"Solvent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there is nothing in his poetry of which it is more difficult to give a satisfactory account. For humour is nowise a distinct or separable thing with him, but a perfusive and permeating ingredient of his make-up: it acts as a sort of common solvent, in which different and even opposite lines of thought, states of mind, and forms of life are melted into happy reconcilement and co-operation. Through this, as a kind of pervading and essential sap, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... forefathers dart cold glances at her, in their gilt frames—yet how helpless they were, with all their respectability, to take her body or her father's honor out of pawn!—and she felt for the first time the hollowness of family power, except in the ever-preserved mail of a solvent posterity. She also made a long, careful survey of her suitor, to see if there was any apology for ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... order, or mistaking a figure in a poor light. If tested by the hand you are absolutely safe, since water can he used twenty degrees hotter internally than externally, but in its passage from the body it would he painful to the external parts. Hot water is the best solvent for impacted faecal matter, and, on the other hand, water below the temperature of the body is likely to cause pain. If the hands are impervious to heat, an excellent plan is to test the water with the tip of the elbow, which is a most sensitive part ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... that was rooted in error and bore only disappointment. Then, too, were the inevitable mistakes, the fakes and cheats, and the expenses of a score of agents effecting nothing. Mr. Marable rubbed the wisps of gray hair on either side of his corrugated temples, and wrung his solvent hands in financial anguish. ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... EUCALYPTUS AMYGDALINA.—The peppermint tree, a native of Tasmania. It produces a thin, transparent oil possessed of a pungent odor resembling oil of lemons, and tasting like camphor, which has great solvent properties. The genus Eucalyptus is extensive and valuable. The greater number form large trees, known in Australia as ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... coming, and I believed, a trifle regretfully, that that great solvent of all mysteries would display these emotions of the night as the phantasmagoria ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... Cromwell Road. They go up and down twice in a day, I am told, stopping nowhere on the way. Without their leaders the Ulstermen are weakening, and they may be expected to accept the Home Rule Act peaceably in the course of a few days. Martial law is certainly an extraordinary solvent of the most difficult situation, and I can only wonder that I never ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... seems never to have entered his head. He could easily have done all this: there was not a Power in Europe that would not have lent him a helping hand in development and reform, in the establishment of a solvent state, in aiding the condition of the peoples over whom he ruled. In whatever he did, provided that it furthered the welfare of his subjects, whether Turk, Armenian, or Arab, the whole Concert of Europe would have provided him with cash, with missionaries, with engineers, ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... shape of argument for increased liability or claim for compensation. It was makeshift everywhere, and Dick could not but ask himself whether any tenant on the estate really knew how far he was hopelessly in debt or a solvent man? It only needed Peter Gill's peculiar mode of collecting the moneys due, and recording the payment by the notched stick, to make the complication perfect; and there, indeed, upon the table, amid accounts and bills and sale warrants, lay the memorable bits of wood themselves, as ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... take the group of American intellectuals who at present are ardent champions of bolshevism we shall find that, with exceptions so few as to be almost negligible, they have embraced nearly every "ism" as it arose, seeing in each one the magic solvent of humanity's ills. Those of an older generation thus regarded bimetallism, for instance. What else could be required to make the desert bloom like a garden and to usher in the earthly Paradise? The younger ones, in their ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... me—the whole tragedy is distilled into the right words, the whole man raised up and reclothed with flesh. One point only is but lightly touched upon—missed it could not be by an eye so sharp and skillful—the effect upon his art of the poisonous solvent of love. How his life was corroded by it, and his soul burnt into dead ashes we are shown in full, but we are not shown in full what as a painter he was before, what as a painter he might have ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... p.0323] were greatly aggravated by the decisions of the court relating to proofs on bills of exchange, under which it was held that the holder of a current bill could prove on the bankrupt estate of an indorser, although the bill was not yet due, and the acceptor was perfectly solvent and able to meet it at maturity. Thus in large mercantile failures, bankers and other holders of first-class bills could prove and vote on the estates of their customers, for whom the bills had been discounted, and thus control the entire proceedings, although they had no ultimate ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... as this does not survive the solvent of translation; and we may be certain that we have here the nearest approach to the Traveller's reminiscences as they were taken down from his lips in ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... representatives of the deceased, as was duly recorded in the newspapers. Mr Inspector watched the proceedings too, and kept his watching closely to himself. Mr Julius Handford having given his right address, and being reported in solvent circumstances as to his bill, though nothing more was known of him at his hotel except that his way of life was very retired, had no summons to appear, and was merely present in the shades of ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... for success as a country gentleman. Nothing about his place was out of order. His own farming, which was extensive, succeeded. His bullocks and sheep won prizes. His horses were always useful and healthy. His tenants were solvent, if not satisfied, and he himself did not owe a shilling. Now many people in the neighbourhood attributed all this to the judicious care of Mr. Edward Spooner, whose eye was never off the place, and whose discretion was equal ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... cleaner than that of a country village. As the air of a contracted space may grow poisonous by respiration, while pure air rests over the entire surface of the earth in virtue of being the final solvent to all terrestrial decompositions, so it is possible that a few good, but narrow people may get alone together in the country, and hatch a social organism far more morbid than the metropolitan. In the latter instance, aberrations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... solid, which appears to soften, though not to liquefy, at the temperature of boiling water. This substance is readily soluble in hot solution of potash or soda, producing a deep brown liquid, from which it is again deposited in flocks on acidifying. I have not yet found any solvent for it. The action of nitric acid with linseed oil is more similar to this than that with any other oil I have tried, but the nitro products of the two, if I may so call them, are quite different from one another. That from linseed oil produced as indicated remains liquid at ordinary temperatures, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... and established, are not the backbone of the Christian religion. It may well be that to minds inured from infancy to the worship of the letter; to believers in "the Bible and the Bible only" as the ground of their religion; Arnold's solvent methods and free handling of the sacred text were alarming and revolutionary. But they fell harmless on the minds which had long schooled themselves in the Christian tradition; which took the Bible from the Church, ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... the greatest known solvent. Because of this property, water is extremely important in the processes of digestion. (See Solution ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... the possession of a capital enables a person to make, (1) a part only is properly an equivalent for the use of the capital itself; namely, as much as a solvent person would be willing to pay for the loan of it. This, which as everybody knows is called interest, is all that a person is enabled to get by merely abstaining from the immediate consumption of his capital, and allowing it to be used for ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... into the influences of that divine power which Christ has come to communicate to the world, our sin and all our impurities will melt from off us, and we shall be clean. No amount of scrubbing with soap and water will do it. The stain is a great deal too deep for that, and a mightier solvent than any that we can apply, if unaided and unsupplied from above, is needed to make us clean. 'Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean,' especially when the would-be bringer is himself the unclean thing? Surely not one. Unless there be a power ab extra, unparticipant ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... misbehavior had led her to conclude; then she began to think better things of him in a general way, but unfortunately it did not occur to her that he might possibly have conceived a liking to herself. Love, that best solvent of difficulties, was astray between them ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... not; the purport will be vouchsafed to thee anon. We can compel the spirits even of the absent to come at our bidding by subtle spells that none have power to disobey. We too can renew and invigorate life, and by the universal solvent bring about the renovation of all things—renovation and decay being the two antagonist principles, as light and darkness. As we can make darkness light, and light darkness at our pleasure, so can we from decay bring forth life, and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... men into penitence, you may frighten them into remorse; and the remorse may or may not lead on to repentance. But bring to bear upon a man's heart the thought of the infinite and perfect love of God, and that is the solvent of all his obstinate impenitence, and melts him to cry, 'I have sinned.' And along with that element there is the other, the plain striking away of all disguises from the ugly fact of the sin. The prophet gives it its hideous name, and that is one element in the process which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... send the red blood coursing through her veins; they will shoe her feet with swiftness and make her hand strong." But, alas! we are mistaken in our amiable and well-meaning efforts. Nature is always behind the age. And as for Life, she is the solvent that breaks up Art, the enemy that lays waste ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... happy years will do; the harvest of the earth was gathered, the winter fell, the clinging mists, the still and deadly cold. But they were a happy household at Brattalithe, for Gudrid was found to be a solvent of much domestic ferment. Her sweet manners drew even Theodhild to come in and out of the house, and hushed the storms which periodically swept over Freydis the Wild. At Yule there was a feast of many days, singing, eating and drinking, and games in the snow for the young men. ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... world of mankind reforms itself at the outset of new civilizations, as Nature reforms itself at every new geological epoch. The first step toward a reform, as toward a crystallization, is a solution. There was a solvent period between the unknown Orient and the greatness of Greece, between the Classic and the Middle Ages,—and now humanity is again solvent, in the transition from the traditions which issued out of feudalism to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... most acute problems with which the Association is faced is the struggle to keep financially solvent. We are all aware of our changing economy, particularly the increased costs of printing and in fact of everything that our organization uses or needs, even postage. In my thinking, the finances of the Association are much the same as those of an individual, who is confronted with ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... neighbour's umbrella. If Lackaday had burst out on Lady Auriol as the triumphant, exquisite artist, there might, in spite of the unheroic travesty of a man in which he was invested, have been some cause for pride in extraordinary, crowd-compelling achievement. The touch of genius is a miraculous solvent. But here was something second-rate, third-rate, half-hearted—though I, who knew, saw that the man was sweating blood to exceed his limitations. Here was merely an undistinguished turn in a travelling circus which folk like Lady ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... Mark Ambient's sister." Whereupon I shook hands with her, saluting her very low. Her laugh was modern—by which I mean that it consisted of the vocal agitation which, between people who meet in drawing-rooms, serves as the solvent of social mysteries, the medium of transitions; but her appearance was—what shall I call it?—mediaeval. She was pale and angular, with a long, thin face, inhabited by sad, dark eyes, and black ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... longer in operation, the worthy landlord, instead of carrying on his business profitably, would have been carried off peremptorily, by a catarrh, his wife's nursing, and a doctor; but, fortunately, it struck one of the post-boys that rain was not necessary to a conversation, and sleet but a bad solvent of a mystery; so the posse adjourned into the tap, in order that the subject might be discussed more at the ease of the gentlemen who ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... across the rapids of ruin, till he is engulfed as by Niagara? Or of the manifestly disinterested and generous capitalist, who gives to some young legatee a junior partner's free arm-chair, only that he may utilise his money and keep the house solvent for yet a year or two, utterly unheeding that ere long the grateful beneficiaire must be dragged down with his chief to poverty? Or, which of us has not had experience of some unjust will, stealing our rights by evil influence? Or of the seemingly luckless ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... in order to show how a man quite well-meaning, although a trifle irascible, may be wanting in Christian charity and ordinary understanding; and of how many tangled knots of human motive, impulse, and emotion this war is a solvent. You see, she defended her son to the last, adopting his own specious line of argument; but at the last came ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... Bank"—was considerable for him, and had been hardly earned money. I understand from him that my share of our American earnings are in the New Orleans banks, which, though they pay no dividends, and have not done so for some time past, are still, I believe, supposed to be safe and solvent.... ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... the universal solvent of all forms, sounds, motions, may we not make of it the basis of a new aesthetic—a loom on which to weave patterns the like of which the world has never seen? To attempt such a thing—to base art on mathematics—argues (some one is sure to say) an entire misconception of the ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... melted. Not even a heart of stone could withstand the solvent power of such love. Her head dropped upon her breast, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... man has worked out his special affinities in this way, there is an end of his genius as a real solvent. No more effervescence and hissing tumult—as he pours his sharp thought on the world's biting alkaline unbeliefs! No more corrosion of the old monumental tablets covered with lies! No more taking up of dull earths, and turning ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... soft cheeses is materially different from that which occurs in the hard type. The peptonizing action does not go on uniformly throughout the cheese, but is hastened by the development of molds and bacteria on the outside that exert a solvent action on the casein. For this reason, soft cheeses are usually made up in small sizes, so that this action may be hastened. The organisms that take part in this process are those that are able to form enzyms (similar in their action to trypsin, galactase, etc.), and these soluble ferments ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... combination. The general does not pin himself down from the outset to one plan of tactics, but watches the field and moulds its issues to his will, according to the yielding or the resistance of the opposing forces, keeping all things solvent until the combinations of the strife have woven together into a soluble problem, upon which he can launch the final charge that shall bring ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... which these masses of food may be utilized. Evidently mere external contact of a solid organism with a solid portion of nutriment, could not result in the absorption of it in any moderate time, if at all. To effect absorption, there must be both a solvent or macerating action, and an extended surface fit for containing and imbibing the dissolved products: there must be a digestive cavity. Thus, given the ordinary conditions of animal life, and the possession of stomachs by all creatures living ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... substances in solution, and which contributes to their agreeable taste, is the carbonic acid gas with which the water is so freely charged. This free carbonic acid gas is probably formed by the decomposition of the carbonates which compose the rock. The water, impregnated with it, becomes a powerful solvent, and, passing through different strata, absorbs the various mineral substances which compose ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... burdens; for the individual, thus released from obligation to discharge, is still left free to create responsibilities, for which it is now the business of the State to make provision. Under such a system the ability to pay as well as the number of the solvent ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... proved to be interested, curious, understanding and clever, an unexpectedly successful King. She described how he was breaking out of the narrow official limits that had kept his mother in a kind of social bandbox, extending his solvent informality of friendliness to all sorts of men. He had won the heart of Will Crooks, the labor member for Poplar, for example, made John Burns a social success and warmed ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... fortune into the assets of Hawarden. By this, and the wise realisation of everything convertible to advantage, including, in 1865, the reversion after the lives of Sir Stephen Glynne and his brother, he succeeded in making what was left of Hawarden solvent. His own expenditure from first to last upon the Hawarden estate as now existing, he noted at L267,000. 'It has been for thirty-five years,' he wrote to W. H. Gladstone in 1882, 'i.e., since the breakdown in 1847, a great object of my life, in conjunction with your mother and your ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... He glanced at the kid, then toward Feldman, his face a mixture of speculation and dislike. He took a dollar bill from the wallet. "That's right," he admitted. "The fee for reporting a solvent case. Medical Lobby rules apply—even to a man ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... does not disappear, add more water. When cool, touch a drop of the liquid to the tongue. Evidently the sugar remains, though in a state too finely divided to be seen. This is called a solution, the sugar is said to be soluble in water, and water to be a solvent of sugar. ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... difficulty cannot be avoided in a metaphysical theory of morality. And it does not stand alone. Green's own dialectics were directed against the Sensationalist and Hedonist theories which used to be regarded as typical of English thought; and on them they acted as a powerful solvent. His own views of the spiritual nature of man and its relation to the eternal self-consciousness were worked out with the confidence and enthusiasm of a reformer rather than with the caution of a critic. But criticism has followed, and not only ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... must always resolve itself into love," said Khalid, as he stood on the rock holding out his hand to his friend. "Love is the divine solvent. Love is the splendour ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... miles out of my road, but I thought a modern alchemist worthy of a visit, particularly as several inhabitants of Luton gravely assured me, that he had succeeded in discovering the Philosopher's Stone, and also the Universal Solvent. The reports about him would have rendered it culpable not to have hazarded anything for a personal interview. I learnt that he had been a man of fashion, and at one time largely concerned in adventures on the turf, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... all the commercial men was that, under the reverses which had successively weighed down Morrel, it was impossible for him to remain solvent. Great, therefore, was the astonishment when at the end of the month, he cancelled all his obligations with his usual punctuality. Still confidence was not restored to all minds, and the general opinion was that the complete ruin of the unfortunate shipowner had been postponed only until the end ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the grape; and yet Bright as a new Napoleon from its mintage, Or glorious as a diamond richly set; A page where Time should hesitate to print age, And for which Nature might forego her debt— Sole creditor whose process doth involve in 't The luck of finding every body solvent. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... utilities municipalized, and the national and local governments busily engaged on canals, roads, forests, deserts, and swamps. Here are occupations employing, let us say, a fourth or a fifth of the working population; and solvent landowning farmers, their numbers kept up by land reforms and scientific farming encouraged by government, may continue as now to constitute another fifth. We can estimate that these classes together with those among the shopkeepers, professional elements, etc., who are directly dependent ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... be the easiest similar task the anxious bookkeeper had ever gone through with; for at the end of the second day the gentleman complimented him on his accurate accounts, and the bank on its solvent condition; after which he was closeted with Mr. Gibbs and the cashier in the president's room for an hour, came out, gravely shook hands all ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... intended. It may be accidentally the means of the conversion of individuals; but a book, after all, cannot make a stand against the wild living intellect of man, and in this day it begins to testify, as regards its own structure and contents, to the power of that universal solvent, which is so successfully acting ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... solutions on the table to evaporate, or evaporate them rapidly over a stove or spirit-lamp. Try to dissolve sand, sulphur, charcoal, in water. Obtain crystals of iodine and show how much better, in some cases, alcohol is as a solvent than ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... expression of the soul. Governments will be the protecting power of a parent over loving children, instead of the dictates of force or tyranny. Religion will wear its native garb of simplicity and truth, the offspring of the love and faith that gave it birth. Modern Spiritualism is as great a solvent of creeds, dogmas, codes, scientific sophisms, as is the sunlight of the substances contained in earth and air, revealing by the stages of intermediate life, from man, through spirits, angels, archangels, seraphim, and ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... solvent for political heresies, for doctrines which are antagonistic to popular government, is education. To the educated mind there comes a conception of duty which is not possible to the ignorant. The great colleges and schools with which we are blessed are performing a vital work, ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... and highly creditable manner, Mr. Hawkehurst," exclaimed the lawyer, with sudden cordiality; "and I beg distinctly to withdraw any offensive observations I may have made just now. Your own affairs are, I conclude, in a sufficiently solvent state?" ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... not for this outward beauty that Widow Shanks, stuck to her house, and paid the rent at intervals. To her steadfast and well-managed mind, the number of rooms, and the separate staircase which a solvent lodger might enjoy, were the choicest grant of the household gods. The times were bad—as they always are when conscientious people think of them—and poor Mrs. Shanks was desirous of paying her rent, by the payment of ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... that 'darkened deepest around human destiny,' solve for me a problem of the human mind? Will he tell me whether, in his after life, when he was the owner of broad acres, fine houses, piles of stocks in paying corporations, and huge deposits in solvent banks, he ever felt richer or prouder when counting his gains, and contemplating the aggregate of his wealth, than he did when he pulled on his first pair of boots?) So, as I said, we rolled up our pants, and waded in for the trout. We caught ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... compromise I got back into bed, happy at being spiritually solvent, and repeating: "O God, don't make me wake in the Old Locker Room; I wish I ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... 1877, p. 49) wrote: "I have been more than once asked to get rid of the objectionable term 'parallel motion.' I do not know how it came to be employed, and it certainly does not express what is intended. The expression, however, has now become crystallised, and I for one cannot undertake to find a solvent."] ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... note, my friend." Andrew now turned to the Notary, who did not hesitate to exchange the merchant's promise to pay, for three five hundred dollar bills of a solvent bank. ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... wot it is,' said Mr. Weller, after a short meditation, 'this is a case for that 'ere confidential pal o' the Chancellorship's. Pell must look into this, Sammy. He's the man for a difficult question at law. Ve'll have this here brought afore the Solvent Court, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... principle? Does organized existence, and perhaps all material existence, consist of one Proteus principle of life capable of gradual circumstance-suited modifications and aggregations without bound, under the solvent or motion-giving principle of heat or light? There is more beauty and unity of design in this continual balancing of life to circumstance, and greater conformity to those dispositions of nature that are manifest to us, than in total destruction and new creation. It is improbable that much ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... quantity of caloric combined with the body. Henceforwards I shall express these elastic aeriform fluids by the generic term gas; and in each species of gas I shall distinguish between the caloric, which in some measure serves the purpose of a solvent, and the substance, which in combination with the caloric, forms ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... stands toward the State and toward her husband in the relation of a preferred creditor. The State cannot call upon her for its most arduous duties, which must however be performed in her behalf. Her husband cannot dispose of real property without her signature. If he dies solvent, nothing can prevent her taking a fair share of his estate, and he may give her the whole; but if he dies bankrupt, neither his will, nor the State, nor anything else, can make her pay one dollar of his debts. "Cuffy is subject to restraint ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... all the elements of discontent and aspirations for change, a universal test by which to try all doctrines and systems. In either case, as was soon discovered, the test would itself admit of diverse interpretations; but in the mean while the solvent had taken effect, the authority of custom and tradition had been overthrown, old ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... Hegelian criticism should be applied to his own system, and the terms Being, Not-being, existence, essence, notion, and the like challenged and defined. For if Hegel introduces a great many distinctions, he obliterates a great many others by the help of the universal solvent 'is not,' which appears to be the simplest of negations, and yet admits of several meanings. Neither are we able to follow him in the play of metaphysical fancy which conducts him from one determination of thought ...
— Sophist • Plato
... humus-making material—to the nearly helpless land. Vegetable matter, rotting on and in the soil, is the life-giving principle. It unlocks a bit of the great store of inert mineral plant-food during its growth and its decay. It is a solvent. The mulch it provides favors the holding of moisture in the soil, and it promotes friendly bacterial action. The productive power of most farming land is proportionate to the amount of organic matter in it. The ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... prescribe, manuscript, escritoire Seco, sectum cut secant, dissect Sedeo, sessum sit supersede, obsession Sentio, sensum feel presentiment, consensus Sequor, secutus follow sequence, persecute, ensue Signum sign insignia, designate *Solus alone solitude, desolate Solvo, solutum loosen solvent, dissolute *Somnus sleep somnambulist, insomnia *Sono sound consonant, resonance *Sors, sortis lot sort, assortment Specio, spectum look despicable, suspect Spiro, spiratum breathe perspire, conspiracy ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... remarked that substances retain their heat for several days when placed in cork boxes. To keep a substance air-tight, it may be placed in a flask, the neck painted with a solution of india rubber in chloroform, and a plate of glass laid upon it. The solvent quickly evaporates, leaving a delicate film of rubber, which holds the ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... reflect that this country (China) could be rendered completely solvent and the Government provided with a substantial income almost by a stroke of the foreigner's pen, while without that stroke there must be bankruptcy, pure and simple. Despite constant civil war and political chaos, the Customs revenue consistently grows, and last year exceeded all records ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... for the first time.] We shall have you finding Faith the only solvent of all problems ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... a silver thread of quiet chuckle that added light to his life and endeared him to thousands. Laughter is the solvent for most of our ills! All of his own personal religion—and he had a deal of it—was never saved up for Sunday; he used it in his business. But James Oliver was a Scotchman, and this being so, the fires of his theological nature were merely banked. When Death ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... to another syllable they are lost; if they let the innocent interlocutor say so much as that a piece of well-nourished healthy brain is more living than the end of a finger-nail that wants cutting, or than the calcareous parts of a bone, the solvent will have been applied which will soon make an end of common sense ways of looking at the matter. Once even admit the use of the participle "dying," which involves degrees of death, and hence an entry of death in part into a living body, and common ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... hands, the hands of the dead, stretch out through several generations to lay claim on him. Like everything in nature this change or rather this transformation should be imperceptible. Mutual toleration is the factor of a healthy assimilation. This has given to the United States a greater solvent power than has been shown by any other nation, ancient or modern. Coercive assimilation arouses national feelings, alien elements, and racial self-assertion. The worst enemy of Canada is the political power which, to please a blatant, ultra-loyal faction, pursues the policy ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... The other solvent which Mr. Darwin most freely and, we think, unphilosophically employs to get rid of difficulties, is his use of time. This he shortens or prolongs at will by the mere wave of his magician's rod. Thus the duration of ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... was probably not solvent when he conceived the scheme, and he borrowed a thousand dollars of his old friend, James Coggeshall, with which to buy the indispensable material. He began with six hundred subscribers, printed five thousand ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... punishable to the same extent as the actual perpetrator of the offence. A person may in certain cases be convicted as an abettor in the commission of an offence in which he or she could not be a principal, e.g. a woman or boy under fourteen years of age in aiding rape, or a solvent person in aiding and abetting a bankrupt to commit offences against the bankruptcy ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... NaOH, or potassium hydroxide KOH, have a most deleterious action on wool. Even when very dilute and used in the cold they act destructively, and leave the fibre with a harsh feel and very tender, they cannot therefore be used for scouring or cleansing wool. Hot solutions, even if weak, have a solvent action on the wool fibre, producing a liquid of a soapy character from which the wool is ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... character and opinion; a farce that you could laugh at without a loss of self-respect. But it is rather by his comedies than by his farces that Mr. Shaw should be judged. If they are not popular, it is for a very good reason: Mr. Shaw's humour is too serious. His humour is a strong solvent, and one of the many things about which this humorist is in deadly earnest is the fetish worship of tradition. To that he persists in applying—in Candida as in half a dozen other plays—the ordeal by laughter—an ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... combined in various proportions, the results differing widely from the elements of which they consist. Oxygen and hydrogen unite to form water, and water forms more than 2/3 of the weight of the whole body. In all the fluids of the body, water acts as a solvent, and by this means alone the circulation of nutrient material is possible. All the various processes of secretion and nutrition depend on the presence of water ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... value, is carbonate of lime. Some of the Virginia marls range as high as seventy and eighty per cent. in carbonate of lime. This form of lime is very valuable for all agricultural purposes. Like its more caustic relative, it plays the part of a solvent and liberator, refines and vitalizes the soil, and causes other ingredients to perform their part in building ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... something less like a geological specimen and more like ordinary "hard tack," The favourite method of dealing with these biscuits was to smash them with an ice-axe or nibble them into small pieces and treat the fragments for a while to the solvent action of hot cocoa. Two important proteins were present in this food: plasmon, a trade-name for casein, the chief protein of milk, and gluten, a mixture ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... life has used me up and flung me aside like a broken tool. I have no further relation to life, nor it to me. I have spent myself and been spent, and now I am bankrupt. Can you make me solvent again?" ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... was positively no less than six hundred a year), he felt for a moment some conscientious scruples about accepting so splendid a post. And when Lady Hilda in her emphatic fashion promptly over-ruled these nascent scruples by the application of the very simple solvent formula, 'Bosh!' he felt bound at least to stipulate that he should be at perfect liberty to say whatever he liked in the new paper, without interference or supervision from the capitalist proprietor. To which the Radical member, in ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... the best solvent known. The alchemists of old spent much time and energy trying to find the universal solvent, believing that thereafter it would be easy to discover a method of making base metals noble. But they never found anything better than water. Water is the compound ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... sacred theory with the Deluge of Noah as a universal solvent for geological difficulties was evidently dying, there still remained in various quarters a touching fidelity to it. In Roman Catholic countries the old theory was widely though quietly cherished, and taught from the religious press, the pulpit, and the theological ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... small quantities almost any open vessel will serve as a receptacle for the liquor, always excepting glazed or metal ones, in which vinegar must never be allowed to stand. Owing to the solvent effects of the acid, the liquor is, in these cases, ...
— The Production of Vinegar from Honey • Gerard W Bancks
... disembody, dissolve; resolve into its elements, separate into its elements; electrolyze [Chem]; dissect, decentralize, break up; disperse &c 73; unravel &c (unroll) 313; crumble into dust. Adj. decomposed &c v.; catalytic, analytical; resolvent, separative, solvent. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and overflowing. It was the simple vapor of water that the clouds borrowed of the earth; now they pay back more than water: the drops are charged with electricity and with the gases of the air, and have new solvent powers. Then, how the slate is sponged off, and left all clean and ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... "reserve" to offset increasing mortality in late years. Finally, the policies may be issued on the natural premium plan, by which the members of each age class pay exactly what the insurance costs for the year. Under this plan the company will remain solvent, but with this and all the other expedients the surviving members are forced to drop the insurance in ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... introducing them, with his pathetic belief in the virtue for every occasion, in the solvent for every trouble, of an extravagant, genial, professional humor; he was naming her to Mrs. Drack as the charming young friend he had told her so much about and who had been as an angel to him in a weary time; he ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... desired that every bank not possessing the means of resumption should follow the example of the late United States Bank of Pennsylvania and go into liquidation rather than by refusing to do so to continue embarrassments in the way of solvent institutions, thereby augmenting the difficulties incident to the present condition of things. Whether this Government, with due regard to the rights of the States, has any power to constrain the banks either ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... better crops. "Give us good times," said Reed to Richard Watson Gilder, "and all will come out right." Inflation was not to be desired by the citizen who had in hand the funds to pay his debts. When he became solvent he could understand the theories of sound finance. It is probable that nature as well as gold was a potent aid to Hanna in procuring ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... ivory has been published in a German journal. The inventor makes a solution of india-rubber in chloroform and passes chlorine gas through it. After this, he heats the solution to drive off any excess of chlorine, and also the solvent, whereupon he has left behind a pasty mass with which it is only necessary to incorporate sufficient precipitated carbonate of lime or sulphate of lead, or, indeed, any other dense white powder, to obtain a material ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... the situation would be true so far as it went; yet it would omit to take account of a third factor, a solvent far less obvious in its workings, but far more disintegrating in its effects. The factor to which we are referring is philosophy; while science and criticism have overthrown certain traditional ramparts, a type of philosophy has sprung up, slowly undermining the very ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... much of his money until it began to acquire the virtue of an alkahest in his mind, an universal solvent that would transmute all the baser metals in Nancy's life and the lives of the people in whom Nancy was interested, into the pure gold of luxury and ease. He knew that the conventional fairy gifts would mean very little to her, but he had ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... unreason of the gods, which lures man as a universal solvent of his sorrow, the great solution to the great enigma! Where was it? Bessie asked when Rob passed her door in the morning on his way to his solitary breakfast without a word of greeting or a kiss, and finally left the house without remembering to go upstairs again. And Falkner asked himself ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... you realize the dramatic force of the unmasking of Fred—accomplished without (explanatory) words, merely by making Fred run out on the stage and dash back into his room again? There is a fine example of the revealing flash! This incident—made big by the dramatic—is the ironical solvent that loosens the warp of Angela's will and prepares her for complete surrender. Harry's entrance in full regimentals—what woman does not love a uniform?— is merely the full rounding out of the plot that ends with Harry's carrying ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... Captain Fenellan, whom she liked—liked, she was sure, quite as innocently as any other woman of his acquaintance did, departed and she hugged her innocence defiantly, with the mournful pride which will sometimes act as a solvent. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... philosopher of Agrigentum, in a Greek poem, pronounced with the authority of an oracle the doctrine that whatever in nature and the universe was unchangeable was so in virtue of the binding force of friendship; whatever was changeable was so by the solvent power of discord. And indeed this is a truth which everybody understands and practically attests by experience. For if any marked instance of loyal friendship in confronting or sharing danger comes to light, every one applauds it to the echo. ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... relative term, is there a man good for so much; hats are elevated and bodies depressed upon a scale of ten thousand pounds to an inch; "I hope you are well," from one of the aristocracy of these places is always translated to mean, "I hope you are solvent," and "how d'ye do?" from another, is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... without hesitation, so far as Hinduism is concerned regard as philosophic Hinduism those basal doctrines and their corollaries which, from the earliest days, have been the stock in trade of all Indo-Aryan thinkers and at the same time the source and solvent of all ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... Woulfe, who was thought to be the last of the true believers in alchemy, Sir Richard Phillips visited an alchemist at Lilley, near Hitchin, named Kellerman, who was believed by some of his neighbours to have discovered the philosopher's stone, and the universal solvent! His room was a realization of Tenier's "Alchemist." The floor was strewed with retorts, crucibles, alembics, jars, and bottles of various shapes, inter-mingled with old books. This worthy had not ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... concern is accurate as far as pesticide residues being translocated into the seed. However, the chemical process used to extract cottonseed oil is very efficient The ground seeds are mixed with a volatile solvent similar to ether and heated under pressure in giant retorts. I reason that when the solvent is squeezed from the seed, it takes with it all not only the oil, but, I believe, virtually all of the pesticide residues. Besides, any remaining organic toxins ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... so common as all that, else the world would quickly come to an end. But particular traits and tendencies of the Hedda type are very common in modern life, and not only among women. Hyperaesthesia lies at the root of her tragedy. With a keenly critical, relentlessly solvent intelligence, she combines a morbid shrinking from all the gross and prosaic detail of the sensual life. She has nothing to take her out of herself—not a single intellectual interest or moral enthusiasm. She cherishes, in a languid way, ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... inorganic matter. Nearly nine tenths of a living body is water; is not this water the same as the water we get at the spring or the brook? is it any more alive? does water undergo any chemical change in the body? is it anything more than a solvent, than a current that carries the other elements to all parts of the body? There are any number of chemical changes or reactions in a living body, but are the atoms and molecules that are involved in such changes radically changed? Can oxygen be anything but oxygen, ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... indifference to religion is the result of suspicion. The congregations are too largely black-coated and white-collared, and the lay officers of the churches much too solemnly sleek and serenely solvent to attract the weak, the unfortunate, the sorrowing, and the sinner. The mere appearance of the congregation in a prosperous Protestant church in an American city is a mockery of Christianity. Any man who preaches to men who can own a seat in God's house is a craven opportunist. Until ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... the avolation of fixed air, (as we have seen,) that much of the ethereal part of the new formed, or, rather, the scarcely-formed spirit, is carried off with it in a gaseous state. This is much assisted by the agency of the atmosphere, which is the solvent and receptacle of ethereal products, whose affinity for them must be as great as it is perfect and immediate—which demonstrates the necessity of having air-tight vats. When we consider the composition of ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... elements at the North was largely responsible for the growth of sectional rancor. For the first time he was moved to state publicly his maturing belief in the efficacy of squatter sovereignty, as a solvent of existing problems in the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... of making the people pay for the failures of their Royal allies, and suffer for their sympathy with the success of their republican enemies. It is the opinion of a learned Jesuit that it was by aqua regia the Golden Calf of the Israelites was dissolved—and the cause of Kings was the Royal solvent, in which the wealth of Great Britain now melted irrecoverably away. While the successes, too, of the French had already lowered the tone of the Minister from projects of aggression to precautions of defence, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... product of a moment of passion or of a passing emotion; the strings of his lyre were not set vibrating by every breeze that blew. The personal emotion from which the lyric springs was with him subjected to the action of an intellectual solvent, was generalized and made almost impersonal before it was given form and expression. For this reason partly the bulk of his poetry is small, not exceeding the limits of one small volume. But there are ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... simply cutting off their noses to spite their faces. These stock and bond issues are perfectly good investments, and no one knows it better than you do. All this hue and cry in the newspapers against Cowperwood doesn't amount to anything. He's perfectly solvent. Chicago is growing. His lines are ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... by a string in the manner of Spallanzani? or putting pieces of calculus down the throat of a living crow, or pike, and observing if they become digested? and lastly could not gastric juice, if it should appear to be a solvent, be injected and born in the bladder without injury by means of catheters of elastic ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... wholly alters the result. I put the leg to soak for a quarter of an hour in disulphide of carbon, the best solvent of fatty matters. I wash it carefully with a brush dipped in the same fluid. When this washing is finished, the leg sticks to the snaring-thread quite easily and adheres to it just as well as anything else would, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... eye and understanding mind, when they were eighteen years of age, discovered and published the Solvent of Caoutchouc, for which a patent was taken out afterwards by the famous Mackintosh. If the young discoverer had secured the patent, he might have made a fortune as large as his present reputation—I don't suppose he much regrets that ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... France—one of the few wise things of which he has ever been guilty. It is further reported that the panic-stricken Privy Council here talks of throwing open all the prison-doors in Edinburgh, after which it will voluntarily dissolve itself. If it could do so in prussic acid or some chemical solvent suited to the purpose, its exit would be hailed as all the more appropriate. Meanwhile, I am of opinion that all servants of the Council would do well to retire into as much privacy as possible, and then maintain a careful ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... explanations and apologies; "I do not suppose that what you have done makes any real difference. I have spent my life despising convention, occasionally defying it, and now it has overthrown me. Yes, sir, that is the true solvent of the situation; my morals have been weighed in ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... entities, as substance, force, Being in se, the Infinite, the Absolute, in the place of theological conceptions. During this period all theological opinions undergo a process of disintegration, and lose their hold on the mind of man. Metaphysical speculation is a powerful solvent, which decomposes and ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... clean surface. Spirit of turpentine will also answer the purpose, but is less rapid in its action and does not evaporate so completely, leaving a slight residuum of resin. Alcohol of any degree of strength must be kept quite away from the work, as even supposing it specially adapted as a solvent for removing the objectionable material that may be found clinging anywhere, it has such destructive action upon the old Italian varnishes that the slightest drop on the surface will cause irreparable injury. Keep it quite clear of your repairing work, it is not absolutely necessary under any ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... Vaughan announces the discovery of the "Extract of Oil of Halcaly," which he had previously found in his wife's days and had lost again. This he calls "the greatest joy I can ever have in this world after her death." He seems to have regarded it as the key to an universal solvent. Nearly every receipt is followed by his and his wife's initials in the form T. R. V. or T. ^V. R., and by some expression of devotion to her ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... and the real intention of Paradise Lost, are not easily brought into vivid apprehension. The natural thing to do, then, would be to use the familiar substance of early epic, but to use it as a convenient and pleasant solvent for the novel intention. It is what has been done in all the great "literary" epics. But hasty criticism, finding that where they resembled Homer they seemed not so close to their matter, has taken this ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... literature throw no light upon this subject three hundred years ago. We must therefore turn to Shakespeare—human nature's universal solvent—for light on this as we would on any other question of his time. Was he troubled with insomnia, then, is the first ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... monologo. Solitary sola. Solitude soleco. Soluble solvebla. Solubility solvebleco. Solution solvo. Solvable solvebla. Solvable (payable) pagokapabla. Solvability (solvency) pagokapableco. Solvability solvebleco. Solve solvi. Solvency pagokapableco. Solvent pagokapablo. Sombre malhela. Sombre (manner) malgaja. Some kelkaj. Some (indef.) ia. Someone iu. Somebody iu. Somebody's ies. Somehow iel. Some (quantity) iom. Something io. Sometime iam. Sometimes kelkfoje. Sometimes—sometimes jen—jen. Some way iel. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... practical and useful knowledge of it, in half-a-dozen of its dialects, that he could pass examinations in it with the highest credit, netting immense rewards. He thus became not only more and more clever, but more and more solvent; until he was an object of wonder to his contemporaries, of admiration to the Lieutenant-Governor, and of desire to several Burra Mem Sahibs[A] with daughters. It was about this time that he is supposed to have written an article published in some English periodical. It was ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... his valuable publications, mentions a mixture of lac and oil by means of borax in certain proportions. They do not, however, readily mix, especially in cold weather. The translator does not seem to be aware that borax is the solvent for lac; she mentions "sulphuric or muriatic acid," but water with borax alone will dissolve lac before it boils.[7] We would venture to recommend some experiments with lac dissolved in borax to water-colour painters. It is by no means improbable that some of the old ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... reached, it seems, by a sudden or abrupt transition from the Theological to the Atheistic creed. There must be an intermediate stage,—the era, in short, of Metaphysics,—during which the process of Criticism will operate as a solvent on all previous beliefs, and by producing Skepticism, in the first instance, in regard to all other systems, will tend at length to concentrate the attention of mankind exclusively on the truths of Inductive Science. The ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... pieces, which are for this reason more readily softened. But violent boiling occasions an enormous waste of fuel, and by driving away in the steam the volatile and savory elements of the food, renders it much less palatable, if not altogether tasteless. The solvent properties of water are so increased by heat that it permeates the food, rendering its hard and tough constituents soft ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... then fallen into the hands of an intelligent woman, who had turned out the undesirable tenants, furnished the flats plainly, but comfortably, and had let them to tenants who might be described as solvent, but honest. Krooman Chambers had gradually rehabilitated itself in the eyes ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... a vehicle of terror, a solvent of dramatic difficulties, and a source of pleasurable excitement to theatrical audiences, seems to have become quite an extinct creature. As Bob Acres said of "damns," ghosts "have had their day;" or perhaps it would be more correct to say, their night. It may be some ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... men, reckoned shrewd in business, whose shrewdness can be overcome by ciphers. It is as though they were wise up to seven figures. Mr. Harley was of these; he had his boundaries. His instincts were solvent, his policies sound, his suspicions full of life and courage, so that you went no higher than nine millions. Burdened beyond that, his imagination would break down; and since his instincts, his ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... young working-man or working-woman, or married couple, there is no assurance of happy or healthy middle life, nor of solvent old age. Work as they will, they cannot make their future secure. It is all a matter of chance. Everything depends upon the thing happening, the thing with which they have nothing to do. Precaution cannot fend it off, nor can wiles evade it. If they remain on the industrial battlefield ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... sudden, rapid thickening of buds over one's head on this poplar. One year the tree under my observation swelled and swelled its buds, which were shining more and more in the sun, until I was sure the next day would bring a burst of leaves. But the weather was dry, and it was not until that wonderful solvent and accelerator of growing things, a warm spring rain, fell softly upon the tree, that the pent-up life force was given vent. Then came, not leaves, but these long catkins, springing out with great rapidity, until ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... "I desire to harm no one; but certain suppositions have taken shape in my mind which serve as a solvent to several ambiguities." ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James |
