"Mercury" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... downward into the carpet-binding; a lever, with a small weight on the upper side, and a tooth projecting downward at one end, operated on by the type, and a metallic fork, also projecting downward, over two mercury cups; and a short circuit of wire embracing the helices of the electro-magnet connected with the positive and negative poles of the battery and ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... to the window, and stood for several moments as still as the bronze Mercury on the mantel. When she turned around, her features were as fixed as if they belonged to some sculptured ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... pump, which has been specially constructed to better suit the work required. The stop-cock which is usually employed has been omitted, and instead of it a hollow stopper s has been fitted in the neck of the reservoir R. This stopper has a small hole h, through which the mercury descends; the size of the outlet o being properly determined with respect to the section of the fall tube t, which is sealed to the reservoir instead of being connected to it in the usual manner. This arrangement ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... the stern-post of a ship is upon her keel, and was about fourteen feet high, two broad, and one inch and a half thick. They both consisted of boards of carved work, of which the design was much better than the execution. All their canoes, except a few at Opoorage or Mercury Bay, which were of one piece, and hollowed by fire, are built after this plan, and few are less than twenty feet long. Some of the smaller sort have outriggers; and sometimes two are joined together, but ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... are less intense, on the Earth than in Montalluyah. These facts would, in the first instance, seem to indicate, not a longer, but a shorter distance of Montalluyah from the central luminary, and to point rather to Venus or Mercury than to Mars. But, according to the scientific theories of Montalluyah, the amount of light and heat received from the Sun, and the aspect of that luminary, are governed, not so much by proximity, as by the nature and electricity ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... heaven prophesy the future greatness and power of the Julian line. Then he sent Mercury, the messenger of the gods, down to earth to bid the queen of Carthage and her people give a hospitable reception to the Trojans, for it was near that city, on the Li'by-an shore, that they had landed after the storm. Venus herself, too, came down from Olympus, and, ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... sacredness of the number seven itself—the belief in which has not been quite shaken off even to this day—was deduced by the Assyrian astronomer from his observation of the seven planetary bodies—namely, Sin (the moon), Samas (the sun), Umunpawddu (Jupiter), Dilbat (Venus), Kaimanu (Saturn), Gudud (Mercury), Mustabarru-mutanu (Mars).(11) Twelve lunar periods, making up approximately the solar year, gave peculiar importance to the number twelve also. Thus the zodiac was divided into twelve signs which astronomers of all subsequent times have continued to recognize; and the duodecimal system of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Mercury will again be visible for a short time about the middle of the month a little after the sun has set, arriving on the 16th at his greatest eastern elongation, or apparent distance from the centre of the system, as seen from the earth in 20 deg. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... about metallic pesticide residues adhering to fruit skins. However, it has been nearly half a century since arsenic and lead arsenate were used as pesticides and mercury is no longer used ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... of a heat engine, such as a boiler, is to raise the temperature of the furnace to the utmost, and reduce the heat of the smoke to the lowest possible point. It should be noted, in addition, that it is immaterial what liquid there may be in the lake; whether water, oil, mercury, or what not, the law will equally apply, and so in a heat engine, the nature of the working substance, provided that it does not change its physical state during a cycle, does not affect the question of efficiency with which the heat being expended is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... dearest James became more wretched under her. And no one could see what his complaint was. He called in the old physicians at the Club. He dosed himself with poppy, and mandragora and blue pill—lower and lower went poor James's mercury. If he wanted to move to Brighton or Cheltenham, well and good. Whatever were her engagements, or whatever pleasures darling Rosey might have in store, dear thing!—at her age, my dear Mrs. Newcome, would not one do all to make a young creature ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the dresser of the vine in Homer's 'Hymn to Mercury' translated so exquisitely by Shelley, and of a very beautiful single figure in Theocritus besides. Neither probably would suit your purpose. In the 'Pax' of Aristophanes there is an idle 'Chorus' who talks of looking at the vines and watching the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... needle and the atmospheric pressure is undisturbed on earthquake days within the tropics. In seventeen observations, which I made during earthquakes in Lima with a good Lefevre barometer, I found, in fifteen instances, the position of the mercury quite unaltered. On one occasion, shortly before a commotion, I observed it 2.4 lines lower than it had been two hours before. Another time, I observed, also on the approach of the shock and during the twelve following hours, a remarkable rising and sinking in the column. During these ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... under Venus, Mercury and Mars. These three planets were in conjunction at the time of your birth. You were born when the sign was wrong and you have had more or less trouble ever since. Had you been born when the sign was in the head or the heart, instead of the feet, you would not ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... people of Edessa possessed a region, which, from time immemorial, had been sacred to that luminary: that there were two subordinate Deities, Monimus and Azizus, who were esteemed coadjutors, and assessors to the chief God. He supposes them to have been the same as Mars and Mercury: but herein this zealous emperor failed; and did not understand the theology which he was recommending. Monimus and Azizus were both names of the same God, the Deity of Edessa, and [101]Syria. The former is, undoubtedly, a translation of Adad, which ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... to Hartford, where he studied law, edited the American Mercury,—a weekly paper he had helped to found,—- and with John Trumbull, Lemuel Hopkins, and David Humphreys formed a literary club which became widely known as the "Hartford Wits." Its chief publication, a series of political lampoons styled 'The Anarchiad,' ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... him they have the name of the day of the week Teuosdag, which we call Tuesday, and the Germans Tuisconsdaeg, and the Latins Dies Martis; the second mount was dedicated to their god Woden, so they called Mercury, and from thence their day of the week is named Wodensdag, which we also call Wednesday, the Germans Wodensdaeg, and the Latins Dies Mercurii; the third mount was dedicated to their goddess Freya, so they called Venus, and from thence comes ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... Then come Mercury, the winged messenger, interpreter and ambassador of the gods; Diana, queen of the woods and goddess of hunting, and hence the counterpart of her brother Apollo; and finally, Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and skill, who is said to have Sprung full-armed ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... her love's; The fane of Venus where he moves His worthy love-suit, and attains; Whose bliss the wrath of Fates restrains For Cupid's grace to Mercury: Which tale the author ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... sulphureted hydrogen, it forms sulphides of boron and phosphorus and hydriodic acid, without liberation of iodine. Metallic magnesium when slightly warmed reacts with it with incandescence. When thrown into vapor of mercury, boron phospho-di-iodide ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... upon and is a lyre. This instrument, as is well known, was first made out of a vacant turtle-shell, by Mercury, the god of gymnastic exercises and of theft, that is to say, of technic, and of plagiarism. Mercury was nimble with his affections also; among his progeny was the great god Pan, who is frequently reported, and commonly believed, to be dead. Pan was so far from beautiful that even his nurse ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... and got up on weaving legs. He might wash it in the creek, he considered, and so take out the rough of whatever infection the dog's teeth had driven into his flesh, but dismissed the notion at once as altogether foolish. It needed bichloride of mercury, and it was unlikely there was such a thing within ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... of endurance above all others—its sublime power of patience. STRENGTH and FORCE are the two agents who appear on this darkened theatre to bind the too benevolent Titan—Wit and Treachery, under the forms of Mercury and Oceanus, endeavour to prevail upon him to make himself free by giving up his dreadful secret;— but Strength and Force, and Wit and Treason, are all alike powerless to overcome the resolution of that suffering divinity, or ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... blankly. The hole that he had made into the foot wall had been filled with dynamite and tamped, as though ready for shooting. But the charge had not been exploded. Instead—on the ground lay the remainder of the tamping paper and a short foot and a half of fuse, with its fulminate of mercury cap attached, where it had been pulled from its berth by some great force and hastily stamped ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... inner boulevard, which forms a sort of slightly elevated garden, is not only a favorite resort in summer, but is thronged every winter afternoon with people promenading or sitting under the snow-powdered trees in an arctic fairyland, while the mercury in the thermometer is at a very low ebb indeed. It is fashionable in Russia to grumble at the cold, but unfashionable to convert the grumbling into action. On the contrary, they really enjoy sitting for five hours at a stretch, in a temperature ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... together. She had been shopping or doing what it is that women do down town of afternoons, and he had met her at the close of business, and they had eaten together as usual, and when they emerged into the open air it was but to learn that the mercury had dropped some few degrees, and that the jacket she wore was light for the occasion. She became cold before her home was reached, and ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... Athenians to multiply the objects of their devotion; for here at the gateway stands an image of Neptune, seated on horseback, and brandishing the trident. Passing through the gate, his attention would be immediately arrested by the sculptured forms of Minerva, Jupiter, Apollo, Mercury, and the Muses, standing near a sanctuary of Bacchus. A long street is now before him, with temples, statues, and altars crowded on either hand. Walking to the end of this street, and turning to the right, he entered the Agora, a public square surrounded with porticoes and temples, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... MERCURY ONCE DETERMINED to learn in what esteem he was held among mortals. For this purpose he assumed the character of a man and visited in this disguise a Sculptor's studio having looked at various statues, he demanded the price of two figures of Jupiter and Juno. ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... his face grew peaked and anxious with that sense of loss I had first seen when the Power snatched him. But this time the agony was tenfold keener. As I watched it mounted like mercury in the tube. It lighted his face from within till I thought the visibly scourged soul must leap forth naked between his jaws, unable to endure. A drop of sweat trickled from my forehead down my nose and splashed on the back ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... "Why, indeed, Madam,'tis Mercury carries the wings. In another lady's presence I had said 'tis Cupid, but from some ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... elements. About ten of the elements are gases at ordinary temperatures. Two—mercury and bromine—are liquids. The others are all solids, though their melting points vary through wide limits, from caesium which melts at 26 deg. to elements which do not melt save in the intense heat of the ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... inspired and partly written by Franklin. It is hotly partisan, and sometimes sophistical and unfair. Articles on the quarrel will also be found in the provincial newspapers, especially the New York Mercury, and in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1755 and 1756. But it is impossible to get any clear and just view of it without wading through the interminable documents concerning it in the Colonial Records of Pennsylvania and the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... never, please; and without pleasing you will rise but heavily. Venus, among the ancients, was synonymous with the Graces, who were always supposed to accompany her; and Horace tells us that even Youth and Mercury, the god of Arts and Eloquence, would not do ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... seated herself at a table, a smile lurked around the corners of her mouth and flickered faintly upon the waiter who forthwith became a Mercury for expedition and a prodigal for variety. Her quarrel on the road with her companion had in nowise interfered with that appetite which the fresh air and the lateness of the hour had provoked, nor were ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... part of my career; the above conversations may serve as a sufficient sample of my electioneering qualifications: and so I shall merely add, that after the due quantum of dining, drinking, spouting, lying, equivocating, bribing, rioting, head-breaking, promise-breaking, and—thank the god Mercury, who presides over elections—chairing of successful candidateship, I found myself fairly chosen member for the ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Cessation of Oracles, "is palpably the proper emblem of rest, on account of the security and firmness of the superficies." He further tells us that the pyramid is an image of the triangular flame ascending from a square altar; and since no one knows, his guess is as good as any. At any rate, Mercury, Apollo, Neptune, and Hercules were worshiped under the form of a square stone, while a large black stone was the emblem of Buddha among the Hindoos, of Manah Theus-Ceres in Arabia, and of Odin in Scandinavia. Everyone knows of the Stone of Memnon in Egypt, which was said to speak ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... round with your little finger," said the P.K. "That's because it floats in a mercury bath. And in turning that you are moving four tons. When the lantern is lighted, it shows dark for seven and a half seconds, then two sets of four flashes, making a complete revolution every half-minute. They can see the light at sea on a clear night for nineteen ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... here, upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See what a grace was seated on this brow; Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald Mercury New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; A combination and a form indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal To give the world assurance of a man; This was your husband. Look you now, What follows: Here is your husband: like a mildewed ear, Blasting his wholesome brother. Have ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... Tingley descended the car steps, ready to go to breakfast, her other son appeared—a second Mercury. ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... Since subspace distances do not coincide with normal space distances, the SOS was first picked up by a Fomalhautian freighter bound for Capella although it had been issued from a point in normal space midway between the orbit of Mercury and the sun's corona ...
— A Place in the Sun • C.H. Thames
... virtues cannot be properly ascribed, as they have been, to the metals which they contain. It might be further proved, that iron cannot possibly enter the blood, retaining its essential qualities; for metals in general, except mercury, are suspended in liquids in solutis principiis, or principles disengaged, which are thus deprived of their metallic properties. Iron, entering the body as a volatile vitriolic acid, cannot act by its specific gravity as mercury does; it therefore acts per accidens, ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... books, the Old Testament to the New, the expurgated parts of "Gulliver's Travels" to those that are left. I delight in beef stews, limericks, burlesque shows, New York City and the music of Haydn, that beery and delightful old rascal! I swear in the presence of ladies and archdeacons. When the mercury is above ninety-five I dine in my shirt sleeves and write poetry naked. I associate habitually with dramatists, bartenders, medical men and musicians. I once, in early youth, kissed a waitress at Dennett's. So don't accuse me of vulgarity; I admit it and flout you. Not, of course, that I have no ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... (dracaena) has been identified with the dragon, and its exudation, "dragon's blood," was called cinnabar, and confused with the mineral (red sulphide of mercury), or simply with red ochre. In the Socotran dragon-myth the elephant takes the hero's role, as in the American stories of Chac and Tlaloc (see Chapter II). The word kinnabari was applied to the thick matter that issues from ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... Subject of which it is predicated; we desire those gentlemen to answer for us how 'Post-Man' or 'Post-Boy' can signify a News-Paper, the Post Man or Post Boy being in all my reading properly and strictly applicable, not to the Paper, but to the Person bringing or carrying the News? Mercury also is, if I understand it, by a Transmutation of Meaning, from a God turned into a Book—From hence our Club thinks they have not fair Play, in being deny'd the Privilege of making an Allegory as well as ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... air lock of the compression chamber when we got the compressor in. They tested out pretty good for a half-hour, then we tried them on in there. Well, it wasn't a complete vacuum, just twenty-seven inches of mercury, but that was O.K. ...
— We Didn't Do Anything Wrong, Hardly • Roger Kuykendall
... cow-boy, trudging along, wondered what we could be gazing at. After spying about some time, he found it could only be the sunset, and looking, too, a moment, he said approvingly "that sun looks well enough;" a speech worthy of Shakspeare's Cloten, or the infant Mercury, up to everything from the cradle, as you ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... remarkably fertile and prolific. His first inventions in the art, made in 1875-76, continue through many later years, including all kinds of carbon instruments —the water telephone, electrostatic telephone, condenser telephone, chemical telephone, various magneto telephones, inertia telephone, mercury telephone, voltaic pile telephone, musical transmitter, and the electromotograph. All ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... feet by horses and mules tied to hitching-posts raised clouds of dust, immense reddish ghosts that could not be laid. In the bank itself, ordinarily a cool retreat, smelling faintly of tobacco juice deposited by some of its clients, the mercury was swelling toward ninety. It was April Fools' day, and unless Miss Tennant was cool, nobody was. She looked cool. If the temperature had been 40 deg. below zero she would have looked warm; but she would have been ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... snow." In a certain sense it is marvellous, because the mechanical difficulties that have been overcome in reducing the air to these unusual conditions are great. Yet, in another and broader view, there is nothing more wonderful about liquid air than about liquid water, or liquid mercury, or liquid iron. Long before air was actually liquefied, it was perfectly understood by men of science that under certain conditions it could be liquefied just as surely as water, mercury, iron, and every other substance could be brought to a similar ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... hypochondria. One of his pet ideas was that a copious dose of calomel would ensure his restoration to perfect health. Unfortunately, however, during the prevalence of the plague, our medicine chest had one day been accidentally left exposed, and our mercury was abstracted. Still there was no use to attempt calming him with the assurance that his nostrum could not be had. The more we argued the impossibility of supplying him, the more was he urgent and imperative ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... water that remained in the saucepan from its last cleansing. It froze as it fell upon the soil. He looked at the night, and shook himself to throw off an oppressive sensation of being clasped in the icy ribs of the air, for the mercury had descended below the familiar region of crisp and crackly cold and marked a temperature at which the numb atmosphere seemed on the point of congealing into black solidity. Nothing ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... they all had one thing in common—a dream. All had visions of becoming Space Cadets, and later, officers in the Solar Guard. Each dreamed of the day when he would command rocket ships that patrolled the space lanes from the outer edges of Pluto to the twilight zone of Mercury. ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... Mundi of this rather mysterious person we need have little to do. It is, down to the dialogue-form, an obvious imitation of Lucian—a story about the ancient divinities (especially Mercury) and a certain "Book of Destiny" and talking animals, and a good deal of often rather too transparent allegory. It has had, both in its own day and since, a very bad reputation as being atheistical or ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... The mercury of Clodd's conceit shot upward to a point that in the case of anyone less physically robust might have been dangerous ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... Almighty heard him as he prayed holding the altar-horns, And to the war-walls of the Queen his eyes therewith he turns, 220 And sees the lovers heeding nought the glory of their lives; Then Mercury he calls to him, and such a bidding gives: "Go forth, O Son, the Zephyrs call, and glide upon the wing Unto the duke of Dardan men in Carthage tarrying, Who hath no eyes to see the walls that fate to him hath given: ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... way, and puzzled him altogether. He took some of this boiled infusion that I have been speaking of, and by the use of a mercurial bath—a kind of trough used in laboratories—he deftly inverted a vessel containing the infusion into the mercury, so that the latter reached a little beyond the level of the mouth of the inverted vessel. You see that he thus had a quantity of the infusion shut off from any possible communication with the outer air by being inverted upon a bed ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Fake away! None knap a reader like me in the lay. [15] Soon then I mounted in swell street-high, Nix my doll, pals, fake away! Soon then I mounted in swell street-high. And sported my flashest toggery, [16] Fake away! Fainly resolved I would make my hay, Fake away! While Mercury's star shed a single ray; And ne'er was there seen such a dashing prig, With my strummel faked in the newest twig, [17] Fake away! With my fawnied famms and my onions gay, [18] Fake away! My thimble of ridge and my driz kemesa, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... on whom we must rely as the beginners of the enterprise. No longer shall Alexius's cunning, in avoiding popular assemblies, avail to protect him; he cannot, with regard to his honour, avoid being present at a combat to be fought beneath his own eye; and Mercury be praised for the eloquence which inspired him, after some hesitation, to determine for ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... musical proportion, calleth that a tone, by how much the moon is distant from the earth: from the moon to Mercury the half of that space, and from Mercury to Venus almost as much; from Venus to the Sun, sesquiple [i.e., half as much more as a tone]; from the Sun to Mars, a tone, that is as far as the moon is from the earth: from Mars to Jupiter, half, and from Jupiter to Saturn, half, and thence ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... ancient world lay in ruins about her. Basil was not studious. Long ago he had forgotten his 'grammatical' learning—except, of course, a few important matters known to all educated men, such as the fact that the alphabet was invented by Mercury, who designed the letters from figures made in their flight by the cranes of Strymon. Though so ardent a lover, he had composed no lyric or elegy in Veranilda's honour; his last poetical effort was made in his sixteenth year, when, to his own ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... of the sun—the Indian is exposed during the whole year to Sol's most ardent beams, whilst but a scant share of its genial rays goes to warm the body of the Laplander. Now, if we placed the bulb of a thermometer beneath the tongue of a Hindu, we would find the mercury to stand at 98 degrees on Fahrenheit's scale, and if we repeated the experiment on a Laplander, we would obtain an identical result. Numerous experiments of this nature have been made on individuals in most parts of the world, and the results have proved that the temperature ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... Connel. "These suits were designed to withstand the temperature of the light side of Mercury! It gets boiling there, so I guess we can stand it ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... noble scorn of the world, and, with the ringing cadences of an enthusiastic style, to ennoble the vulgar and to sanctify the low. How much may be done, with an engine of such power, in increasing the numbers of 'The Family' may be conceived. The Muse of Faking, fair daughter of the herald Mercury, claims her place among 'The Mystic Nine.' Her language, erewhile slumbering in the pages of the Flash Dictionary, now lives upon the lips of all, even in the most fashionable circles. Ladies accost crossing-sweepers as 'dubsmen'; whist-players are generally spoken of in gambling ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... [attraction] rises very high. Then a paper is laid at the nearest end of the plate, over which the glass is slided till it lies upon the plate, having driven much of the quicksilver before it. It is then, I think, pressed upon cloths, and then set sloping to drop the superfluous mercury; the slope is daily heightened ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... "fathomless intervals," into an angle of vision of forty-five degrees? It is quite superfluous to ask "who is likest this, Turner or Poussin?" There immediately follows a remark upon another picture in the National Gallery, the "Mercury and Woodman," by Salvator Rosa, than which nothing can be more untrue to the original. He asserts that Salvator painted the distant mountains, "throughout, without one instant of variation. But what is its colour? Pure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... articles were collected from individuals in the meeting, and successively presented to them, all of which they described. India-rubber, cork, sponge, pocket combs, &c. A small pocket thermometer, with its tube and its mercury, its principles and use, and even the Turkey-leather on the cover, were all fully described. After explaining the nature and properties of coal-gas, one of the boys stated to the meeting, that since the commencement of this experiment, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... the root of the bryony and the white snake, and who make washes with honey and the blood of a cock. See clearly through that which is false. It is not quite true that Orion was the result of a natural function of Jupiter. The truth is that it was Mercury who produced this star in that way. It is not true that Adam had a navel. When St. George killed the dragon he had not the daughter of a saint standing by his side. St. Jerome had not a clock on the chimney-piece of his study; first, because living in a cave, he had no ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... place well enough. There were plenty of shady places to lie and smoke in when the mercury went sizzling up its tiny tube. Sometimes, when there was a dance, they would choose the best of Phoebe's roses to decorate their horses' bridles; and perhaps their hatbands, also. Peaceful would then ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... Illness of Harry. Fever. Determining temperature. Making a thermometer. Substitutes for glass and mercury. How Fahrenheit scale is determined. Centigrade scale. Testing the thermometer. Determining fever. Danger point. Why a coiled pipe tries to straighten out under pressure. Medicine for fever. Rains and rising Cataract River. Decision to explore sea coast to the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... places. The Temperance Society had emptied them. Hawthorne tried to smoke a cigar in one of them, but "was soon out on the piazza." Hawthorne, Emerson said, was more inclined to play Jove than Mercury. It is a pleasing picture—these two men, so unlike, but both typical of New England and both men of a high order of genius, walking in friendly converse along the country roads in the golden September days over seventy years ago. Emerson always regretted that he never succeeded in "conquering ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... saw a change in the Mercury whom he had last seen at the door of the London restaurant, a ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... several holes were soon bored in the glassy coating and sticks of dynamite inserted. These were then capped with fulminate of mercury caps, and Harry climbed the rope to the surface of the narrow gully with the wires which were to carry the explosive spark. The others followed, and then, carrying the battery box to which the wires had been attached, withdrew to what was ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Coelum Britannicum, acted before the court at Whitehall, the 18th of February, 1633; Momus, arriving from Olympus immediately after Mercury, says ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 66, February 1, 1851 • Various
... not imply all the planets; for, certain as we are that the moon has no atmosphere, so we are equally certain that some of the planets possess that attribute. Still there are other circumstances that render the notion of their being inhabited by beings like ourselves exceedingly improbable. Mercury, for example, is so embarrassed by the solar rays, that lead must always be in a state of fusion, and water, if not reduced to a state of vapor, will be hot enough to boil the fish that are in it. Uranus, at the other extremity of the system, receives four hundred times less ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... immortal gods her birth-rites forth to grace, Descending from their glorious seat above, They did on her these several virtues place: First Saturn gave to her sobriety, Jove then indued her with comeliness, And Sol with wisdom did her beautify, Mercury with wit and knowledge did her bless, Venus with beauty did all parts bedeck, Luna therewith did modesty combine, Diana chaste all loose desires did check, And like a lamp in clearness she doth shine. But Mars, according to his stubborn ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... The Weekly Mercury.—"Mr Henry Herman has carefully studied the little weaknesses of the great army of readers. Like a celebrated and much advertised medicine, he invariably 'touches the spot,' and hence the popularity of his works. His latest novel, 'The Sword of Fate,' contains ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... three ways of thinking. For some deemed certain men to have been gods, whom they worshipped in the images of those men: for instance, Jupiter, Mercury, and so forth. Others again deemed the whole world to be one god, not by reason of its material substance, but by reason of its soul, which they believed to be God, for they held God to be nothing else than a soul governing the world by movement and reason: ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... life has been the result. Shoring up being little known, the miners are not infrequently buried alive.... This Ophir, this California, where every river is a Tmolus and a Pactolus, every hillock a gold-field—does not contain a cradle, a puddling-machine, a quartz crusher, a pound of mercury." That a land apparently so wealthy should be entirely neglected by British capitalists caused Burton infinite surprise, but he felt certain that it had a wonderful future. His thoughts often reverted thither, and ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... in troth I am pleased at my stocking; very well pleased at my stocking. Oh, here's my niece! Sirrah, go tell Sir Sampson Legend I'll wait on him if he's at leisure: —'tis now three o'clock, a very good hour for business: Mercury governs ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... largest moon of Jupiter, was an important way station of the Solar Alliance for all spaceships traveling between the outer planets of Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto and the inner planets of Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury. The colony on Ganymede was more of a supply depot than a permanent settlement, with one large uranium refinery to convert the pitchblende brought in by the prospectors of the asteroids. Refueling ships, replenishing supplies, and having a small tourist trade, it was a ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... mile and a half from the shore: we were no sooner under the lee of the land, than the air, before of a pleasant and a moderate temperature, became so heated as to produce a scorching sensation; and to raise the mercury in the thermometer from 79 to 89 degrees. We were also assailed by an incredible number of flies and other insects, among which was a beautiful species of libellula. The sea swarmed with turtles, sea-snakes, and fish of various ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... old astronomy (according to which each planet had its proper sphere, around the earth as centre), then the influence of the sun would be judged to be inferior to that of either Saturn, Jupiter, or Mars; while the influences of Venus and Mercury, though inferior to the influence of the sun, would still be held superior to that of the moon. For the ancients measured the spheres of the seven planets of their system by the periods of the apparent revolution of those bodies around the celestial ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... story will express surprise at these terms, but I assure them that not only these articles but tumbrils, guillotines, and conciergeries were in active use among the Federals. If substantiation be required, I refer to the Charleston "Mercury," the only reliable organ, next to the New York "Daily News," published in the country. At the Bastile I made the acquaintance of the accomplished and elegant author of "Guy Livingstone," [Footnote: The recent conduct of Mr. Livingstone renders him unworthy of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... grapes, dazzled the eye. On either side of the tree were grottoes of fir-trees and moss, hung with red and blue paper lamps. In each grotto was an altar; upon one stood John of Bologna's floating Mercury; upon the other, a reduced cast in plaster of Thorwaldsen's Shepherd-boy. The steps were covered with presents, to which were attached ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... laid and a grateful incense rises from the ground, the sides of the water chatty grow dark and moist and cool themselves in the hot air, and through the dripping interstices of the khuskhus tattie a chilly fragrance creeps into the room, causing the mercury in the thermometer to retreat from its proud place. Nay, the seraph finds his way to your very bath-room, and discharging a cataract into the great tub, leaves it heaving like the ocean after a storm. When you follow him there, you will thank that nameless poet who gave our humble Aquarius ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... legion, so far as this, that the rain which relieved the Emperor's army in the field, and which the Church ascribed to the prayers of the Christian soldiers, is by Dio Cassius attributed to an Egyptian magician, who obtained it by invoking Mercury and other spirits. This war had been the occasion of one of the first recognitions which the State had conceded to the oriental rites, though statesmen and emperors, as private men, had long taken part in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... forth in time to see an athletic little figure in navy blue wearing a jaunty Panama hat, skim like a bird over a sweeping Dorothy Perkins just coming into bloom and alight on one leg with the perfect poise of a winged Mercury on the ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... Christ-worshipers assert that their saints had the power of raising the dead, and that they had Divine revelations, the Pagans had said before them that Athalide, son of Mercury, had obtained from his father the gift of living, dying, and coming to life whenever he wished, and that he had also the knowledge of all that transpired in this world as well as in the other; and that Esculapius, son ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... free to do what Congress could not do, or to reject Douglas and endorse Davis's ultimatum—that in substance was the issue. "In this convention where there should be confidence and harmony," said the "Charleston Mercury", "it is plain that men feel as if they were going into a battle." In the committee on resolutions where the States were equally represented, the majority were anti-Douglas; they submitted a report affirming ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... the cushioned transom, picking his teeth while he scans the columns of a late number of the Liverpool Mercury, is Captain Smith, the skipper, a regular-built, true-blue, Yankee ship-master. Though his short black curls are thickly sprinkled with gray, he has not yet seen forty years; but the winds and suns of every zone have left their indelible traces upon him. He is an intelligent, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... crude oil, mercury, tin, tungsten, antimony, manganese, molybdenum, vanadium, magnetite, aluminum, lead, zinc, uranium, world's ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... went crying about among them to stay their tumult and bid them listen to the kings, till at last they were got into their several places and ceased their clamour. Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... Treasurer of this Province has received a Bill of Lading for two Boxes of Portugal Gold, ship'd by Mr. Agent Bollan, on board the Mercury Man of War, amounting to Twenty thousand six hundred and eighty Pounds, seventeen shillings and six Pence; being Part of the L27,000 granted by Parliament in 1757, to this Province, to recompence them for the Expences they were at in the ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... origin of the symbol. Devaki is likewise figured with the divine Krishna in her arms, as is Mylitta, or Istar, of Babylon, also with the recurrent crown of stars, and with her child Tammuz on her knee. Mercury and Aesculapius, Bacchus and Hercules, Perseus and the Dioscuri, Mithras and Zarathustra, were all ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... activity, a dignified intensity of heavy perseverance, which made her perhaps more intolerable than her father. She was like some old coaches which we remember—very sure, very respectable; but so tedious, so monotonous, so heavy in their motion, that a man with a spark of mercury in his composition would prefer any danger from a faster vehicle to their horrid, weary, murderous, slow security. Lady Selina from day to day performed her duties in a most uncompromising manner; she knew what was due to her position, and from ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... upon impact, a detonator exploding the main charge. The detonator, comprising fulminate of mercury, is placed in the head or tail of the missile. To secure perfect detonation and to distribute the death-dealing contents evenly in all directions, it is essential that the bomb should strike the ground almost at right ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... an offering of friendship and fair dealing to the South, this speech failed of its purpose as signally as all kindred endeavors had done from the beginning. The "Richmond Enquirer" and "Whig," the "Charleston Mercury," and other leading organs of secession, denounced the inaugural, and seemed to be maddened by the very kindliness of its tone and the moderation of its demands. Their purpose was disunion and war, and ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... he realized that in Chesterman he had encountered the spirit which he felt against him everywhere—a cool, calculating, unmerciful spirit of single purpose, against which the play and flow of his emotional and imaginative nature was as ineffectual as mercury against the point ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... nations. Alongside, the dignity of such is placed, and their several inventors are named. But on the exterior all the inventors in science, in warfare, and in law are represented. There I saw Moses, Osiris, Jupiter, Mercury, Lycurgus, Pompilius, Pythagoras, Zamolxis, Solon, Charondas, Phoroneus, with very many others. They even have Mahomet, whom nevertheless they hate as a false and sordid legislator. In the most dignified position I saw a representation of Jesus Christ and ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... complacent expectation of the pretty girl whom he had met at the ball. He had not seen her for a month. It was a happy inspiration of his own that enabled him to present himself that morning in the twin functions of a victorious Mercury and Apollo. ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... circumstances, a globule of Apis 30 will quiet the patient, and the action of the drug will achieve the cure without any further difficulty, and without much loss of time, unless psora, sycosis, syphilis, or vaccine-virus prevail in the organism, or sulphur, iodine or mercury had been previously given in large doses. In the presence of such complications Apis will prove ineffectual until they have been removed by some specific antidote. After having made a most careful diagnosis, a single dose of the highest potency of the specific ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... does not intend to censure this practice entirely in Comedy, but to remind the Audience that in some recent Play of Luscus Lavinius this had been the sole stirring incident introduced. Plautus introduces Mercury running in the guise of Sosia, in the fourth Scene of the Amphitryon, l. 987, and exclaiming, "For surely, why, faith, should I, a God, be any less allowed to threaten the public, if it doesn't get out of my way, than a slave in the Comedies?" This practice can not, however, ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... stretched once more for some months on a sick-bed, and this weakened me the more since very heroic measures were used in the treatment of the complaint, a violent attack of phlebitis. The leg was rubbed every day from the sole of the foot to the hip with mercury ointment, which could not be without its effect on ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... solid when cold. Pfeffer ("Physiology", Eng. Tr. III. page 52. Pfeffer has pointed out the resemblance between the contact irritability of plants and the human sense of touch. Our skin is not sensitive to uniform pressure such as is produced when the finger is dipped into mercury (Tubingen "Untersuchungen", I. page 504.) generalises the result in the statement that the tendril has a special form of irritability and only reacts to "differences of pressure or variations of pressure in contiguous... regions." Darwin was especially interested in such ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... and Sam, who were already on a broad grin, "you strain it through a piece of red cheesecloth—not white, remember—and add one teaspoonful of sugar, one of salt, one of ginger, one of mustard, one of hog's lard, one of mercury, one of arrowroot, one of kerosene oil, one of lemon juice, one of extract of vanilla, one ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... omnipotent forces from Heaven itself for his use. His voice can now reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and, taking wing in his aeroplane, he can fly in one swift flight from Nova Scotia to England, or he can leave Lausanne and, resting upon the icy summit of Mont Blanc—thus, like "the herald, Mercury, new-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill"—he can again plunge into the void, and thus outfly ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... borders of Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire. For a position on the central line near Stafford, Hind found that the totality began at 2h. 36m. p.m. local mean time, the duration being 3m. 26s., and the Sun's altitude being more than 30 deg.. The stars seen were probably the planets Mercury and Venus, then within a degree of each other, and 10 deg. W. of the Sun, and perhaps the stars forming the well-known "Square of Pegasus." Mars and Saturn were also, at that time, within a degree of each other, but very near ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... {dinosaur}s. Sometimes used for the entire period up to 1960—61 (see {Iron Age}); however, it is funnier and more descriptive to characterize the latter period in terms of a 'Bronze Age' era of transistor-logic, pre-ferrite-{core} machines with drum or CRT mass storage (as opposed to just mercury delay lines and/or relays). See also {Iron Age}. 2. More generally, a pejorative for any crufty, ancient piece of hardware or software technology. Note that this is used even by people who were there for ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... saw himself condemned to a third excursion (whither the gods only knew), hastened after her, deploring his fate, and solemnly assuring Castor and Pollux that he believed the blind girl had the talaria of Mercury as well as ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... held themselves above this law, as above every other. Marigny, the brother of the Pompadour, had his entry with M. le Prince de Soubise. In spite of? No, because. Du Barry, the god-father of the Vaubernier, was very welcome at the house of M. le Marechal de Richelieu. This society is Olympus. Mercury and the Prince de Guemenee are at home there. A thief is admitted there, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... During the early days of the same year Vaughan converted Helvetius, the celebrated physician of the Hague, who in his turn became Grand Master of the Rosicrucian Fraternity. In 1668 he published his "Experiments with Sophic Mercury" and Tractatus Tres, while ten years later, or in 1678, the year of his infernal translation, he produced his edition of "Ripley Revived" and the Enarratio ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... the autumn of 1911 I had a heavy crop on a hundred and twenty acre orchard. The season was rainy, and we lost six days during October, which put us across the line into November with our picking. The last days of October or first of November brought a severe freeze when the mercury went to twenty, or twelve below freezing. This lasted two nights and one day. The apples were frozen absolutely solid through and through on the trees. As I had over 12,000 bushels, all Willow Twigs, unharvested, it was an anxious time for me. The second day was cloudy ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... a very common but inaccurate opinion that sore-mouth in childhood is often produced by the employment of mercury. I never yet saw a sore mouth due to the administration of mercury in any child before the first set of teeth were entirely cut; and never but once out of 70,000 cases which have come under my notice in hospital or dispensary practice, have I seen in ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... we continually wander among ruins, and see every where around us the relics of the past. Thus a short walk brought us from Cicero's villa to the ruins of three temples—those of Diana, Venus, and Mercury. Of the first, one side and a few little cells, called the "baths of Venus," alone remain. Part of Venus's temple stands in the rotunda. It was built on acoustic principles, so that any one who puts his ear to a certain ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... was a coil of thread-fine copper wire. Somebody had snipped off a bit of it for test, and discovered that the wire was superconductive. A superconductor is a material which has no electrical resistance whatever. In current Earth science tin and mercury and a few alloys could be made into superconductors by being cooled below 18 deg. Kelvin, or four hundred odd degrees Fahrenheit below zero. Above that temperature, superconductivity did not exist. But the children's wire was a superconductor at room temperature. ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... prayer or gratitude. After the pause of a minute, she presented to Edward some letters which had been forwarded from Tully-Veolan during his absence, and, at the same time, delivered some to her brother. To the latter she likewise gave three or four numbers of the CALEDONIAN MERCURY, the only newspaper which was then published to the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... chain-lightning genius Haff is!" exclaimed my frend. "I remember when he traveled for Howard & Sanger; good-natured, voluble, energetic, and uneasy as a lump of mercury. Suddenly he blossomed out as an inventor, and he's kept on inventing ever since. I've been surprised that the man who is father of so many children has not invented a better nursing-bottle or colic exterminator. What's your ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... you would find yourselves jostled and hustled and trodden upon by the curious from other lands, with Argus eyes taking in five hundred pictures a minute, and traversing those halls at a rate of speed at which Mercury ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... repute, and perhaps of occasionally higher gifts both in his own time and others. The rarest notes of Apollo he has not, but he is never driven, as the poet and friend of his, to whom we next come, was often driven, to the words of Mercury. This special gift was not very common at the time; and though that time produced better poets than Browne, it is worth noting in him. He may never reach the highest poetry, but he ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... coursers of the proud Bellona, Mercury brings a crown from Olympus; The king of the gods sends it to the hero of the French As the reward of his success. Ye whom he guided a hundred times in the fields of glory, Phalanx of warriors, children of victory, Braving ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... was lying at full length on the floor of the little porch, watching with drowsy, half-closed eyes the assembled birds in the tree. But she seemed to have relinquished the pleasures of the chase until the mercury should fall. ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... and I had our mansion cottage in the suburbs of this city, hard by the temple of Mercury. And by the common soldiers of the Shitens, the Scithians— what do you call them?—with all the suburbs were burnt to the ground, and the ashes are left there, for the country wives to ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... September, the heat in the shaded air, from noon to three o'clock, is often between ninety and an hundred degrees; and as such extreme heat is of short duration, being commonly productive of thunder-showers, it becomes on that account the more dangerous. I have seen the mercury in Fahrenheit's thermometer arise in the shade to ninety-six in the hottest, and fall to sixteen in the coolest season of the year; others have observed it as high as an hundred, and as low as ten; which range between the extreme heat of summer and cold in winter is prodigious, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... VENUS, and the MOON, Who stole a thimble or a spoon; And tho' they nothing will confess, Yet by their very looks can guess, And tell what guilty aspect bodes, 595 Who stole, and who receiv'd the goods. They'll question MARS, and, by his look, Detect who 'twas that nimm'd a cloke: Make MERCURY confess, and 'peach Those thieves which he himself did teach. 600 They'll find, i' th' physiognomies O' th' planets, all men's destinies.; Like him that took the doctor's bill, And swallow'd it instead o' th' pill Cast the nativity o' th' question, 605 ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler |
