"Inflammable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... away some of the ship's woodwork, which I threw overboard and let drift to land to serve as fuel. When I did eventually return to my little island, I unravelled a piece of rope, and then tried to produce fire by rubbing two pieces of wood smartly together amidst the inflammable material. It was a hopeless business, however; a full half- hour's friction only made the sticks hot, and rub as hard as I would I could not produce the faintest suspicion of a spark. I sat down helplessly, and wondered how the savages I had read of ever ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... it, pricks himself." Charles had conceived a furious and not ill-founded hatred for his base yet formidable neighbor and rival, Louis XI. of France. The latter had succeeded in obtaining from Philip the restitution of some towns in Picardy; cause sufficient to excite the resentment of his inflammable successor, who, during his father's lifetime, took open part with some of the vassals of France in a temporary struggle against the throne. Louis, who had been worsted in a combat where both he and Charles ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... destroy the Southside railroad as far east as Farmville. Owing to its swollen condition the river was unfordable but knowing that there was a covered bridge at Duguidsville, I hoped to secure it by a dash, and cross there, but the enemy, anticipating this, had filled the bridge with inflammable material, and just as our troops got within striking distance it burst into flames. The bridge at Hardwicksville also having been burned by the enemy, there was now no means of crossing except by pontoons. But, unfortunately, I had only eight of these, and ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... original roof, which was in a ruinous condition, was removed altogether; wooden shelves, galleries, and staircases concealed the painted walls; a boarded floor was added half-way up, and rolls of dusty and inflammable parchments increased the constant risk of fire. In 1834 when the houses of Parliament hard by were burnt, watchers were stationed on the roof of the Chapter House, ready to remove the Doomsday Book and other valuable records should the conflagration spread and the ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... till a little before day-dawn. Where he went, and with whom, and what he was doing, was to her an awful mystery,—and it was one she dared not share with a human being. If she told her kind old grandfather, she feared that any inquiry from him would only light as a spark on that inflammable spirit of pride and insubordination that was rising within him, and bring on an instantaneous explosion. Mr. Sewell's influence she could hope little more from; and as to poor Mrs. Pennel, such communications ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... not plain and ordinary, and the smiles which were intended as innocent lures from snares, instead of into them, might make trouble for all concerned. Haldane was naturally combustible, to begin with, and was now at the most inflammable period of his life. ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... brigade formed, but their efforts were unavailing. As the other lamps were exploded by the heat new inflammable material was thrown about. In a quarter of an hour the whole interior was in flames, and in an hour only a grim, black skeleton, lighted up by occasional flashes of flame, remained of ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... which serves at the same time as an excellent test of the purity or impurity of the air in the mine, for the lower he descends, the more frequently he will find his light to be extinguished by carbonic acid gas, arising chiefly from the exhalations of the convicts. There are no inflammable gases in the mine, and the men work with naked lights. As he descends ladder or staircase after staircase, the visitor becomes conscious of the presence of human beings in the mine, for strange unearthly sounds greet his ear more and ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... lighted and hung by the stairs, and the tribune came down from the deck. At his word the marines put on their armor. At his word again, the machines were looked to, and spears, javelins, and arrows, in great sheaves, brought and laid upon the floor, together with jars of inflammable oil, and baskets of cotton balls wound loose like the wicking of candles. And when, finally, Ben-Hur saw the tribune mount his platform and don his armor, and get his helmet and shield out, the meaning of the preparations might not be any longer doubted, and he made ready for ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... taste had vainly cried aloud for abolition of this ugly building which was such an eyesore by the side of the elegant proportions of the Zwinger Gallery in its neighbourhood. In a few moments the Opera House (which as regards size was, it is true, an imposing edifice), together with its highly inflammable contents, was a vast sea of flames. When this reached the metal roofs of the neighbouring wings of the Zwinger, and enveloped them in wonderful bluish waves of fire, the first expression of regret made itself audible ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Scourge thee as a burning wheel.]—At certain feasts a big wheel soaked in some inflammable resin or tar was set fire to ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... of flame wheeled with the gale and charged at the humble dwelling or the precious hay or wheat-stacks of the settler, was the willingly assumed duty of many a rider of the plains. One recalls the case of Constable Conradi, who, while on patrol one fall day when the dry grass was as inflammable as tinder, asked a settler if there was any homesteader living in the direction where a fire was rushing. The settler said yes, that there was a man named Young, his wife and children, that way, but it would be impossible to reach them through ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... parts of oxygen gas and seventy-three of azote or nitrogen gas, which are simply diffused together, but which, when combined, become nitrous acid. Water consists of eighty-six parts oxygen, and fourteen parts of hydrogen or inflammable air, in a state of combination. It is also probable, that much oxygen enters the composition of glass; as those materials which promote vitrification, contain so much of it, as minium and manganese; and that glass is hence ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... Liquor, that came over, proved an Aqua Regis: the substance in the bottom, had not onely a mild taste, and {196} affected the Pallat much more like salt-peter, than Common salt; but was also very fusible, and inflammable, though produced of two un-inflammable bodies: and the same substance, consisting of Acid salts, by a certain way of the Author, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... gate," he commanded, "and fetch out my last three men, and we'll leave without setting fire to anything. The Lord Ghek would like it that way. He's locked up in a room that's particularly inflammable." ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... But this process extended only to the weakening of the fibers, and not their complete destruction. A later patent, in the same year, provided for exposing the ground rubber waste to the direct action of flames of gas or inflammable liquids, by which the foreign matters would be consumed and the rubber rendered plastic and cohesive, but it is not on record that this process ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... crafty.—There is, undoubtedly, a strong habit of dissimulation in this country, which has supported so many different yokes; but it is not to dissimulation that we must always attribute the rapid transition from one manner of being to another. An inflammable imagination is often the cause of it. The character of a people who are only rational or witty, may be easily understood and will not suddenly surprise us, but all that belongs to the imagination is unexpected. It leaps over intermediate barriers, it is often hurt at nothing, and frequently ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... them into the thickest nest of pine or other evergreen boughs at hand, and darted back to his next marked station, where he threw in another of his blazing torches, and so on till he reached the cleared ground, which was not one moment too soon for his safety. For so dry and inflammable had every thing there become, under the scorching sun of the preceding fortnight, which had been relieved by neither rain nor cloud, that, the instant the fire touched the tinder-like leaves, it flashed ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... beheld a sea of living fire as the hills blazed before her eyes. It was as though the whole place had been lit at one touch. The sea rolled on with incredible swiftness, as the tongues of flame licked up the inflammable objects they encountered. The efforts of her mare became puerile in comparison with the fearful pace of the flames. How could she hope to outstrip ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... between those eminent antiquarians, Bishop Percy and Mr. Ritson, in the eighteenth century. Dr. Percy had defined the English minstrels as an "order of men in the middle ages, who subsisted by the arts of poetry and music, and sung to the harp the verses which they themselves composed." The inflammable Joseph Ritson, whose love of an honest ballad goes far to excuse him for his lack of gentle demeanor toward the unfaithful editor of the Reliques, pounced down so fiercely upon this definition, contending that, however applicable to Icelandic skalds ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... applied a match to some of the inflammable matter, for in another instant the growing, hissing roar of fire ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... acquaintances was Madame Weichsel, prima donna of His Majesty's Theatre, and mother of the more celebrated Mrs. Billington. The lady occasionally studied her roles under Dr. Worgan, when MacOwen played the part of stage-lover, and, being of an inflammable disposition, speedily developed into a real one. This love-affair was the cause of a sudden reverse of fortune. During Mr. Blake's absence from town, Robert accompanied Madame Weichsel to Vauxhall, where she was engaged to sing a duet. Her professional colleague ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... understand," answered the burgher-magistrate, "that the young man Butler's zeal is of so inflammable a character. But I will make farther investigation. What other business is ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... angry with me, you are irresistible, you are an angel, and your husband is a monster: for what does he mean by sending a siren to a young man whom he knows to be inflammable!" ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... returned with a gang of laborers, who took from the bomber a dozen heavy packing cases of various sizes, several of them labelled either "Fragile" or "Inflammable" in large type. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... of Patagonia it was our privilege to rescue a crew of 15 hands from the bark 'Monkshaven,' laden with an inflammable cargo of smelting coals, which had been on fire six days when we most providentially descried her signals ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... a Turkish house is a serious matter. The old beams and boarded walls are like so much tinder, and burn up immediately, as though soaked with some inflammable liquid. I rose, and went out to see if there were anything wrong. As I opened the door which shut off the whole apartment from the stairs, I heard a strange crackling sound, and outside the window of the staircase, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... Little Ruster was inflammable and proud. He twirled his moustache and shook back the black artist's hair that stood like a dark cloud over his head. What did Liljekrona mean? Should he stay because he had nowhere else to go? Oh, only think how they stood and waited ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... of the remedies for root lice, among which were hot water and bisulphide of carbon. Hot water will get cold before it can reach the smaller roots, however efficient it may be showered on leaves. Bisulphide of carbon is very volatile, inflammable, and sometimes explosive, and must be handled with great care. It permeates the soil, and if in sufficient quantity may be effective in destroying the phylloxera; but its cost and dangerous character prevent it from ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... short all, contributed, in that house, to corrupt my native parity, which had taken no root in education; whilst now the inflammable principal of pleasure, so easily fired at my age, made strange work within me, and all the modesty I was brought up in the habit, not the instruction of, began to melt away like dew before the sun's heat; ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... from an aeroplane, or a dirigible balloon, is a comparatively simple matter. Of course there are complications that may ensue, from the danger of carrying high explosives in the limited quarters of an airship, with its inflammable gasoline fuel, and ever-present electric spark, to the possible premature explosion of the bomb itself. But they seem to be considered minor ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... to scatter them fore and aft, was the work of little more than a minute. The enemy scarcely understood what we were about, or they would have tried to interrupt our proceedings. The effect of our combustibles was very rapid. A number of inflammable things were scattered about; they at once caught fire, and thick wreaths of smoke, followed by fierce flames, darted ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... general, and he repeated the order that had already once been given in detail: "and tell the hussars that they are to cross last and to fire the bridge as I ordered; and the inflammable material on the bridge must ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... elements in the Indian populations which need to be kept under and subdued. Let us remember that only one-tenth part of the men, and only one-hundredth part of the women, know how to read. There is a vast proletarian mass, ignorant and inflammable, ready to follow leaders of better education, but less principle, than themselves. This mass the British Government has failed to educate, so that, while ninety per cent of the people in Japan can read, in India only one-tenth as many can read. ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... as they rushed, but they took care to secure good aim. The Mexicans were driven from the roofs and the windows and then the Texans carrying the torches dashed inside. Every house contained something inflammable, which was quickly set on fire, and two or three huts made of wood were lighted in ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of wind, or some barrier which the fire cannot pass. A barrier of this kind is often made by starting another fire some distance ahead of the principal one, so that when the two fires meet, they will die out for want of fuel. In well-kept forests, strips or lanes, free from inflammable material, are often purposely made through the forest area to furnish protection against top fires. Carefully managed forests are also patrolled during the dry season so that fires may be detected and attacked in their first stages. Look-out stations, watch-towers, ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... themselves so close to their brilliant and beautiful eyes, as we fancy we can do with impunity in Britain, promenade up and down the ball-room, or in one of the large ante-rooms contiguous to it. No doubt their tindery and inflammable temperaments, whenever love-making is concerned, has something to do with this arrangement; as, if a young male acquaintance of any damsel took a seat beside her, it would be certain to attract the papa or chaperon, to the spot, to see what ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... exists in, and can be educed from, almost any known substance. Even children are familiar with the light produced by the friction of two pieces of quartz; and no one needs to be informed how light may be produced by the combustion of inflammable substances. But the number of these substances is far greater than is generally supposed, and light can be produced by processes to which we do not generally apply the idea of burning. Resins, wool, silks, wood, and all kinds of earths and alkalies, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... came out unusually strong this morning, I noticed; and it's a well-known scientific fact that the action of the solar rays, focussed by such a medium as I have suggested, will produce ignition—provided, of course, that the inflammable material is in ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the city, the barrels of powder with which the catacombs were stuffed, the monuments and public buildings ready to be blown into the air at a moment's notice; and all were connected by electric wires in such a way that a single spark would suffice to set them off; there were great stores of inflammable substances, too, especially petroleum, with which the streets and avenues were to be converted into seething lakes of flame. The Commune had sworn that should the Versaillese enter the city not one of them would ever get ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... the focus right, I directed the concentrated spark straight on to Imbozwi's greased top-knot, where I knew he would feel nothing, my plan being to char a hole in it. But as it happened this top-knot was built up round something of a highly inflammable nature, reed or camphor-wood, I expect. At any rate, about thirty seconds later the top-knot was burning like ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... the Balakhani Peninsula, and the naphtha is carried into the Baku refineries by numerous pipe lines. The whole country round is, however, impregnated with oil, and even the sea in one or two bays near Baku is coated with inflammable stuff and can be ignited by throwing a lighted match upon it. At night this has a ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... There are several little holes from which the water trickles, but the principal spring is in a hole a foot in diameter, and about the same in depth. Numbers of bubbles are constantly rising. The steam feels acrid in the throat, but is not inflammable, as it did not burn when I held a bunch of lighted grass over the bubbles. The mercury rises to 158 Deg. when the thermometer is put into the water in the hole, but after a few seconds it stands steadily at 160 Deg. Even when ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... grumbling—was removed. Store of roots and dried flesh was gathered within; and every one was set to the collection of dry and half-dry fuel. The light stuff, with an immense number of short, highly-inflammable faggots, was piled inside the doorway where no rain could reach it. And the heavy wood was stacked outside, to right and left, in such a fashion as to form practical ramparts for the innermost ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... on Guido, who soon after realized what his master had thus imagined. Perhaps no one ever caught more from others than Raffaelle. I do not allude to his "borrowing," so ingeniously, not soundly, defended by Sir Joshua, but rather to his excitability, (if I may here apply a modern term,)—that inflammable temperament, which took fire, as it were, from the very friction of the atmosphere. For there was scarce an excellence, within his knowledge, of his predecessors or contemporaries, which did not in ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... millions of bushels annually. The river is navigable for steamboats to this point at an ordinary depth of water. Coal is used in the manufactories, which is dug from the adjacent mountains, and brought to the works on wooden railways. Seven miles above Charlestown is the famous burning spring. Inflammable gas escapes, which, if ignited, will burn with great brilliancy for many hours, and even for several days, in a favorable state of the atmosphere. The State of Virginia has constructed a tolerably good turnpike road from the mouth ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... strengthen this precious little fort, but they had found, even as Bucquoy and the archduke on their part had learned, that the North Sea in winter was not to be dammed by bulrushes. Moreover, in a bold and successful assault the besiegers had succeeded in setting fire to the inflammable materials heaped about the ravelin to such effect that the fire burned for days, notwithstanding the flooding of the works at each high tide. The men, working day and night, scorching in the flames, yet freezing kneedeep in the icy slush ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the galleries were built up. Still the danger could not be wholly prevented. The miners must necessarily guide their steps through the extensive underground ways with lighted lamps or candles, the naked flame of which, coming in contact with the inflammable air, daily exposed them and their fellow-workers in the pit to the risk of death in one of ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... the low building he saw that the fire had already gained considerable headway, just as if the incendiary might have used kerosene or some other inflammable fluid, to ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... after the event just related, he was living in a hut on the shores of Lake Nyassa. One night, accompanied by a friend, he returned from a journey. Desiring refreshment he found none available except some Johanna rum in an unopened keg. This liquor is extremely strong and highly inflammable. Rhodes knocked in the bung; some of the spirit spurted out ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... the nature and origin of these remarkable appearances. When electricity began to be understood, this was thought to afford a satisfactory explanation, and the shooting stars were regarded by Beccaria and Vassali as merely electrical sparks. When the inflammable nature of the gases became known, Lavosier and Volta supposed an accumulation of hydrogen in the higher regions of the atmosphere, because of its inferior density, giving rise by ignition to the meteoric exhibitions. While these theories of the older philosophers have been ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... experiments. He soon made several valuable discoveries. One was that explosions of inflammable gases could not pass through long narrow metallic tubes. Another was that when he held a piece of wire gauze over a lighted candle, the flame would not pass through it. As a result of his long and patient toil Davy was able at last to construct his now famous ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... delayed too long," exclaimed the doctor; "we must now pass through a zone of fire, with our balloon filled as it is with inflammable gas!" ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... the night some malicious person had placed under the front steps in the areaway of his house a barrel that had been filled with cotton waste saturated with oil. It was only necessary after that to apply a match to the inflammable material to start an incipient conflagration. Had the house itself not been built of granite, and—save the doors and windows and other trimmings—been practically fireproof, the result would have been disastrous; as it was, however, beyond ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... as I can understand the description, it entirely resembles the Sitakunda near Chitagang, that is, the water has no connexion with a subterraneous fire, and the flame is occasioned by the burning of an inflammable air, that issues from the crevices of a rock, over which the water has been artificially conducted. The streams of the Kali and Narayani unite at Kagakoti, take the name of Narayani, and are also called Krishna, Gandaki, and Salagrami, from the number of ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... at night had a similar meaning. The head of the arrow was dipped in some highly inflammable substance and then set on fire at the instant before it was discharged from the bow. One fire-arrow shot into the sky meant that the enemy were near; two signaled danger, and three great danger. When the Indian shot many fire-arrows up in rapid succession he was signaling to his friends that ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... fury and rapidity with which fires rage through the forests of America during a dry hot season, at which period the broken underwood, decayed vegetable substances, fallen branches, bark, and withered trees, are as inflammable as the absence of moisture can make them. To such irresistible food for combustion we must add the auxiliary afforded by the boundless fir forests, every tree of which in its trunk, bark, branches, and leaves contains vast quantities ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... surrounded the garrison, and for two days exerted all their ingenuity in attempting to destroy the building. They wrapped around their arrows hemp dipped in oil, and, setting them on fire, shot them upon the dry and inflammable roof. Several times the building was in flames, but the inmates succeeded in arresting the conflagration. It was now the evening of the 4th of August. The garrison, utterly exhausted by two days and two nights of incessant ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... which was saving its light by burning very dimly, "that lamp will be off the what-not in a moment. How could you put it right on the edge?" And she took it down from its pinnacle, and placed it firmly on the middle of a table, at a distance from anything inflammable. "Mr. Manlius is so absent-minded, Sir," said ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... anybody can suggest anything better, I should like to hear it," replied Kit. "I don't want to burn the boat, I'm sure; but I can't see anything else that looks inflammable." ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... been raised to this process is that the use of such an easily inflammable substance as bisulphide of carbon is attended by great risk of fire. Were the bisulphide to be exposed to free air, there might be force in this objection; but there is no reason why it should ever be removed from under a layer of water. The apparatus, to make all safe, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... the rebels out of the country. The day before, the Chinese had filled our house and looted it completely, except the books in the library, for which they seem to have had some respect; but we had reason to believe that on Monday the house would have been burnt, for gunpowder and inflammable materials were found strewed about after they left. They took everything they could carry away, and destroyed the rest, cutting long slits in the gauze of the mosquito-rooms, and pouring all the chemicals and medicines of the dispensary ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... with this great fight. The protagonists were two poets of undoubted talent, whose temperaments and tendencies were so diametrically opposed that it seemed as though Providence must have set them down in that raw and inflammable civilization for the express purpose of setting the standing corn of thought on fire. Henrik Wergeland (1808-45) was a belated son of the French Revolution; ideas, fancies, melodies and enthusiasms fermented in his ill-regulated brain, and he poured forth verses in ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... the short time I was there the newspapers noted several cases of fires caused by people leaving their stoves turned up high at night and the flames bursting into the room and setting fire to some inflammable thing near at hand when the pressure grew strong after the good Pittsburgers went ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... point when I open that book. 'Some things can be done as well as others,' can they? Suppose I should try what I can do by visiting Miss Myrtle Hazard? I think I may say I am old and incombustible enough to be trusted. She does not seem to be a safe neighbor to very inflammable bodies?" ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... we are being particularly incendiary," said Pateley, with the comfortable air of one disposing of the subject. "It is only that the world is rather inflammable at this moment." ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... delicatessen store mode—sausages, rolls and buns—whereupon both of them laugh in a significant, silvery way, and you feel the back of your neck setting your collar on fire. You can smell the bone button back there scorching and you're glad it's not celluloid, celluloid being more inflammable and subject to combustion when ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... according to their several resources. Then, when gathered within the hall, a crowded mass of ugly masks, shocking bad hats, and antique attire, look down from the steep slope of seats upon the stage where lies the effigy of Father Euclid, in inflammable state. After a voluntary by the 'Blow Hards,' 'Horne Blenders,' or whatever facetiously denominated band performs the music, there is a mighty singing of some Latin song, written with more reference to the occasion than to correct ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... are built mostly of reed and thatch work standing in shallow water on bamboo stalks, highly inflammable and subject to alterations by a blunt pocket-knife. So a favorite device for holding a man prisoner is a hole in the ground too deep and sheer for him to climb out of. That's why I'd brought a length of knotted rope. The dynamite was instead of men, which ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... would find encouragement and inspiration. Susan's hopes were high for the Women's Bureau, and in this most respectable, fashionable, and even elegant setting, she expected her Revolution, in spite of its inflammable name, to live down its turbulent past and win ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... stooped down, and threw a little inflammable fuel on the remains of the camp fire, so that when it blazed up, which immediately happened, there was no longer darkness near the spot, as they could see far into the jungle that lay on the side away ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... have been the making of chemical experiments; and his brothers and sisters were often terrified at the experiments in electricity which he tried upon them. He was also fond of making the children personate spirits or fiends, while he burned some inflammable liquid. ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... one name, and tell me all Its qualities as well; As, coal is black, and coal is hard, And coal's inflammable. ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... on the 27th of March. Important events had occurred there since his departure. The population of that great city, which numbered nearly three hundred thousand inhabitants, fickle, inflammable, inclined to change, had followed the suggestions of Turkish emissaries, and fallen upon the French the moment they heard the cannon at Heliopolis. Pouring forth outside the walls during the battle, and seeing Nassif-Pasha and Ibrahim Bey, with some thousand ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... extra-matrimonial scandals, the playhouses commercialize the sexual instinct in lurid melodramas, sex problems are the centre of public discussion, all the old barriers which the traditional policy of silence had erected are being broken down, the whole nation is gossiping about erotics. In such inflammable surroundings where the sparks of the dance are recklessly kindled, the danger is imminent. If a nation focuses its attention on sensuality, its virile energy must naturally suffer. There is a well-known antagonism between sex and sport. Perhaps ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... denied, not simply but cum modo, with a qualification. And some Logicians have considered any adverb occurring in the predicate, or any sign of past or future tense, enough to constitute a modal: as 'Petroleum is dangerously inflammable'; 'English will be the universal language.' But far the most important kind of modality, and the only one we need consider, is that which is signified by some qualification of the predicate as to the degree of certainty with which it is affirmed or denied. ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... hunted up Sally. He found her in one of the dressing-rooms, extinguishing candles which had nearly burned to the bottoms of the lanterns, and were threatening their inflammable surroundings. ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... incineration tube. He'd do the necessary things first ... then direct the ray of it against the softer portions of the hideout of Barter. The flame would eat through. Somewhere it would finally reach wood; that was inflammable. ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... gone rashly into that combustible foreign element. But so it is: this was the fatal limit. The poor Kaiser's Shadow-Hunt, going Scot-free this long while, and merely tormenting other people, has, at this point, by contact with inflammable Poland, unexpectedly itself caught fire; goes now plunging, all in mad flame, over precipices one knows not how deep: and there will be a lamentable singeing and smashing before the Kaiser get out of this, if he ever get! Kaiser Karl, from this point, plunges down and down, all his days; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... a little while this same unknown poet was pleased to put abroad a certain ballad of his that was ostensibly given over to the praise of certain lovely ladies of our city. Florence was always a very paradise of fair women. An inflammable fellow like myself could not walk the length of a single street without running the risk of half a dozen heartaches, and never was traveller that came and went but was loud in his laudations of the loveliness of Florence feminine. A poet, therefore, could scarcely have a more ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... perhaps four feet by six was the wireless focus which received all reports and sent all orders, with trim bluejackets at the keys. "Go!" and "Come!" the messages were saying; they wasted no words. Officers of the staff did their work in narrow space, yet seemed to have plenty of room. Red tape is inflammable. There is no more place for it on board a flagship prepared for action ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... told her all he knew of the late ascent, at which he had been present in Bordeaux; how Montgolfier and his brother made the balloon; how he stood by their enclosure and saw them fill the balloon with inflammable gas; how the brave four got into the car and everybody prophesied their destruction; and of the speechless thrill with which he saw at last the strange machine dart upwards and carry them swiftly higher and higher, until it was but a speck ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... caution against a too hasty judgment interests me more in relation to Mr. Casaubon than to his young cousin. If to Dorothea Mr. Casaubon had been the mere occasion which had set alight the fine inflammable material of her youthful illusions, does it follow that he was fairly represented in the minds of those less impassioned personages who have hitherto delivered their judgments concerning him? I protest against any absolute conclusion, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... or soul-stirring about it: Andor had gone away, having told her that he loved her, and adjured her to wait for him. She had waited for three years, patiently, quietly, obstinately, despite the many and varied sieges laid to her heart and her imagination by the inflammable, eligible youth of the countryside. Elsa Kapus—the far-famed beauty of half the county, counted her suitors by the score. Patiently, quietly, obstinately she kept every suitor at bay—even though many were rich and some in high positions—even ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... one in fact, was by water; but it could be approached only by swimming. The fort was built of stone and brick, while the door, made of thick posts, and lined with sheets of copper, would have defied for a long time, the power of their axes or fire. Our only anxiety was about the inflammable quality of the roof, which was covered with pine shingles. Against such an accident, however, we prepared ourselves by carrying water to the upper rooms, and we could at any time, if it became necessary, open holes in the roof, for the greater facility ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... up from the cabin deck and sat directly under his hiding-place. At first he was too much afraid of discovery to listen to what they were saying, but later his interest outweighed his fear. For they were evidently lovers, and Sandy was at that inflammable age when to hear mention of love is dangerous and to see a manifestation of it absolute contagion. When the great question came, his heart waited for the answer. Perhaps it was the added weight of ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... a billet of wood and let it be completely saturated with water; the wood acquires a new property (as also by the application of fire, which converts it into ashes and air), for its specific gravity is increased, it becomes less inflammable, emits vapor more readily, and yields less readily to the blow of the axe. Place the same billet under a powerful screw, and a vessel beneath. Compress the billet, and by a sufficient application of force, you will ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... grey (Labrador) or jack pine is considered good fuel in the far north, where hard woods are scarce. Seasoned tamarack is good. Spruce is poor fuel, although, being resinous, it kindles easily and makes a good blaze for 'branding up' a fire. Pitch pine, which is the most inflammable of all woods when dry and 'fat,' will scarcely burn at all in a green state. Sycamore and buckeye, when thoroughly seasoned, are good fuel, but will not split. Alder burns readily and gives out considerable heat, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... reference of these words is to the threatened retribution for national idolatry, of which 'oaks' and 'gardens' were both seats. The nation was, as it were, dried up and made inflammable; the idol was as the 'spark' or the occasion for destruction. But a wider application, which comes home to us all, is to the fatal results of sin. These need to be very plainly stated, because of the deceitfulness of sin, which goes on slaying ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... thirdly, the tedium which obsesses the life of the woman who is not forced, and cannot force herself, to work. On the top of these grievances comes the fact that the suffragist conceives herself to be harshly and unfairly treated by man. This last is the fire which sets a light to all the inflammable material. ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... sufficiently annoying. Thorpe's old tin pail was pressed into service as a smudge-kettle. Every evening about dusk, when the insects first began to emerge from the dark swamps, Charley would build a tiny smoky fire in the bottom of the pail, feeding it with peat, damp moss, punk maple, and other inflammable smoky fuel. This censer swung twice or thrice about the tent, effectually cleared it. Besides, both men early established on their cheeks an invulnerable glaze of a decoction of pine tar, oil, and a pungent herb. Towards ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... somewhat recklessly. Polite and amiable in indiscriminate fashion, Hadria ignored the secret jealousies and heart-burnings of the neighbourhood, only to recognise and repent her mistakes when too late. To-day she was even more unchastened than usual in her dealings with inflammable social material. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... F—— pronounces the wind to be just right, and proposes that we should go to some place where the grass is of two, or, still better, three years' growth, then I am indeed happy. I am obliged to be careful not to have on any inflammable petticoats, even if it is quite a warm day, as they are very dangerous; the wind will shift suddenly perhaps as, I am in the very act of setting a tussock a-blaze, and for half a second I find myself in the middle of the flames. F—— generally gets his beard ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... his inflammable nature and appearances of vanity are his greatest social liabilities. They stand between him and success many times. He must learn to control them if he desires to reap the full benefit of his ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... that he took in the first performance of a new play, has left a very living account of the scene: Lord Kilmarnock, tall, slender, refined, faultlessly dressed, looking less than his years, which were a little over forty, and inspiring a most astonishing passion in the inflammable heart of Lady Townshend; Lord Cromarty, of much the same age, but of less gallant bearing, dejected, sullen, and even tearful; Balmerino, the very type and model of a gallant, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... could only revert to the senses. His divinity was the phallic divinity. The other male divinity, which is the spirit that fulfils in the world the new germ of an idea, this was denied and obscured in him, unused. And it was this spirit which cried out helplessly in him through the insistent, inflammable flesh. Even this play-acting was a form of physical gratification for him, it had in it neither ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... north side of the harbor, but the allies did not yet feel confident that the end had quite come. About midnight one of the maritime forts was blown up, and explosions continued at intervals throughout the night, fires bursting out wherever any inflammable substance remained. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... by botanists the Fraxinella, which has the peculiar property of giving out, from its leaves and stalks, a gas which is inflammable. Sometimes, on a very still day, when there is no wind to blow it away as fast as it is produced, this gas may be ignited by a match, when the plant is growing in the open air. But this is very seldom the case, for the air must be very quiet, and the plant very productive, for ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... investigations were principally: (1) Crude paraffin oil, being the oil obtained direct from the destructive distillation of shale in retorts; (2) green paraffin oil, which is yielded by distilling or re-running the crude paraffin oil, and removing the lighter or more inflammable portion by fractional distillation; and (3) blue paraffin oil, which is obtained by rectifying the twice run oil with sulphuric acid and soda, and distilling off the paraffin spirit, burning oil, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... deeply ignorant of the grievances which the higher classes nurse into bitterness. And yet it should not be forgotten that the ignorance of the people, coupled with their narrow superstition and lively imagination, make them very inflammable material under the influence ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... Captain Titus, were placed on the boiler-deck directly over the boilers. One of the firemen who was saved, says he had occasion to go on deck, and seeing the demijons, removed them. They were replaced, but by whom is not known. Their inflammable contents undoubtedly aided the flames ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... sweetly, and then turned her head coquettishly, and then looked again with eyes full of meaning. Now, although Mr Vanslyperken had always avoided amours on account of the expense entailed upon them, yet he was, like a dry chip, very inflammable, and the extreme beauty of the party made him feel unusual emotions. Her perseverance too—and her whole appearance so very respectable—so superior to the class of people who generally accosted him. He thought of the widow and her money-bags, and thought, also, how infinitely more desirable ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... who scarcely expected such a boon, so great were the difficulties and obstacles which stared them in the face. It was impossible for the liberators of Italy to have effected so marvellous a movement if the material on which they worked had not been so impulsive and inflammable. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... night seemed to be suddenly undrawn. Objects the most minute were visible as in the broad view of day. The brown heath, the grey and the mossy stone, were each distinguishable, but clad alike in one bright and unvarying colour, red as the roaring furnace. Soon the great magazine of inflammable matter in the interior caught fire, and rolled out in a wide mass of light, like the first burst of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... standing in a field of this sort, bounded only by the horizon, and enemies setting fire to a line of a mile or two, by running along with bunches of burning straw in their hands, touching here and there the inflammable material,—the wind blowing towards the doomed village—the inhabitants with only one or two old muskets, but ten to one no powder,—the long line of flames, leaping thirty feet into the air with dense masses of black smoke—and pieces of charred grass falling down in ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... Oil is a fatty, inflammable matter, drawn from many vegetable and animal bodies. The oils in common use are of three different kinds. The first are mere oily or fatty bodies, extracted either by pressure, or by decoction: of the first kind are those of almonds, nuts, olives, &c.; ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... in the arms of stalwart youth, with the clergy looking on approvingly; another of Mr. John Drew assuming a commanding posture as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew; some ennuied flabby angels riding on the clouds; a child of unhealthy pink clasping lovingly an inflammable dog; on the mantel a miniature ship, under glass, and some lady statuettes whose toilettes ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... he had a gayly-flaming pile of inflammable material burning high there. Its gleam lightened every inch of the gloomy room. It brought out into hideous clearness the writhing dark bodies of the crawling moccasins, even to the patches of white at their lips which gave ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... highly inflammable heap, and when tired Mr. Sterling went home to snatch a bite of something to eat, and lazy Lem Wacker came strolling into the place, pipe in full blast, Bart had not hesitated to exercise his brief authority. ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... system. Repression was the panacea which Metternich recommended to all the governments of Germany, large and small. No doubt the system of keeping things quiet secured to Germany and to Europe at large a thirty years' peace, but it could not prevent the accumulation of inflammable material which, after several threatenings, burst forth at last in the conflagration of 1848. Among my friends I remember several who were ready for the wildest schemes in order to have Germany united, respected abroad, and under constitutional government at home. Splendid ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... a soil said to be full of bituminous springs, and where (as in Trinidad) the tertiary strata carry veins of asphalt, or are saturated with naphtha. At the famous sacred Fire wells of Baku, in the Eastern Caucasus, the ejections of mud and inflammable gas are so mixed with asphaltic products that Eichwald says 'they should be rather called naphtha volcanoes than mud-volcanoes, as the eruptions always terminate in a large emission ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... under the ligature, and afterwards pressed with both hands, so as to make all that it contains pass on one side, and to produce a swelling on that part which contains the incision, which must be held with the left hand, to prevent the inflammable air escaping. This hand being removed, and a candle applied about an inch from the stomach, a blueish flame will issue, which will last nearly a minute. The circumstances of the case of Grace Pitt, to which your Correspondent refers, perfectly coincide with the foregoing remarks. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... conceptions founded on the law of nature. The movement produced good and evil results. In serious minds it led to a deep and conscientious study of history, national literature, popular mythology, and the like; whilst in frivolous, inflammable spirits it gave birth merely to a torrent of patriotic fervour and rhetorical exaggeration. The Slavophils were the Russian representatives of this nationalistic reaction, and displayed both its serious and ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... of the negotiators was amicable enough. The Americans found their opponents courteous and well-bred; and both sides evinced a desire to avoid in word and manner, as Bayard put it, "everything of an inflammable nature." Throughout this memorable meeting at Ghent, indeed, even when difficult situations arose and nerves became taut, personal relations continued friendly. "We still keep personally upon eating and drinking terms with them," Adams wrote at a tense ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... governor of Moscow, Count Rostopchin, intended to greet the entering conqueror with an illumination, and, as he had no torches handy, he set fire to the houses. He removed the stores and supplies, compelled the inhabitants to leave, had the fire-engines concealed, ordered inflammable oils and rosin to be placed everywhere in order to intensify the fury of the conflagration, and then released the convicts that they might set fire to the city. The first house kindled was Rostopchin's own ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... Annabel Franklin, the daughter of a cousin of Mrs. Wilson's. Mark had stayed at the Franklin house during his three weeks' visit in Boston, where he had gone on business for his father. The young people had naturally seen much of each other and Mark's inflammable fancy had been so kindled by Annabel's doll-like charms that he had persuaded her to accompany him to his home and get a taste of country life in Maine. Such is man, such is human nature, and such is life, that Mark had no sooner got the whilom object of his affections under his own roof ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... as others have done, may find, perhaps, that the passions of your sex are easier raised than allayed. Do not therefore boast too soon or too strongly of your insensibility to, or resistance of, its powers. In the composition of the human frame there is a good deal of inflammable matter, however dormant it may lie for a time, and like an intimate acquaintance of yours, when the torch is put to it, that which is within you may burst into a blaze; for which reason and especially too, as I have entered upon the chapter of advices, I will read you a lecture ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford |
