking time. But I tell ye, cuff, wouldn't mind lettin' on ye preach, if a feller can make a spec good profit on't." The gentleman concludes, contracting his eyebrows, and ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Or with contracting mind he saw the host Of mountain warriors banded, moving down Untrodden ways, as on young buds a frost Falls, and the spring lies stiff. The air was sown With strife, the fields with blood, the night with ghost Wandering by ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... observed that Goldsmith was sometimes content to be treated with an easy familiarity, but upon occasions would be consequential and important. An instance of this occurred in a small particular. Johnson had a way of contracting the names of his friends, as Beauclerk, Beau; Boswell, Bozzy.... I remember one day, when Tom Davies was telling that Dr. Johnson said—'We are all in labour for a name to Goldy's play,' Goldsmith seemed displeased that such a liberty should be taken with his name, and said, 'I ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of his friend and patron Mr Horace Barlow, and there he had again met with Miss Rupert. This lady had no power whatever over his emotions, but he felt assured that she regarded him with strong interest. When he imagined the possibility of contracting a marriage with Miss Rupert, who would make him at once a man of solid means, his head drooped, and he wondered at his precipitation. It had to be confessed that he was the victim of a vulgar weakness. He had declared himself not of the first ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... flow beyond their proper margins, either surging out in a milky, frothing wave, washing from its place a florid gothic capital, drowning the white violets of the marble floor; or else reabsorbed into their limits, contracting still further a crabbed Latin inscription, bringing a fresh touch of fantasy into the arrangement of its curtailed characters, closing together two letters of some word of which the rest were disproportionately ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the said Ships, Vessells, Goods and Merchandizes, so taken and Condemned for Lawful Prize, without any Damage or Molestation to Ensue thereupon to the said Byers, or any of them, by reason of the Contracting ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... breath. "It's a man's scrap, Grant—a man's fight as sure as you're born." Grant sprang to his feet and threw back his head, as he began pacing the narrow cell. As he threw out his arms, his claw clicked on the steel bars of the cell, and Morty Sands felt the sudden contracting of the cell walls about ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... a man out-argued and overcome. He had no wish to meet his uncle, whose behaviour in contracting a misalliance and casting a shadow on the family, in a manner so perfectly objectless and senseless, appeared to him to call for the reverse of compliments. Cecilia's lock of hair lying at Steynham hung in his mind. He saw the smooth flat curl ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 3, providing that any person contracting or attempting to contract to supply coolie labor to another be guilty of felony. Excluding convicts, and women imported for immoral purposes, ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... Teutonic, and Eastern fables. In Orkney, even during the last century, lovers met within the sacred circle of stones dedicated to Scandinavian deities, to plight their love. Through a hole in one of the pillars the hands of contracting parties were joined, and the vow made was called the promise of Odin. To violate this vow, rendered the false one infamous ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... ship-cabin, she and Halet being on the return trip to Orado by then. She wasn't too interested in the treaty's details—they conformed almost exactly to what she had read out to Iron Thoughts and his co-chiefs and companions in the park. It was the smooth bridging of the wide language gap between the contracting parties by a row of interpreting machines and a handful of human xenotelepaths ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... originally usurped by the rebellion is already sundered by our possession of that great continental highway, the Mississippi river, and though no shadow of hope remains that the enemies of the Union will ever be able to recover it; though the recent boundless theatre of hostilities is gradually contracting, and the resources of the rebellion are rapidly melting away, until there remains no longer any doubt of our ultimate and even speedy success in crushing the wasted armies of the desperate foe; and though the boundaries ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... went by in this timid dropping of grains of salt into a putrid sea. But at last, in 1842, Nicholas issued his ukase creating the class of "contracting peasants." Masters and serfs were empowered to enter into contracts, the serf receiving freedom, the master receiving payment in instalments. It was a moderate innovation, very moderate—nothing more than the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... partially strangle it. Recovering its reason, but having ceased to be Catholic, it has forced the signature of a pact which is repugnant, and which reduces their moral union to physical cohabitation. Willingly or not, the two contracting parties are to continue living together in the same domicile, since that is the only one they possess; but, as there is incompatibility of humor, they will do well to live apart. To this end, the State ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of a slight movement in the banks—a shivering of stem, quiver of leaf. The mere act of his passing had set some sensitive plant to register his presence. A lacy, fern-like thing was contracting its fronds into balls. He should not stay—disturbing the peace of the hydro. But it made little difference now—within a matter of hours all this luxuriance would be thrust out to die and they would have to depend upon canned oxgy and algae tanks. Too bad—the ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... he demanded, his brows contracting and his lips beginning to slide back in a snarl—it promised to be a sad morning for human curs of all kinds who did not scurry out ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... or unconscious, and Gale, with a contracting throat and numb heart, decided for the former. Not so Ladd, who probed the bloody gash on Thorne's temple, and ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... cavities containing glands and cell elements. The glands contain coloring matter, and the changes of color in the frog's skin are due to the distribution of these pigment-cells, and the power they have of shrinking or contracting under nerve irritation. The pigment varies in individuals and in different parts of the body. Brown, black, yellow, green, and red are the colors most frequently observed. The color-cells are technically known as chromatophores. ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... to enlarge the field of labor by contracting debts (Rom. xiii. 8), and afterwards appealing to the Church of Christ for help, because this we consider to be opposed both to the letter and the spirit of the New Testament; but in secret prayer, God helping us, we shall carry the wants of the Institution ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... the treaty between the high contracting parties, in the City of Mexico, the discussion of the subject grew interesting at the Government Boarding-House in San Francisco, and a new California was hoped for on the southern boundary. Old Spanish history was ransacked for information from the voyages of Cortez in the Gulf of California ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... instantly concealed again, though many an anxious and stolen glance was directed through the tops of the grass, on the movements of their enemies. At the distance of half a mile, the Teton band was seen riding in a circuit, which was gradually contracting itself, and evidently closing upon the very spot where the fugitives lay. There was but little difficulty in solving the mystery of this movement. The snow had fallen in time to assure them that those they sought were in ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... unwearied exertions of a succession of wise men through a long course of ages; withdrawing every case as it arises from the dangerous power of discretion, and subjecting it to inflexible rules; extending the dominion of justice and reason, and gradually contracting, within the narrowest possible limits, the domain of brutal force and of arbitrary will. This subject has been treated with such dignity by a writer who is admired by all mankind for his eloquence, but who is, if possible, still more admired by all competent judges for his philosophy; a writer, ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... Hague, Sir Ralph Winwood, at Wesel, where a defensive alliance that had long been mooted between James I and the princes of the Union, including those of the Palatinate, Brandenburg, Hesse, Wurtemberg, Baden, and Anhalt, was actually concluded. Both contracting parties promised one another mutual support against all who should attack them on account of the Union or of the aid they had given in settling and maintaining the tenure of Cleves and Juliers. The King ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... armistice is to continue, uninterrupted by the contracting parties, for the space of fourteen weeks from the signature hereof; at the expiration of which time, it shall be in the power of either of the said parties to declare a cessation of the same, and to recommence hostilities, upon giving fourteen ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... his spirited lead-horse, until it leaped forward suddenly, as though to vent his excitement, and, setting his email white teeth sternly, with an eye like a burning coal, looked forward into space, his whole face contracting. ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... institute government with a view to those advantages; that this institution requires a promise of obedience; which imposes a moral obligation to a certain degree, but being conditional, ceases to be binding, whenever the other contracting party performs not his part of the engagement. I perceive, that a promise itself arises entirely from human conventions, and is invented with a view to a certain interest. I seek, therefore, some such interest more immediately connected with government, and which may be at once ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... remained to carry out the terms of the treaties with England and France, and they were nullified by the failure of the infant nation to comply with its own obligations and the consequent refusal of the other contracting parties to comply with theirs. The government made a call upon the States to raise $8,000,000 for the most vital needs, but only $400,000 was actually received. Then Congress asked the States to vest in it the power to levy a tax of five per cent, on imports for a limited ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... Sometimes WILLIAM'S smile, contracting, breaks into a whistle, horribly out of tune. He rather fancies his musical powers, and is proud of his intimate acquaintance with the fashionable chansons current in London to-day, or as he puts it, "Vat dey shings at de Carrelton Clob." Then ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... The contracting parties are stated to be the king of Portugal by his deputy, the captain-general and governor of Goa, Dom Joao de Castro, and the great and powerful King Sadasiva, king ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... General Browne was but little interested in the details which these accounts conveyed to him. They were, indeed, of the kind which are usually found in an old family gallery. Here was a cavalier who had ruined the estate in the royal cause; there a fine lady who had reinstated it by contracting a match with a wealthy Roundhead. There hung a gallant who had been in danger for corresponding with the exiled Court at St. Germain's; here one who had taken arms for William at the Revolution; and there a third that ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... falling gracefully away from a parting in the middle of it. It never seemed to grow long, and yet it never looked as if it had been cut. Mr. Maddledock's eyes were his most striking feature. Absolutely unaffected by either glare or shadow, neither dilating nor contracting, they remained ever clear, large, gray, and cold. No mark or line in his face indicated care or any of the burdens that usually depress and trouble men. If such things were felt in his experience their force was spent long before they had contrived to ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... not readily expelled do not attempt to force it out by straining. Instead, flatten in the abdomen by forcibly contracting the abdominal muscles. ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... am the youngest; but had misfortunes, through their doing beyond their power for two unhappy brothers, who are both dead, and whose debts they stood bound for; and so became reduced, and, by harsh creditors, (where most of the debts were, not of their own contracting,) turned out of all; and having, without success, tried to set up a little country-school; (for my father understood a little of accounts, and wrote a pretty good hand;) forced to take to hard labour; but honest all the time; contented; never repining; and loving to one ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... period, the time of rich chesnut locks, parted not by a visible white line, but by a shadowed furrow from which they fell in massive ripples to right and left. In these slim days he looked the younger for being rather below the middle size, and though at last one perceived him contracting an indefinable air of self-consciousness, a slight exaggeration of the facial movements, the attitudes, the little tricks, and the romance in shirt-collars, which must be expected from one who, in spite of his knowledge, was so exceedingly young, it was impossible to say that he was making any great ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the youth of these United States sent to foreign countries for the purposes of education, often before their minds were formed, or they had imbibed any adequate ideas of the happiness of their own; contracting too frequently not only habits of dissipation and extravagance, but principles unfriendly to republican government and to the true and genuine liberties of mankind, which thereafter are rarely overcome; for these reasons it has been my ardent wish to see a plan devised on a liberal scale, which ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... a lean, hard-riding gentleman, who was supposed to be on the verge of contracting an alliance with the eldest of the Grenfell girls, regretted that Mrs. Spence was neither unmarried nor ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... by your laws no man can make a contract for a horse or piece of land until he is twenty-one years of age, and by which contract he is not bound if any deception has been practiced, or if the party contracting has not fulfilled his part of the agreement—so long as the parties in all mere civil contracts retain their identity and all the power and independence they had before contracting, with the full right to dissolve all partnerships and contracts for any reason, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... "Both contracting parties guarantee to each other the integrity of their respective territories, as constituted before the present war, keeping the boundaries possessed at that time by each captaincy general or viceroyalty of those who now have resumed the exercise of their ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... on Meeson, without noticing his remark, and contracting his heavy eyebrows, "there's no end to the trouble she has brought on me. I quarrelled with my nephew about her, and now she's dragging my name through the dirt here, and I'll bet the story will go all over New Zealand ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... obtained her by main force. At the present day, while the milder method generally prevails, there are still survivals of the ancient custom. The betrothal truly takes place very early, even in infancy, and at the ceremony a fowl is killed, and each contracting party takes a rib; but as the young folk grow to marriageable age, the final negotiations have to be made. These are purposely prolonged until the bridegroom, growing angry, gathers his friends and makes an attack on the maiden's home. Arming themselves with cudgels, they approach secretly, and ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... of marriage cannot be performed unless both the contracting parties furnish certificates of having made confession within three weeks. To secure his certificate it would be necessary for Pierre to confess to the cure ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... confined to the riverine area irrigated by the Niger. About 10% of the population is nomadic and some 80% of the labor force is engaged in agriculture and fishing. Industrial activity is concentrated on processing farm commodities. The economy is beginning to turn around after contracting through 1992-93, largely because of enhanced exports and import substitute production in the wake of the 50% devaluation of January 1994. Post-devaluation inflation appears to have peaked at 35% in 1994 and the government appears to be keeping on track ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... excrement also affords an excellent breeding place for flies. In army camps the latrines are the points from which much infection is transmitted to troops, and thousands of the men have lost their lives by contracting typhoid fever transmitted in this manner. During the summer time all open vaults and dry closets should be treated continuously with lime, crude creolin or crude carbolic acid, and they should be carefully cleaned ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... any rate, probable, drawn from his own imagination or from some equally exclusive source. The Morning Post might content itself with the mere statement of the arrangement which would shortly take place, but it was St. Michael's breathless little voice that proclaimed how the contracting parties had originally met over a salmon-fishing incident, why the Guards' Chapel would not be used, why her Aunt Mary had at first opposed the match, how the question of the children's religious upbringing had been compromised, ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... that of Santiago, a certain amount of suffering is inevitable. In such a climate as that of southern Cuba, a certain amount of disease is unavoidable. In the very hot-bed of yellow fever and malaria, no army could hope to escape without contracting these diseases; and in a campaign conducted with the marvelous celerity of the one at Santiago, some difficulty in forwarding supplies must necessarily ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... A tree, contracting in the cool of the night, made a loud noise. It was directly above him. He yelped in his fright. A panic seized him, and he ran madly toward the village. He knew an overpowering desire for the protection and companionship of man. In his nostrils was the smell of the camp-smoke. ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... I am sorry to say, as to Amelia's father or brother; she will be the mother of sons, who, according to the law of the land, must be brought up in the religion of their father. You see, then, that if this marriage takes place, one of the two contracting parties must yield; and, it appears to me, that is the calling and ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... began to feel that he was contracting his first college friendship. The great, strong, badly-dressed, badly-appointed servitor, who seemed almost at the same time utterly reckless of, and nervously alive to, the opinion of all around him, with his ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... hospitality. Glancing subsequently at the action of caste feeling in confining the sympathies of individuals more especially to the members of their own caste, we came to the conclusion that, though caste had undoubtedly the effect of contracting the feelings within a narrow circle, there was to be found a compensating advantage in the fact that the claims of caste produced, in the aggregate, a greater amount of charity, and, in short, were calculated to ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... to be admitted that the net showing in favor of these others, e.g., the French or the English-speaking peoples, is by no means so unreservedly to their credit as such a summary statement of the German case might seem to imply. As bearing on the chances of a peace contingent upon the temper of the contracting nationalities, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that such a peace compact would hold indefinitely even if it depended solely on the pacific animus of these others that have left the dynastic State behind. These ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... was in progress there, the gardener did not for a moment dream that one of the contracting parties could be other than the sick Baron. He descended the ladder and again walked round the house, waiting only till he saw Margery emerge from the same little door; when, fearing that he might be discovered, he withdrew in the direction ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... that sailor's wife of yore, who had chestnuts In her lap, and scowling like the witch who asked for some in vain, the old woman picked the shilling up, and going backwards, like a crab, or like a heap of crabs: for her alternately expanding and contracting hands might have represented two of that species, and her creeping face, some half-a-dozen more: crouched on the veinous root of an old tree, pulled out a short black pipe from within the crown of her bonnet, lighted it with a match, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... bestowed on them by fishermen, more poetically inclined than scientists. A gelatinous, semifluid substance coated the fibrous tissue of these sponges, and from this tissue there escaped a steady trickle of water that, after carrying sustenance to each cell, was being expelled by a contracting movement. This jellylike substance disappears when the polyp dies, emitting ammonia as it rots. Finally nothing remains but the fibers, either gelatinous or made of horn, that constitute your household sponge, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... exquisite repute of an aristocratic connection, and other tangible advantages. He, impoverished as he is, looks for a splendid dowry. No one thinks of the child-wife, Pompilia. She becomes the scapegoat, when the gross selfishness of the contracting parties stands revealed. Count Guido has a genius for domestic tyranny. Pompilia suffers. When she is about to become a mother she determines to leave her husband, whom she now dreads as well as dislikes. Since the ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the rock itself; sometimes from below or above, through the veins. The entire substance of the contracting rock may be filled with liquid, pressed into it so as to fill every pore;—or with mineral vapour;—or it may be so charged at one place, and empty at another. There's no end to the 'may be's.' But all that you need fancy, for our present purpose, is that hollows in the rocks, like the caves in ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the only object of interest to me. I was at once subject and object to myself, and watched with intense interest the workings of my own mind. The "Urgent" is an elderly ship. She had been built, I was told, by a contracting firm for some foreign Government, and had been diverted from her first purpose when converted into a troop-ship. She had been for some time out of work, and I had heard that one of her boilers, at least, needed repair. Our scanty but excellent crew, moreover, did not ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... narrow forehead; her face was long and thin, and her small, clear gray eyes were shaded by brown eyebrows meeting together, and, when she was talking earnestly, or listening attentively, slightly contracting, and deepening her keen and thoughtful expression. Her nose was long and rather prominent; and her mouth and chin were large, showing character and will; but their masculine expression was relieved by a short upper ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of this uncommon succession of high qualities in a race born to the purple may be ascribed to two main considerations. In the first place, the habit of contracting, marriages with Hindu princesses, which the policy and the latitudinarianism of the emperors established, was a constant source of fresh blood, whereby the increase of family predisposition was ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... by the theory of equality, which was not a mere passion, but a political doctrine, and at the same time a national necessity. Political philosophers who, since the time of Hobbes, derive the State from a social compact, necessarily assume that the contracting parties were equal among themselves. By nature, therefore, all men possess equal rights, and a right to equality. The introduction of the civil power and of private property brought inequality into the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... manner, the Scottish, even of the better rank, avoid contracting marriage in the month of May, which genial season of flowers and breezes might, in other respects, appear so peculiarly favourable for that purpose. It was specially objected to the marriage of Mary with the profligate Earl of Bothwell, that the union was formed within this interdicted month. ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... the imagination deals with it thus, has no substantial relation to mortal affairs. It is a tricksy thing, distending and contracting as it dances in the mind, like sunlight on the ceiling cast from a morning tea-cup, if a forced simile will aid the conception. The farmer struck on thirty thousand and some odd hundred pounds—outlying debts, or so, excluded—as what Anthony's will, in all likelihood, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of eight and twelve in the forenoon; and without prejudice to the minister of the place where the said woman is a parishioner: We do hereby, for good causes, [it cost me—let me see, Jack—what did it cost me?] give and grant our License, as well to you as to the parties contracting, as to the Rector, Vicar, or Curate of the said church, where the said marriage is intended to be solemnized, to solemnize the same, in manner and form above specified, according to the rites and ceremonies prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer in that behalf published by authority ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... is to be expected and contrary to the sincere desire of the two high contracting parties, one of the two Empires should be attacked by Russia, the two high contracting parties are bound reciprocally to assist one another with the whole military force of their Empire, and further not to make peace except ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... said Bedford, contracting his brows till they almost met ever his arched nose, 'I tell you, his look brings back to me my mother's, the last time she ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nebula composed of planetismals, and the planets as formed from knots in the nebula, where many planetismals had been concentrated near the intersections of their orbits. These groups of meteorites, already as dense as a swarm of bees, were then packed closer by the influence of gravity, and the contracting mass was heated by the pressure, even above the normal melting-point of the material, which was kept rigid by the weight ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... or hidden designs as other men commonly have in what they do. From that we had discourse of Sir G. Carteret, and of many others; and upon the whole I do find that it is a troublesome thing for a man of any condition at Court to carry himself even, and without contracting envy or envyers; and that much discretion and dissimulation is necessary to ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... were, at that time, the London financial agents for the United States Government, and they would unquestionably have been supported and gratefully thanked, had they assumed the responsibility of contracting for all the arms in sight in England. Any army officer, fit for such a mission as that of buying arms for a great Government at the outbreak of a war, would have acted, if necessary, without instructions, and secured everything that ...
— The Supplies for the Confederate Army - How they were obtained in Europe and how paid for. • Caleb Huse
... impatiently, and with his brows contracting a little. "I am very busy—not a moment ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... been perfectly sensible, that, in the then state of the revenues and country of Oude, (which are in effect the Company's revenues and the Company's country,) the debt or pretended debt aforesaid, asserted to be about five hundred thousand pounds, or thereabouts, could not be paid without contracting another debt at an usurious interest, without encroaching on the necessary establishments or on private property or on the pay of the army, or without grievous oppression of the country, or all these together. And it doth appear that one hundred ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... this. Your turn has not come yet, and everybody began like you originally. But I do wish to impress upon you that you must prepare yourself to become some day useful to others, so that you may pay back the debts which you are now contracting. ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... inheritance is that in which the child resembles neither parent, but the first husband of its mother. A woman contracting a second marriage, transmits to the offspring of that marriage the peculiarities she has received through the first union. Breeders of stock know this tendency, and prevent their brood-mares, cows, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... foolhardy daring born of rage resolved him at that instant. He flung himself out from his saddle and raised his hand with a knife clenched in it. But the Maccabee with a composed laugh caught the hand and wrenching it about, dropped it, red and contracting with pain, ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... Clonbrony gathered up her cards, she would direct an inquiring glance to the group of young people at the other table; whilst the more prudent Mrs. Broadhurst sat plump with her back to them, pursing up her lips, and contracting her brows in token of deep calculation, looking down impenetrable at her cards, never even noticing Lady Clonbrony's glances, but inquiring from her partner, 'How ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... and that, further, believers generally might be stirred up, to renounce their alliance with the world in the management and promotion of religious objects, and that, lastly, it might be seen, that, without contracting debts, such objects ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... a habit,—a habit of looking through a glass of one peculiar colour, which imparts its hue to all around it. We are but creatures of habit. Luxury is nothing more than contracting fresh habits, and having the means of administering to them—ergo, doctor, the more habits you have to gratify, the more luxuries you possess. You luxuriate in the contemplation of nature—Price in quoting, or trying to quote, Shakespeare—Billy Pitts in his dictionary—I in my ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... thirty-third part of the duration of the month at present; in other words, the moon must revolve around the earth in a period of somewhat about two hours. It seems impossible that the day can ever have been as brief as this. We have therefore proved that, in the course of its contracting duration, the moon must have overtaken the contracting day, and that therefore there must have been a time when the moon was in the vicinity of the earth, and having a day and month of equal period. Thus we have shown that the critical condition of ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... official looked at the smiling face for a moment, his bushy eyebrows contracting ever so slightly. There was a shameless streak of dust across her cheek, but there was also a dimple there that appealed to the grim old man. His eyes twinkled as he replied, with ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... He insisted it was no fit place for me, and that I ran the risk of contracting disease. But I generally have my own way, even with him, and in this case I felt it a duty to my country, and that I was right in ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... down at the peaceful capital. Nothing was alight except the gambling houses; the dry snow crunched under his feet, but there was no other sound save the tread of an occasional sentinel, and the sharp crack of the timbers in a house contracting under ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... thousands of miles apart. I have seen flocks streaming south in the fall so large that they were flowing over from horizon to horizon in an almost continuous stream all day long, at the rate of forty or fifty miles an hour, like a mighty river in the sky, widening, contracting, descending like falls and cataracts, and rising suddenly here and there in huge ragged masses like high-plashing spray. How wonderful the distances they flew in a day—in a year—in a lifetime! They arrived in Wisconsin in the spring just after the sun ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... proceeded onward the banks rose on either side, still fringed with pine, cedar and oaks. At an angle of the lake the banks on either side ran out into two opposite peninsulas, forming a narrow passage or gorge, contracting the lake once more into the appearance of a broad river, much wider from shore to shore than any other part they had passed through since they had left the entrance ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... or woman cannot long live an impure life without sooner or later contracting disease which brings to every sufferer not only moral degradation, but often serious and vital injuries and many times death ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... courted, and asked me to write him some verses that he might present her in return. I promised, but forgot; and when he called for his lines at the time agreed on—Sit still a moment, (says I) dear Mund' [see post, May 7, 1773, for Johnson's 'way of contracting the names of his friends'], 'and I'll fetch them thee—So stepped aside for five minutes, and wrote the nonsense you now keep such a stir ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... clime, stood some way up the side of a hill which rose abruptly from the waters of Loch Etive, on the north side of which it was situated. To the west the hills were comparatively low, the shores alternately widening and contracting, and projecting in numerous promontories. The higher grounds were clothed with heath and wood, while level spaces below were diversified by cultivated fields. To the east of the house, up the loch, the scenery assumed a character much more striking and grand. ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... appear to be overclouded by a dull, smoky vapour which presently condenses into milky clouds among which are seen innumerable little gold specks of light, dancing in all directions, like gold-dust in a sunlit air. The focus of the eye at this stage is inconstant, the pupil rapidly expanding and contracting, while the crystal or mirror alternately disappears in a haze and reappears again. Then suddenly the haze disappears and the crystal looms up into full view, accompanied by a complete lapse of the seer into full consciousness ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... ready to misrule it again by the meaner prejudice of color. We can have no permanent peace with the South but by Americanizing it, by compelling it, if need be, to accept the idea, and with it the safety of democracy. At present we seem on the brink of contracting to protect from insurrection States in which a majority of the population, many of them now trained to arms, and all of them conscious of a claim upon us to make their freedom strong enough to protect them, are to be left at the mercy of laws which ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... "but there it is. Of course, at Gretna Green, which, as you say, is not far away, the blacksmith used to witness marriages, although his presence was unnecessary. Old stories have it that the contracting parties jumped a broomstick or a pair of tongs, or something of that sort, but whether there were any signatures I really do not know. Anyhow, the law in Scotland, as I have been informed, is that if a man and a girl agree to take each other as husband and wife, a marriage is legally performed, ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... the utmost importance, said Aristotle, to provide in education for the use of the ennobling and the fortifying moods. These philosophers knew that music creates a spiritual world, in which the spirit cannot live and move without contracting habits of emotion. In this vagueness of significance but intensity of feeling lies the magic of music. A melody occurs to the composer, which he certainly connects with no act of the reason, which he is probably ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... finger. I do not exactly recollect when I had examined before, but I am sure it could not have been long, as I made a constant practice of searching for what I then found, but always had much difficulty in introducing my finger, the female contracting the orifice so extremely close. The belly of the female had for some days been observed to be increasing in size, and on the 15th of August, I saw a young one, for the first time, the mouth, or opening of the false belly, being very much dilated. ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... tragic part! After this fit, When Norfolk cock had got the best of it, And Wisbich lay a dying, so that none, Tho' sober, but might venture Seven to One; Contracting, like a dying taper, all His strength, intending with the blow to fall, He struggles up, and having taken wind, Ventures a blow, and ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz |
