"Tonic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arrived soon afterwards. It was a party of which Ward strongly approved. While I was trying to make the kettle boil, I heard Dennison say that we were the pick of the freshers, a statement which no one was very likely to deny. I felt badly in need of some tonic after my afternoon, and I swallowed the one provided by Dennison without any hesitation, not stopping to wonder how often he had said the same thing to other men. As a matter-of-fact we were rather an odd lot to be the ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... the quantity or proportion must be shown on the label, so that a man cannot sell you a bottle filled with water when you think you are buying a tonic. In the same way the proportion of water in a stock issue should be ...
— The New York Stock Exchange and Public Opinion • Otto Hermann Kahn
... years younger than I, and I think that the unbroken monotony of his goodness and truthfulness and obedience would have been a burden to her but for the relief and variety which I furnished in the other direction. I was a tonic. I was valuable to her. I never thought of it before, but now I see it. I never knew Henry to do a vicious thing toward me, or toward any one else—but he frequently did righteous ones that cost me as heavily. It was his duty to report me, when I needed reporting and neglected to do it ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... into this cottage like a stray beam of sunshine on a cloudy day. My heart went out of my keeping the night she called here with the old gentleman. I believe it was her freshness, her moral purity, that acted on my morbid, half blase spirit, like a tonic, and brought me on my feet. I'm talking random nonsense, you say, but why shouldn't I? I'm drunk with love. Don't laugh at me. I'll be all right by daylight, except a headache. We got to talking ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... prevailing cold acts as a universal sedative and tonic, soothing the nervous excitement and sensibility, allaying the activity of the circulation, moderating the functions of the skin, ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... really very much annoyed. A powerful man always is annoyed when forced to yield. The revelation of a limit to human endurance infuriates him. A woman invariably thinks that the man should be scolded, by way of tonic. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... Sedgwick, "and I have been dreading such a report as you have made me, for the last seven days. If you can keep his life from going out until we can reach Naples, I believe we can then find a tonic that will save him." ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... anticipate the coming of wrinkles and lay plans to ward them off. Live after strict rules of hygiene, as told in the chapters on Exercise, Baths, Sleep, Diet, and Dress. Have a tonic method of living. Invigorate your muscles and the skin of your body by sponge baths and brisk drying with a coarse bath towel. Friction is a great beautifier. Eat only that food which is going to do you some good, and take ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... you some well-roasted coffee," she said, "and in the little bottle that is stoppered and tightly wrapped up there is also some black coffee, better than mother usually makes over at your house. Just let her taste it; it is a veritable medicine tonic, so strong that one swallow of it will warm up the stomach, so that the body will not grow cold on the coldest of winter days. The other things in the pasteboard-box and those that are wrapped up in paper in the knapsack you are to bring home ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... strength, the weaknesses and the needs as well as the gifts and graces of his new acquaintance, and who took his dreams and ambitions seriously. The sane, wholesome companionship which The Dreamer found in him and at his hospitable fireside acted like a tonic upon his spirits and improvement in his health both of mind and ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... now over. The reaction from it would probably have been serious, if she had not had the distraction of work. Activity was, as it had often been before, the tonic which restored her to comparative health. She had no money, and Fanny, despite Imlay's promises, was entirely dependent upon her. Her exertions to maintain herself and her child obliged her to stifle at least the expression of misery. One of her last outbursts of grief found utterance ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... her horse and with her arm through the bridle was strolling along one of the quieter roads which Victor often took in his rambles. It was a tonic October day, with floods of sunshine upon the gorgeous autumnal foliage, never more gorgeous than in that fall of the happiest alternations of frost and warmth. She heard the pleasant rustle of quick steps in the fallen leaves that carpeted the byroad. She knew it was he ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... highways. Each day is fitted by some subtle magic of adaptation to the place and the aspect of nature which it is to reveal with a clearness denied to other hours. There came such a day not long ago to me; a day of tonic atmosphere—clear, cloudless, inspiring; there was no audible invitation in the air, but I knew by some instinct that the day and the mountains were parts of one complete whole. The morning itself was a new birth of nature, full ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Donatello's rival, owes little or nothing to the elder man, and the versatile sculptors who outlived Donatello, such as Rossellino, Benedetto da Maiano, Mino da Fiesole and Desiderio, show relatively small traces of his influence. But Donatello's sculpture acted as a restraining influence, a tonic: it was a living protest against flippancy and carelessness, and his influence was of service even where it was of a purely negative character. Through Bertoldo Donatello's influence extended to Michael ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... I've a notion to do it." Pete's laugh was a tonic in itself. "Here you and your horse are both down, and you can't stand on one of your feet. I'll bet it's froze, and you about to go over the River; and when a fellow tries to pull you back you say, 'Oh, let me go!' You darned renegade! ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... her daughter, the Princess Louise, stood in the parlor, a gift of the Queen. If the Dean was very broad in his theology, his cultured wife was as decidedly evangelical in hers and her religious influence was very tonic in all respects. After lunch that day the Dean very kindly took me into the famous Jerusalem chamber and showed me where the Westminster Assembly had sat for six years to give birth to our Presbyterian Confession of Faith and Catechism. ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... Session of the Tonic Sol-fa College I carefully tested the breathing capacity of ten students, and found that there was an average excess of midriff and rib breathing over collar-bone breathing to the extent of 25 cubic inches: the least amount of their increased power was 12 cubic ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... have forgotten its variety and subtlety; its demand on the imagination; how it makes history and geography live, and initiates one painlessly into the mysteries of the currency of all nations. Then what a tonic it is for the memory! Only think of the implications of the annual price-catalogue! Soon after the issue of this work, every collector worthy the name has almost unconsciously filed away in his mind the current market values of thousands of stamps. And he can tell you offhand, not ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Ione Bloomsbury in person to be even more wonderful than her photograph suggested. Obviously she had brains; it was apparent, too that she had breeding. Her cheerful view of the world was like a tonic for tired nerves; and withal, she had a gentle sort of courtesy in her manner that may have been old-fashioned, but it was almost too much for Phil. Before the dinner was over, he would have laid his heart at her feet. It gave him a thrill that went to his head, to have her by his side, slipping ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... as from a pestilence. He is kindly, charitable, sympathetic, and sincere. Exaggeration, insinuation, and caricature are altogether foreign to his spirit. In his society we feel inspired and ennobled. His very presence is a tonic, and his tongue distills only purity. His example is the lodestar of our aspirations, and we fain would be his disciples. We feel him to be something worshipful in that his life constantly beckons to our better selves. ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... bring that book he told her about." He had prescribed a course of light literature for Miss Quincey and seemed to think it necessary to supply his own drugs. To be sure he brought a great many medicines that you cannot get made up at the chemist's, insight, understanding, sympathy, the tonic of his own virile youth; and Heaven only knows if these things were not the ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... open air was sufficiently tonic to help him through the details of ticket-buying and embarkation; and afterward sleep came so quickly that he did not know when the Pullman porter drew the curtains to adjust the screen in the window at his feet, though he did awake drowsily later on at the sound of ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... hot water arrived, and Berene did not appear. The Baroness drank a quart of hot water every morning as a tonic for her system, and another quart after breakfast to reduce her flesh. Her excellent digestive powers and the clear condition of her blood she ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... alive. During the day the sun was excessively hot, and the crowd of visitors round the cage impeded the circulation of the air and added to their sufferings. It was true that the cold at night frequently prevented them from sleeping, but it acted as a tonic and ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... optimism. Something seemed to tell him that all would be well. He would have been the last person to deny that his position was a little complicated—he had to use a pencil and a sheet of paper to show himself just where he stood—but what of that? A few complications in life are an excellent tonic for the brain. It was with a sunny geniality which startled that unaccustomed stripling considerably—and indeed caused him to swallow his chewing gum—that he handed in his card to Mr. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... to a degree (the Saxons, not the pigs). They were fearless navigators and reckless warriors. Armed with their rude meat-axes and one or two Excalibars, they would take something in the way of a tonic and march right up to the mouth of the great Thomas catapult, or fall in the moat with a courage that knew not, recked not ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... taint, or because he promised his mother he wouldn't, or simply because he doesn't like the taste of the stuff, Gussie Fink-Nottle has never in the whole course of his career pushed so much as the simplest gin and tonic over the larynx. And he expects—this poop expects, Jeeves—this wabbling, shrinking, diffident rabbit in human shape expects under these conditions to propose to the girl he loves. One hardly knows whether to ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... the impression she had made upon him was due to some accident of mood or circumstance; and, at any rate, any charm she might have exhibited then had probably been obliterated by the coarsening effect of publicity and the tonic influence of his kinswoman. It will be observed that in this reasoning of Basil Ransom's the impression was freely recognised, and recognised as a phenomenon still present. The attraction might have vanished, as he said ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... British chaplain, who by Miss Morley's invitation had joined the excursion. Perhaps on the whole it was just as well. Mrs. Clark was what the girls called "a perfect dear," and a few hours in her company was a restful mind tonic. She had a cheery manner and chatted upon all sorts of pleasant subjects, so that after a time Lorna began to forget her "jim-jams" and even to volunteer a remark or two, instead of confining ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... doctor, just as she had given up in despair and was returning to her room. He spoke pleasantly enough, asked her how she felt, and showed much concern that she had refused to eat any supper. "You must eat, mademoiselle," he told her. "Have you taken regularly the tonic I prescribed?" She nodded, not considering it necessary to inform him that she had carefully poured it, dose by dose, into the sink. For a moment she thought of asking him what had become of Mr. Brooks, but she feared to rouse his suspicions. "I'm feeling somewhat out of ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... then paused and looked again into the sky. The Moon was up, a round, white will-o'-the-wisp in the clear blue afternoon sky. He stared at it and the old feeling of affinity swept over him, stronger than ever. The Moon was, for him, both a goal and a tonic. Sight of its illusive form could always sweep away his doubts; ...
— The Big Tomorrow • Paul Lohrman
... a rest at the seaside for me, but I felt that the best tonic was work. In less than three days I settled everything. I resumed the editorship of the Freethinker at once, and began filling up my list of engagements. On meeting the Committee, who had managed our affairs in our absence, I found everything in perfect order, besides ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... solely determined by chance together with a certain histrionic bluffing on the part of the players, and the stakes were rather high. It was mostly played by the younger gentlemen, who could not do without their nerve-tonic in the evenings, in the monotony of camp life. The older men sat apart at tables, talking and drinking whisky-and-soda, and smoking their short pipes. Amongst them there was also a gentleman in civilian dress. The hospitality with which he was treated showed that he was ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... discomforts," he wrote; but the discomforts troubled me little, and I think I rather preferred the independent launch out into lecturing work, trusting only to my own courage and ability to win my way. So far as health was concerned, the lecturing acted as a tonic. My chest had always been a little delicate, and when I consulted a doctor on the possibility of my lecturing he answered: "It will either kill you or cure you". It has entirely cured the lung weakness, and I ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... people. But he did not see them. When morning came he was on Fifth Avenue many miles from his home. He wandered downtown in a constantly growing human stream whose noise and bustle and many-keyed voice acted on him as a tonic. For the first time he asked himself what he would do. Stronger and stronger grew the desire in him to return, to face again that situation in his home. I believe that he would have done this—I believe ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... Malcolm, do not say any more; it was very wrong of nurse to put these ideas in your head. You know mother spoke to Dr. Armstrong, and he is giving me a tonic; he says I must go out more, so mother is trying to spare me ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of suspense proved an admirable tonic to the whole being of the young man. His listlessness had departed, and he did everything with an energy he had never shown before. Only nothing would induce him to go near Vale Leston, and he made it understood ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rather than violent agencies. What is it that makes the reputation of Sydenham, as the chief of English physicians? His prescriptions consisted principally of simples. An aperient or an opiate, a "cardiac" or a tonic, may be commonly found in the midst of a somewhat fantastic miscellany of garden herbs. It was not by his pharmaceutic prescriptions that he gained his great name. It was by daring to order fresh air for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... afraid that Miss West and I did most of the talking. She was breezy, vivacious, tonic, and I noted again that the delicate, almost fragile oval of her face was given the lie by her body. She was a robust, healthy young woman. That was undeniable. Not fat—heaven forbid!—not even plump; yet her lines had ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... cricket and footer Elevens, and School racquet-player, and a monitor; and after you leave you'll come down here, and you'll see that Harrow hasn't forgotten you, and then you'll know why these fellows cut engagements. My governor says that an hour at a School Concert is the finest tonic in the world for an ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... a short distance when on the further side of the street I descried a golden halo which outlined the silhouette of a coffee stall. It occurred to me that a cup of hot coffee would be a good tonic to disperse the last symptoms of my friend's indiscretion, so I deflected him across the road, and we brought up, ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... his friend Pancha even as he did his friend Mark. That she could have complexities and reservations beyond his simple ken had never occurred to him. What he saw on the surface was what she was, and being so, the news he was bringing would be as a tonic to ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... were assisting me touched lightly and by chance the point of his scalpel to the internal crural nerves of the frog, suddenly all the muscles of its limbs were seen to be so contracted that they seemed to have fallen into tonic convulsions. Another of my assistants, who was making ready to take up certain experiments in electricity with me, seemed to notice that this happened only at the moment when a spark came from the conductor of the machine. He was ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... Clifford the month of June brought the halcyon days of the year. The warm sunshine revived her, the sub-acid of the strawberry seemed to furnish the very tonic she needed, and the beauty that abounded on every side, and that was daily brought to her couch, conferred a happiness that few could understand. Long years of weakness, in which only her mind could be active, had developed in the invalid a refinement scarcely ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... it made for Jean Dalziel in the first place?"—I asked this, thinking she needed some sort of tonic ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... all of these except the last two; some of the springs being saline, some chalybeate, some sulphur, and nearly all carbonated; and in the list may be found cathartic, alterative, diuretic and tonic waters of varied shade and differing strength. The cathartic waters are the most numerous and the most extensively used. The curative agents prepared in the vast and mysterious laboratories of Nature are ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... the land of the Gosh The Ogs, they continued to come, With buttons and hooks, and medical books, And rotary engines, and rum, Large cases with labels, occasional tables, Hair tonic and fiddles and 'phones; And the Glugs, while copncealing their joy in the dealing, Paid promptly in nothing but stones. Why, it was screamingly Laughable, seemingly—- Asking ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... the stars, and are in scientific correspondence with astronomers in Europe. This circumstance gave us real pleasure on their account,—for science, in all its degrees, is a positive good, and a mental tonic of the first importance. Earnestly did we, in thought, commend it to those wearied minds which have undergone the dialectic dislocations, the denaturalizations of truth and of thought, which enable rational men to become first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... but steadily from the ashes of disappointment; even his natural humility helped him, and he told himself he had no more than his desert. Presently, with efforts the very vigour of which served as tonic to character, he began to wrestle at the granite again and resume his archaeologic studies. Speaking in general terms, his mind was notably sweetened and widened by his experience; and, resulting from his own failure to reach happiness, there awoke in him a charity and sympathy for others, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... appearance about an hour after the time at which they had begun to expect him; and as soon as Meg saw him, one of them flew upstairs, to tell Anty and give her her tonic. Barry had made himself quite a dandy to do honour to the occasion of paying probably a parting visit to his sister, whom he had driven out of her own house to die at the inn. He had on his new blue frock-coat, and a buff waistcoat ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... and his eyes grew serious for a moment. "I once knew a girl much like you, Miss Ruth," he said. "Just as full of life and enthusiasm. You are a tonic ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... doctor," he said. "Let's have the brandy-and-water, and sugar purissima, as you folks call it now, and you can mix me up a tonic and send ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... the victim experiences violent pains in the eyes and headache. Sight may be seriously impaired, and it may take years to recover. Often prolonged exposure results in blindness, though a moderate exposure acts like a tonic. The rays may be compared in this double effect to drugs, such as strychnine. Too much of them may be destructive ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... October, our party was increased. Mr. and Mrs. Crookshank had come out from England—she a bride, and quite a new element of youth and beauty for Sarawak. A lady friend and her child and nurse also came on a long visit to us, the air of Sarawak being considered quite a tonic compared to the sea-breeze at Singapore, which was at times visited by a hot wind from Java. Very pleasant days followed our return home. Mrs. Harvey and I, with our children, went for a month to "See-afar" Cottage on the hill of Serambo. I have already mentioned this little house, built by Sir James ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... fact of modern music is the principle of tonality. Tonality is said to be present in a piece of music when every element in it is referred to, gets its significance from its relation to, a fundamental tone, the tonic. The tonic is the beginning and lowest note in the scale in question, and all notes and chords are understood according to their place in that scale. But the conception of the scale of course does not cover the ground, it merely furnishes the point of ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... said Napoleon. "In times of peace if a man needs a tonic you give him iron, and it builds him up; but in war if you give the troops iron it bowls 'em down. Look at those Austrians; they've got nervous prostration of ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... intuition. There is a true story, which has even found its way into French literature, of how the Welshmen were stirred to defeat an all-conquering New Zealand football team by the strains of the "Land of my Fathers." That was the sort of tonic the British public found in Mr. Lloyd George, and it would not have been so much to their taste at a less emotional time. He was the very embodiment of an emotion that was not overburdened with scruples, and of an impulse which hardly troubled to think. He ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... to the British soldier a tonic, and when Wellington drew up his lines in challenge of battle to his pursuer, on the great hill of Busaco, his red-coated soldiery were at least full of a grim satisfaction. One of the combatants has described the diverse aspects ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... way. Colonel Higginson comes down from his pulpit to draw on his jackboots, and thenceforth rides in our imagination alongside of John Bunyan and Bishop Compton. To have stored moral capital enough to meet the drafts of Death at sight, must be an unmatched tonic. We saw our light-hearted youth come back with the modest gravity of age, as if they had learned to throw out pickets against a surprise of any weak point in their temperament. Perhaps that American shiftiness, so often complained ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... who had been all day silent, abstracted, and unlike his usual self, this joyous influence acted like a tonic. As entertainer, he was bound to exert himself, and the exertion did him good. He threw off his melancholy; and with the help, possibly, of somewhat more than his usual quantity of wine, entered thoroughly into the passing joyousness ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... suggested at the inquest that the chemist who made up a certain heart tonic Colonel Crofton had been in the habit of taking for some time, had put in a far larger dose ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... from her? She's her father's best tonic! She keeps him young and makes him laugh. She's getting her education and living her home life at the same time, and that seems to me ideal. We shall probably have to spare her later on to be married, so we may as well make the most of ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... repose. Between the beginning and the ending the same tones were employed, whether the melody proposed to repose upon re, upon fa or do. The usual points of repose in Greek music were mi, fa and re; never upon do, the real key tone, and rarely upon la, the natural tonic ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... tonic, but the fearless little man generally found an audience at the end of the day in this studio or that. The truth of much that he said appealed to the lofty-minded and serious; his dry cynicism, savage dislike of civilization, and frank affection ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... through the Mapani scrub country that lies north of Lobatsi, simplicity is the chief characteristic of the scenery. As I went by Victoria West (I had spent the night talking politics with the civillest Dutchmen) I came in early morning to the first Karroo I had seen. The air was tonic, like an exhilarating wine with some wonderful elixir in it other than alcohol, and though the country reminded me in places of vast plains in New South Wales, it lacked, or seemed to lack, the perpetual brooding melancholy that invests the great Austral island. ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... asked what his bill was, he told himself that he made a mistake when he said it was the captain and not a doctor who set his arm, for the surgeon charged him a good round price for his trouble, as well as for the little bottle of tonic he wrapped up for him; and when he went to the telegraph office, the operator who sent off a dispatch to his mother made no distinction between him and a citizen. The ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... nothing could help me here so much as to know of that wonderful color of yours and that you are so well and strong again. That you are getting health and happy memories for the winter of work and study ahead is the best tonic I can take, and every morning when I go to my desk I get out that little picture of you and, nobody being by, I kiss it and send you my love, and it is a breath of life-giving air to know you are mine. Since the first time I saw you—you were exactly one hour old and laughing even then—you ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... and matchless servant in the promoting of healthfulness of the house, for which no substitute has yet been discovered. It is the foe alike of bacilli and the blues; the best tonic ever yet invented for the liver and for the scalp, and for everything between, the only real complexion restorer, and the deadliest ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... debilitated by want of exercise, I would ask, is there an article in the whole materia medica, that can cure the complaints of sedentary people, unless proper exercise at the same time be taken? With exercise tonic remedies will undoubtedly accelerate the cure, but without it, they ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... speak quickly, Warren, for although I suffer no more pain, Dr. Grayson told me the truth—my strength is going every hour. Your mother had been in poor health, and I had ridden down to the village to see the doctor, for a tonic for her. On the way out again, I passed Henley's poolroom, where the cheap gamblers are still running their crooked betting on the Louisville and Lexington races. Jim Marcum crossed from the front ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... allowed myself to become soft and inefficient, without being aware of it. There may be other professions which call for a fiercer display of energy, but for the man with a private income who has loitered through life at his own pace, a little school-mastering is brisk enough to be a wonderful tonic. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... plan of unity and brotherhood has been enunciated again and again—from the tub of Diogenes, from Socrates and his golden-haired disciple; from that superb slave, Epictetus, whose spirit has since been a tonic for all races of men; from the deep-hearted emperor Aurelius—and even before these, whom we have the temerity to call Pagans. Then the Master Jesus came down, and left the story told more clearly ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... rest of the family sleeping she had slipped out of the cabin and met the waiting hunter. She had grown to love the hunt—the early sun sparkling on the yellow of frost-coated grass, the green of the ocean, the tonic of the sea air, and the swift, never-to-be-forgotten creak-creak-creak of flying wings close overhead. There was a thrill in the cautious creeping toward the lake wreathed in the gossamer mists of the autumn morning, and the wriggling through the stiffened yellow grass, and a pang of delighted wonder ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... do she resolved to go. There was a tonic in the mere act of decision. She wrote a letter. She felt that she could not wait so long as its answer would require. She resolved to send ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... of nervous headache, Caroline conceives an exceedingly ingenious plan: this plan consists in using the conjugal bliss of the opposite neighbors as a tonic to stimulate Adolphe. The idea is not without depravity, but then ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... blue floor extending unbroken to the horizon. Here indeed was something that had not been changed—a mighty existence, to which a thousand years were as one day and one day as a thousand years. There could be no tonic for my case like the inspiration of this great presence, this unchanging witness of all earth's mutations. How petty seemed the little trick of time that had been played on me as I stood in the presence of this symbol of everlastingness which made past, present, and ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... command, however, looked over the flash and glitter of the first success, to the sterner realities beyond; and they drew the bands of discipline only tighter—and administered the wholesome tonic of regular drill—the nearer they saw the approach of ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... been pulled out from under the table in the morning perchance. I am not abnormally partial to the pleasures of the table, but I have found a good dinner in combination with first-rate port, rationally dealt with, an excellent tonic for the brain. ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... added, "he hasn't taken a vacation in thirty years; hasn't even been to Yosemite or the Big Trees. He has always said that work was his tonic; but the truth was that he feared to come home and find a dollar unaccounted for,—neither more nor less. And there comes a time, my dear young man, ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... stenographer; over his head hung the bulb of an electric light, its green circular shade throwing the white rays directly down on his open notebook. The girl was once more in the working world, and its bracing air acted as a tonic to her overwrought nerves. All longings and regrets had been put off with the Paris-made gown which the maid at that moment was carefully packing away. The order of nature seemed reversed; the butterfly had abandoned its gorgeous wings of gauze, and was habited in ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... harmful; it is tonic. Excellence is an inspiration, an intoxication. Let excellence, not Will-it-pass? be the standard of exchange. From the very endeavor after excellence comes a certain exaltation of spirit, which ennobles the least fragment of ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... water, lightly tinged with a Burgundy wine agreeable to her taste, but destitute of any tonic properties; every other kind of wine would be bad for her. Never allow her to drink water alone; if ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... still blown about by the wind, and it was very cold. But the influence of both wind and rain were inspiring to the boy. They were a tonic to body and mind, and he grew bolder as he came nearer to the ground. At last he stepped upon the level earth, and stood for a little while black and motionless against ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... had observed, the waxlike figures moved, sat upright, and stared. This sudden disturbance of brain balance made them all giddy, but the surprise of seeing a man, not a steward, at the door, was so great that for a moment or two it acted as a tonic. Nothing dreadful happened to any one of the five until after the smooth black head had been withdrawn and ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... assertion has been repeated until second-rate minds confuse it with an axiom. People of a certain class of mind seem capable of believing anything they see in print, provided they see it often. For these, the announcement that somebody's lung tonic possesses a peculiar virtue has only to be repeated at intervals along a railway line, and with each repetition the assurance becomes more convincing, until towards the journey's end it wears the imperativeness almost of a revealed truth. And yet no reasonable ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lady," answered Jasmine, "is as bountiful as she is kind. What return can I make her for her kindness to a stranger? Stay," she said, as the thought crossed her mind that the verses she had written the night before might prove a wholesome tonic for this effusive young lady, "I have a few verses which I will venture to ask her to accept." So saying, she took a piece of peach-blossom paper, on which she carefully copied the quatrain and handed it to the woman. "May I trouble ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... Majorana).—This plant is used for culinary purposes in the same way as the Pot Marjoram, and it is also regarded as a tonic and stomachic. The most satisfactory mode of cultivation is that of a half-hardy annual. Sow in March or April and allow each plant ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... moustache; he was bald on the top of his head, and wore gold-rimmed spectacles through which his fine dark eyes beamed down upon his patients with an expression of sympathy that was in itself as good as a tonic. He asked me a few questions in a quiet, almost caressing tone of voice, gave the orderly who had me in charge certain instructions, and then, patting me gently upon the shoulder, assured me that I ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... that I can discover," the doctor answered. "Yet, as I told you before, there are certain things about his condition which I do not understand. I should like to see him again in the morning! I am giving him a tonic, more as a matter of form. I scarcely think his system will respond ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... now, becomes quite complacent and easy. There is something agreeable in the misfortunes of others, as the philosopher has told us. Remark what a good breakfast you eat after an execution; how pleasant it is to cut jokes after it, and upon it. This merry, pleasant mood is brought on by the blood tonic. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and the walls rise sheer out of the rocks and the water. At certain tides, the sea dashes against them and breaks back upon itself in froth and foam and angry boom. Sight and sound are a wonderful nerve tonic. Countless rocks rise like small islands in every direction, stretching far out to sea. On a calm day it is all lovely beyond the power of words. The sky is blue and brilliant with sunshine. The sea receives the dazzling ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... be dull for him here at times, in spite of his work. Why, he hasn't been out of this county for over three years, and just think of the unfettered life he must have led before he came here! Yes, I'm sure New York will stimulate him. A dose of New York is a very good tonic. It regulates one's mental liver. Don't look so worried, Armand—you remind me of those hens who hatch ducklings. I should think a duckling of John Flint's size could be trusted to swim by himself, ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... front of the Atabak palace where we had been living, about to step into the automobile that was to bear us back over the same road to Enzeli. The mountains behind Teheran were white with snow, the sun shone brightly in a clear blue sky, there was life-tonic in the air, but none in our hearts, for our work in Persia, hardly begun, had come to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... sore for a time, on account of a contact with priestly knuckles, doubtless there soon set in a corresponding uneasiness in the region of your conscience. Such shocks are often vigorously alterative and tonic—eh, my son?" ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... and men here pretty vigilantly, with what good and hopeful spirits you can imagine. When you return do pay me a visit. There's nobody who would be such a tonic ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... clergyman, born in Yorkshire; the founder of the Tonic Sol-fa system in music; from 1864 gave himself up to the advocacy and advancement ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to Graydon's letters were scarcely more than notes, but they were breezy little affairs, fragrant with the breath of the mountains, and had an excellent tonic effect in the hot city. They usually contained a description of what she had seen or of some locality visited. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... her parents, any relatives outside the family circle. Then alone will she be able to go through this existence in peace and in quiet.' No one heeded the nonsensical talk of this raving priest; but here am I, up to this very day, dosing myself with ginseng pills as a tonic." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... new life and activity to the kidneys, the cause of the trouble, but by strengthening the kidneys it acts as a general tonic and ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... of the Jains never concentrated the strength of the religion in themselves to the same extent; the severity of their rule limited their numbers: the laity were wealthy and practically formed a caste; persecution acted as a tonic. As a result we have a sect analogous in some ways to the Jews, Parsis, and Quakers[292], among all of whom we find the same features, namely a wealthy laity, little or no ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... of the pines, combined with the fresh woodsy fragrance, is like a tonic. Just ahead of us we see a growth of manzanitas, with their smooth purple-brown bark and pinkish white flowers in crowded clusters, standing out vividly against the background of oaks and firs, and we sink knee-deep amid the ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... passed in "picnicking" the lunch, then Sally rang for the maid to remove the dishes. After she had gone, Sally turned to her mistress and, with the familiarity of an old servant, said, "Miss Rufie shore is de bestes tonic you ebber took. You'se et more lunch, Miss Selina, dan I'se seen ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... ride you feel the heat, but you beguile it with brushing the hawthorn-blossoms as you pass along the hedges, and catching at the wild rose and honeysuckle; and when you get into the meadows there is stir enough in the air to lighten the dead weight of the sun. The Roman air, however, is not a tonic medicine, and it seldom suffers exercise to be all exhilarating. It has always seemed to me indeed part of the charm of the latter that your keenest consciousness is haunted with a vague languor. Occasionally ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... tones, like some bitter tonic. Not a word of praise—always finding fault; and as for sympathy—you might as well have looked for it from an Indian ready to use his scalping knife. And yet—that is what made the Yale team what ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... time to explain my business he had started on a series of explosive directions: "Eat proper food. Plenty of open air. Exercise morning, noon and night and in between. Use the Muldow system. You need a tonic." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... man to whom illness was chronic, When told that he needed a tonic, Said, "O Doctor dear, Won't you please make it beer?" "No, no," said the ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... hold of her grippingly, and the thought of leaving that unbearable place was like a tonic to the frantic girl. She crossed the room rapidly and examined the window panes. But even if she could break them, as Bobbie suggested, the water below would receive their bodies, and death would follow. If it were a street, she might manage. Yet the sight of the flowing water, the ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... ordinary player, is a very good example of the general character of Russian melodies. The songs of the peasants are further distinguished by their frequent modulation from the major to the minor key, as if not long could they be joyful, and also by the peculiar way in which they are rendered. The tonic and the dominant are the prevalent intervals, and the intermediate notes are slurred or slightly sounded. Rochlitz found it impossible to convey this peculiarity by notation, but gives the following melody as a favorite accompaniment to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... And for us it should be as joyous to think, 'Thou God seest me,' as it is for a child to play or work with a quiet heart, because it knows that its mother is sitting somewhere not very far off and watching that no harm comes to it. That thought of being in His presence would be for us a tonic, and a test. How it would pull us up in many a meanness, and keep our feet from wandering into many forbidden ways, if there came like a blaze of light into our hearts the thought: 'Thou God seest me!' There are many of our activities, I am afraid, which we should not like to put down ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... us already. The old skin-flint only had it for life, in trust for us and the others. But his life was a good deal sounder than mine or Kate's—and one could picture him taking extra care of it for the joke of keeping us waiting. I always felt that the sight of our hungry eyes was a tonic to him. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... understood he referred to the state of trade. He looked from one to the other of the two men. As his eyes rested on Murrell, that gentleman raised the first three fingers of his right hand. The gesture was ever so little, yet it seemed to have a tonic effect on Mr. Slosson. What might have developed into a smile had he not immediately suppressed it, twisted his bearded lips as he made an answering movement. "Eph, come here, you!" Slosson raised his voice. This call brought a ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Academicians between him and Jules Janin'—or that 'the beautiful Duchesse de ———- has been placed in a lunatic asylum because she has gone mad for love of a certain young Red Republican whose name begins with R.'—can't you think of any bit of similar good news? If you can, it will be a tonic to the relaxed state of your dear boy's amour propre, compared to which all the drugs in the Pharmacopoeia are moonshine and water; and meanwhile be sure to remove him to your own house, and out of the reach of his giddy young friends, as ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... French should still persist in perpetuating this political vice; that all their policy should still be the policy of Centralization,—a principle which secures the momentary strength, but ever ends in the abrupt destruction of States. It is, in fact, the perilous tonic, which seems to brace the system, but drives the blood to the head,—thus come apoplexy and madness. By centralization the provinces are weakened, it is true,—but weak to assist as well as to oppose a government, weak to withstand a mob. Nowhere, nowadays, is a mob so powerful as in Paris: ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... was in or out, wet or dry, seemed to be of no moment to any one, provided he was punctual at meal-times. It was at first hard to realize the reasonable freedom suddenly in his possession. The appearance of complete want of interest in his health and what he did was as useful a moral tonic as was for the body the educational out-of-doors' society of the fearless girl, his aunt's niece whom he was told to consider as his cousin. To his surprise, he was free to come and go, and what he or Leila ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... one of those affected by Mrs. Marston and her kind. It had no relation whatever to life. Its ideals, characters, ethics and crises made up an unearthly whole, which, being entirely useless as a tonic or as a balm, was so much poison. It was impossible to imagine its heroine facing any of the facts of life, or engaging in any of those physical acts to which all humanity is bound, and which need more than resignation—namely, open-eyed honesty—to ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... outcome, start out with this rule and keep it to the end. For nothing wastes your powers so much as apprehension. The hardest work, if done with common sense, is after all a tonic. But fear lest that work will not yield you as much as you wish is a sort of irritating cocaine of character, numbing and deadening all of your powers and at the same time lashing your mind and nerves with the knotted thongs ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... was a god-send to Madame d'Hauteserre, who had not, like her husband, rural occupations, nor, like Laurence, the tonic of hatred, to enable her to bear the dulness of a retired life. Many things had happened to ameliorate that life within the last six years. The restoration of Catholic worship allowed the faithful to fulfil their religious duties, which play more of a part ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... incident made him suspend his intention, and wait till he could obtain some fresh evidence of evil intentions. The day passed without any other noticeable occurrence. The doctor called, found Helen somewhat better, and ascribed it to his medicines, especially to the effect of his tonic draught the first thing in the morning. Helen smiled. "Nay, Doctor," said she, "this morning, at least, it was forgotten. I did not find it by my bedside. Don't tell my aunt; she would be so angry." The doctor ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... me about Hartmann, the owner of the new variety store. Hartmann wants to get one because he thinks it will draw trade. I went to see him as soon as Dave got through telling me how much dandruff I had and how much I needed some of his patent tonic. Mr. Hartmann was a little doubtful at first about buying a home made set, but I told him if he wasn't pleased with it he didn't need to pay us for it and we'd take it back. That seemed to satisfy him, so he said he'd buy it. It was ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman |
