"Vibration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rapidly, and there was a smoothness and lightness to its progress that was absent from a gasolene auto. There was no vibration from the motor. Faster and faster it ran, until it was moving at a speed scarcely less than that of Mr. Damon's car, when it was doing its best. Of course that was not saying much, for the car owned by the odd gentleman was not a very powerful one, but it could make ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... vision of a throbbing, glaring inferno, wherein he was shaken and tossed by terrific forces. His very vital essence seemed to respond to a mighty vibration. Now he was but a part of some terrific chaos. Dimly he became aware of another being with whom he must contend. Now he was in a death struggle, and to his horror he found himself being slowly but surely overpowered. A demoniac grin played ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... upright like this it is much more liable to injury than when prone on its flank. New safeguards have therefore been introduced. It is packed under its belly with squares of wood and inclosed in scaffolding to prevent dangerous vibration. Additional precautions against this latter danger are provided by gangs of men who walk at each side and hold, some ropes fastened to the uprights of the scaffolding, others long forked poles engaged under its horizontal pieces. By these means equilibrium could be restored after any extra ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... downwards from a burst sky-rocket, was a tangle of brilliant red and green signal-lamps settling. A train with the warm flare on its thick column of smoke came thundering upon the lovers. Dazed, they felt the yellow bar of carriage-windows brush in vibration across their faces. The ground and the air rocked. Then Siegmund turned his head to watch the red and the green lights in the rear of the train swiftly dwindle on the darkness. Still watching the distance where the train had ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... of the Cathedral boomed out the hour, the long-drawn strokes of the hammer seeming as if they would never come to an end; while, when the last stroke fell, it was succeeded in the silence of the night by a dull, quivering vibration that slowly died away. ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... up at me without replying, and I looked down at him without pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle question. Just then, there came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused me to start back, as though it had force to draw me down. When such vapour as rose to my height from this rapid train, had passed me and was skimming away over ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... heard the deadened sound of Philip's "Goodnight," the crunch of the mare's hoofs on the gravel and the clink of the bit in her teeth. Then the porch door closed with a hollow vibration like that of a vault, the chain rattled across it, and Pete was ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... some unconscious motive to make her see the thing he thought, also the thing he was—his plain mind and matter-of-fact nature. Possibly she caught a glimpse of that. After a turn of fencing, in which he was impressed by the vibration of her tones when speaking of military heroes, she quitted the table, saying: 'An argument between one at supper and another handing plates, is rather unequal if eloquence is needed. As Pat said to the constable, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... farther away, in a spreading, wooded valley. And the three churches were flaming in the morning glow, and the rain of gold scattered by the sun rays was sweeping the whole countryside, whilst the flying peals of the bells seemed to be the very vibration of the light, the musical awakening of the lovely day ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... A perceptible vibration ran through the monster ship. Her propellers began to churn the water white. A small fleet of tugs helped to swing her against the tide as she slowly backed into the stream. Majestically her monster bulk swung round, her bow pointing seaward. Her ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... crouched as flat as we could, ready for a prompt plunge into the thicket beside us. Each knock and throb seemed to vibrate through our bodies. Louder grew this throbbing and beating, and that irregular vibration increased until the whole moon world seemed to ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... unwonted freedom. Was she not, indeed, too free, too fluent, for perfect naturalness? And was not Dorset, to whom his glance had passed by a natural transition, too jerkily wavering between the same extremes? Dorset indeed was always jerky; but it seemed to Selden that tonight each vibration swung him farther from ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... wonderful is the arrangement in another species of Orchids. When the bee begins to gnaw the labellum, he unavoidably touches a tapering projection, which, when touched, transmits a vibration which ruptures a membrane, which sets free a spring by which a mass of pollen is shot, with unerring aim, over the back of the bee, who then departs ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... grown warmer. Above, in the regions unseen, mysterious activities were in movement, as if marshalling vast forces. The stars had vanished. A gentle but equivocal wind on the cheek presaged rain, and seemed to be bearing downwards into the homeliness of the earth some strange vibration out of infinite space. The primeval elements of the summer night encouraged and intensified Hilda's mood, half joyous, half apprehensive. She thought: "A few days ago, I was in Hornsey, with the prospect of ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... cylinder in contrast to the usual system of having a multiple pump unit remotely placed with regard to the nozzles. The former system was adopted after frequent fuel-line failures were experienced due to the engine's vibration. Woolson stated that his system prevented pressure waves, which interfered with the correct timing of the fuel injection, from forming in the tubing. Leigh M. Griffith, vice president of Emsco Aero, writing in the September 1930, S.A.E. Journal stated: "Regarding ...
— The First Airplane Diesel Engine: Packard Model DR-980 of 1928 • Robert B. Meyer
... and behaviour. An excitement quite fierce in its feebleness possessed them. The doubled-up sorceress flourished aloft her wooden spoon, the puffy monster got off her stool and screeched, stepping from one foot to the other, while the trembling of her head was accelerated to positive vibration. Byrne was quite disconcerted by their excited behaviour. . . Yes! The big, fierce Ingles went away in the morning, after eating a piece of bread and drinking some wine. And if the caballero wished to follow the same path nothing could be easier—in ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... good-will shall remain. It might seem, perhaps, to have in it a tone of the old "diapason of the cannonade"; but on the thoughtful ear, falls from the thundering voice of those guns, a note of that supreme music which fell on the ear of Longfellow, when "like a bell with solemn sweet vibration" he heard "once more the voice of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... feeling of the external object when it is undergoing dissolution by assimilation; (c) smell, the feeling of chemical dissolution in general; (d) hearing, the feeling of the resistance of bodies against attacks: sound being vibration caused by elastic reaction against attacks on cohesion; (e) seeing, the feeling of objects in their independence, without dissolution or attack; plant life, nutrition, a process in which the individuality is not preserved either in time or in space; animal life, as feeling, ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... footlights, he stands a few moments amid the roars of the house, snorting with rage and choking with passion. Like Burleigh's nod, Handel's wig seemed to have been a sure guide to his temper. When things went well, it had a certain complacent vibration; but when he was out of humor, the wig indicated the fact in a very positive way. The Princess of Wales was wont to blame her ladies for talking instead of listening. "Hush, hush!" she would say. "Don't ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... the fibres of the optic nerve in a certain way; and the change in the fibres of the optic nerve produces yet other changes in the brain; and these, in some fashion unknown to us, give rise to the feeling, or consciousness, of redness. If the marble could remain unchanged, and either the rate of vibration of the ether, or the nature of the retina, could be altered, the marble would seem not red, but some other colour. There are many people who are what are called colourblind, being unable to distinguish one colour from another. ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... serious—never was more so. You know one can't see the modulation of violinists' fingers, but one can see the vibration of the drummer's ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... from the firelight. The lustres of the chandelier are bright, and clusters of rubies leap in the bohemian glasses on the 'etagere'. Her hands are restless, but the white masses of her hair are quite still. Boom! Will it never cease to torture, this iteration! Boom! The vibration shatters a glass on the 'etagere'. It lies there, formless and glowing, with all its crimson gleams shot out of pattern, spilled, flowing red, blood-red. A thin bell-note pricks through the silence. A door creaks. The old lady speaks: "Victor, ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... could recollect all the conversation of the morning,—it was so rich and varied. I sat, unconscious of the fading flowers and the passing moments; unconscious of the faint vibration of that deep, under chord, which breathes in low, passionate strains, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... one of another, so also are unconscious thought and unconscious memory. Memory is, as it were, the body of thought, and it is through memory that body and mind are linked together in rhythm or vibration; for body is such as it is by reason of the characteristics of the vibrations that are going on in it, and memory is only due to the fact that the vibrations are of such characteristics as to catch on to and be caught ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... with an answer: "At the final analysis all perception is due to some form of vibration. To be clairaudient is simply to be able to lay hold upon a different set of pulsations in the ether, and to be clairvoyant is to perceive directly without the aid of the eye, which is only a ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... about near the bottom. Another species of mullet, of a splendid changeable blue and green, seemed to be feeding upon the little polyps protruding from the coral tops. Shells, sea-plants, coral, and fishes, and the slightest movement of the latter, even to the vibration of a tiny fin! or the gentle opening of the gills in respiration, could be seen with perfect distinctness in this transparent medium. But what chiefly attracted attention, was the gay tints, and curious shapes, of the innumerable zoophytes, or "flower animals," springing up from the ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... Complete Breath. Chapter IX. Physiological Effect of the Complete Breath. Chapter X. Yogi Lore—The Yogi Cleansing Breath—The Yogi Nerve Vitalizing Breath—The Yogi Vocal Breath. Chapter XI. Seven Yogi Developing Exercises. Chapter XII. Chapter XIII. Vibration and Yogi Rhythmic Breathing—How to Ascertain the Heart Beat Unit Used by the Yogis as the Basis of Rhythmic Breathing. Chapter XIV. Phenomena of Psychic Breathing—Directions for Yogi Psychic Breathing—Prana ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... ground. The wind had yet again increased. His own tree showed that. It no longer swayed or bent over and back. Instead, it remained practically stationary, curved in a rigid angle from the wind and merely vibrating. But the vibration was sickening. It was like that of a tuning-fork or the tongue of a jew's-harp. It was the rapidity of the vibration that made it so bad. Even though its roots held, it could not stand the strain for long. ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... colors, a set of octaves: that each of these centers was a complete octave, and each phase or nation a note. Do you see where these leads? Supposing the note China is struck in the Far Eastern Octave; would there not be a vibration of some corresponding note in the octave Europe? Supposing the Octave West Asia were under the fingers of the Great Player, would not the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... same regular concentric prisms; there was the same dark canopied roof with its in- terstices filled up with its yellow lutings; the same precision of outline in the prismatic angles, sharp as though chiseled by a sculptor's hand; the same sonorous vibration of the air across the basaltic rocks, of which the Gaelic poets have feigned that the harps of the Fingal minstrelsy were made. But whereas at Staffa the floor of the cave is always covered with a sheet of water, here the grotto was beyond the reach of ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... United States Lighthouse Board, first practically used it as a fog-signal by erecting one for use at Beaver Tail Point, in Narragansett Bay. The sounding of the whistle is well described by Price-Edwards, a noted English lighthouse engineer, "as caused by the vibration of the column of air contained within the bell or dome, the vibration being set up by the impact of a current of steam or air at a high pressure." It is probable that the metal of the bell is likewise set ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... answered. And rising briskly from his chair, he went to the window. Sarrion followed him, and they stood side by side looking out over the valley. At that moment that which was more of a vibration than a sound came to their ears across the mountains—deep ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... contempt. A realist, a cynic, and an absolute genius with a Colt .45, he was well known along the border for his dare-devil exploits and reckless courage. The brainiest men in the Secret Service, Lewis, Thomas, Sayre, and even old Jim Lane, the local chief, whose fingers at El Paso felt every vibration along the Rio Grande, were not as well known—except to those who had seen the inside of Government penitentiaries—and they were quite satisfied to be so eclipsed. But the Service knew of the ghost, as it knew ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... gentle creatures could be horribly disconcerting and direct. As a matter of fact he had failed to open more than two of the collection. They were too full of the vibration of a love that had never stirred him. "Yes, I'm glad she's better. I'm afraid you've been rather bored. Illness is ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... structure has its own vibration characteristic, and on that planet, in time, one special vibratory rate knew awareness of self. Mutation here too gave added complexity to the structure, and self-awareness took on that added growth ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... about twenty yards more when I felt a slight vibration accompanied by a muffled roar, and almost immediately came to a short wooden stair that marked the end of the passage. I had no means of judging directions, but I assumed I was somewhere near the chapel ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... a vibration and a light From worlds before and after. [Footnote: Edwin Markham, Poetry. Another recent poem on prenatal inspiration is The Dream I Dreamed Before I Was Born (1919), ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... themselves, apart from any memory which retains and so preserves the "past" vibrations. If matter is to be thought of at all as existing apart from any memory it must be thought of as consisting of a single vibration in a perpetual present with no past. We might alter the description and say that this present moment of matter should be thought of as being perpetually destroyed ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... adorned the imperial mantle of Napoleon were found in the tomb of Childeric. A similar expectation excited the Huguenots, at Caen. They dug up the coffin: the hollow stone rung to the strokes of their daggers: the vibration proved that it was not filled by the corpse; and nothing more was wanted to seal ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... some who sat near them, either provoked at the obstruction of their entertainment, or desirous to preserve the author from the mortification of seeing his hopes destroyed by children, snatched away their instruments of criticism, and, by the seasonable vibration of a stick, subdued them instantaneously to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... high placing. Furthermore, under these conditions, when the air current strikes the roof of the mouth freely, it is reflected into the inflated cavities, and there is heard and felt, through sympathetic vibration of the air in the cavities, added resonance or the wonderful reinforcing power of inflation: in this way is secured not only the added resonance of all other cavities, but especially the resonance of the chest, the greatest of all resonance or ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... and there was an excited vibration in it. Minnie Duncan started, then glanced at her husband's immobile face, took the cue, and ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... Waves Constitution of Sound-waves Analogies of Sound and Light Illustrations of Wave-motion Interference of Sound Waves Optical Illustrations Pitch and Colour Lengths of the Waves of Light and Rates of Vibration of the Ether-particles Interference of Light Phenomena which first suggested the Undulatory Theory Boyle and Hooke The Colours of thin Plates The Soap-bubble Newton's Rings Theory of 'Fits' Its Explanation of the Rings Overthrow of the Theory Diffraction of Light Colours produced by ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... admirer to where the blue fans were numerous. Upon the glistening piano stood a pot filled with white azaleas; and, in the pauses of the conversation, one heard the glass of the chandeliers tinkling gently to the vibration of the music. ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... few small woods, we arrived without interruption over the railway junction of Boislens. With arms free of the machine to avoid unnecessary vibration, the observers trained their glasses on the station and estimated the amount of rolling stock. A close search of the railway arteries only revealed one train. I grabbed pencil and note-book and wrote: "Boislens, 3.5 P.M. 6 ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... sunning itself in the soft warmth of the temperature, borrowing a beauty from the silence, the repose of this noontide hour, the only hour when the roll of carriages was not to be heard under the arches, nor the banging of the great doors of the antechamber, and that perpetual vibration which the ringing of bells upon arrivals or departures sent coursing through the very ivy on the walls; the feverish pulse of the life of a fashionable house. It was well known that up to three o'clock ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... into heat instead of being spent in overcoming the inertia of the barrel to give recoil. Similarly when smokeless powder is fired in a gun, the displacement of the air is so sudden that the sound waves do not possess the same amplitude of recoil or vibration as is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... immediately, and I prefer to direct the singer's chief attention to the second occurrence.) One part may press toward the palate, the other toward the cavities of the head. The division of the breath occurs regularly, from the deepest bass to the highest tenor or soprano, step for step, vibration for vibration, without regard to sex or individuality. Only the differing size or strength of the vocal organs through which the breath flows, the breathing apparatus, or the skill with which they are used, are different in different individuals. The ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... consideration of this question is that of wireless telegraphy—the subtle electric vibrations which journey to and fro with incredible swiftness through the universal ether. In short, telepathy is thought by many to be simply a species of physical vibration, proceeding from brain to brain, just as electric waves pass from the transmitter to the receiver in wireless telegraphy. This explanation is so common that many persons accept it without further ado, as being the correct explanation of the facts. But such a theory cannot be said to cover ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... amount of energy expended in producing the sound. If I rub a tuning-fork with a well-rosined bow, I set it in vibration by the resistance offered to the rosined hair; and if while it is vibrating I again apply the bow, thus expending more energy, the note produced is louder. Repeating the action several times, the width of excursion ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... Patterson, in his excellent Introduction to Zoology, mentions that on one occasion he divided a fragment of the body of a beroe, lately taken from the shore and shattered by a storm, 'into portions so minute that one piece of skin had but two cilia attached to it, yet the vibration of these organs continued for nearly a couple of days afterwards!' But we must leave the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... occupied there came suddenly to him the vibration of machinery and the throbbing ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of defense), must have fallen victim to that. But the Throg was going to make very sure. The second flyer halted, remaining poised long enough to unleash a second bolt—dazzling any watching eyes and broadcasting a vibration to make Shann's skin crawl when the last faint ripple reached his ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... with the vision which is beyond vision; the light of his eyes, the breath of his body were less plain to him than was the mystery of his soul. And the universal life, he saw—spirit and matter, fibre and impulse, vibration of atom and quiver of aspiration—was but an agonised working out into this consciousness of God. With the revelation his own life was changed as by a miracle of nature; right became no longer difficult, but easy; and not the day only, but his ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... her hand to show him a strange jewel in her palm, hers and his for the looking. The intensity of her consciousness swept round him and enclosed him, she knew this profoundly, and had no thought of the insulation he had in his robe. The instant passed; he stood unmoved definitely enough, yet some vibration in it reached him, for there was surprise in his ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... early in the morning that I was wakened by a change in the motion of the boat. There was very little vibration from the engine, but this motion was different. I looked out of the port- hole which had been very cleverly made to resemble a window and found that ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... in a low voice, but with a strange and subtle vibration in it, as if the passion with which she was struggling threatened to burst forth, "you don't know what you ask; you don't know what love is—and you don't know what I am! I didn't know myself until the last few days; until a gradual ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... overspread a noisy vibration of wheels and the rumble of horses' hoofs was coming near and getting bigger in the approach to the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... Miss Cotton more and more sorrowfully. She liked to have people talk as they do in genteel novels. Mrs. Brinkley's bold expressions were a series of violent shocks to her nature, and imparted a terrible vibration to the fabric of her whole little rose-coloured ideal world; if they had not been the expressions of a person whom a great many unquestionable persons accepted, who had such an undoubted standing, she would have thought ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... night; people nestling in their beds or circling late about the fire; Want, colder than Charity, shivering at the street corners; church-towers humming with the faint vibration of their own tongues, but newly resting from the ghostly preachment 'One!' The earth covered with a sable pall as for the burial of yesterday; the clumps of dark trees, its giant plumes of funeral feathers, waving sadly to and fro: ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... said as to the two senses most continually employed and most important may illustrate the way in which I should exercise the other senses. Sight and touch deal alike with bodies at rest and bodies in motion. But as only the vibration of the air can arouse the sense of hearing, noise or sound can be made only by a body in motion. If everything were at rest, we could not hear at all. At night, when we move only as we choose, ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the element of savage energy in Browning. His associates tell us of his sudden fits of indignation, "which were like thunder-storms"; of his "brutal scorn" for effeminacy, of the "vibration of his loud voice, and his hard fist upon the table," which made short work of cobwebs.[94] The impact of hard resisting things, the jostlings of stubborn matter bent on going its own way, attracted him as the subtle compliances of air appealed ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... wilderness. They become frail, insipid; and mar, rather than perfect, the harmony of existence. Contraversely, their absence adds a deeper luster, strikes the tuning-fork that hums with the true note of life. Sorry the man who does not feel a sympathetic vibration! A woman is not exactly at her best when bathing her face above a porcelain bowl, and to be the constant, daily witness of such ablutions would, in my limited experience, engender a slight unrest among the tuneful Nine. Yet let her gracefully lean above a woodland ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... they had something exceedingly fragile in their appearance, the Spaniards hesitated to venture on them with their horses. Experience, however, soon showed they were capable of bearing a much greater weight; and though the traveller, made giddy by the vibration of the long avenue, looked with a reeling brain into the torrent that was tumbling at the depth of a hundred feet or more below him, the whole of the cavalry effected their passage without an accident. At these bridges, it may be remarked, they found persons stationed whose business ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... to set it off or to stop it. Their machinery consists of a barrel pricked with brass pins; when the barrel revolves, these ping lift a series of steel springs of different lengths and thicknesses, and the vibration of these springs when released, ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles—if I dash this Venus to pieces—there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... he was gazing at some lovely humming bird that darted here and there and then poised itself, apparently motionless, till he made out that there was a faint haze visible which must be caused by the rapid vibration of the ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... He did not know this place. The gleaming white metal of walls and ceiling was unfamiliar. There was a slight, persistent tingling vibration in ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... time crush down from above or surge up from beneath; and on all such occasions, proximity to them is obviously not without its perils. "The Colonel," brave, and a Greenland voyager, was more nervous about them than anybody else. He declared, apparently on good authority, that the vibration imparted to the sea by a ship's motion, or even that communicated to the air by the human voice, would not unfrequently give these irritable monsters the hint required for a burst of ill-temper,—and averred also that our schooner, at the distance of three hundred yards, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... object which it names. But if the object is not itself seen, but only its name heard, the mind of the hearer receives an abstract impression only, that is to say as of the object dematerialized, and a corresponding vibration is immediately set up ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... contact with the stigma of that second flower and fertilises it. In the other example (catasetum), when a bee gnaws a certain part of the flower, he inevitably touches a long delicate projection which Mr. Darwin calls the 'antenna.' 'This antenna transmits a vibration to a membrane which is instantly ruptured; this sets free a spring by which the pollen mass is shot forth like an arrow in the right direction, and adheres by its viscid extremity to the back of the bee'" ("Genesis ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... in his poetry from youth upwards. Philosophy was not disclosed to Plato in the highest and purest thought, nor is poetry to Schiller merely an artificial edifice in the harmony of speech; philosophy and poetry are to both a vibration of love in the soul upwards to God, a liberation from the bonds of sense, a purification of man, a moral art. On this reposes the religious consecration of the Platonic spirit and of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... operation. The car had been left standing on a level bit of road, but, just ahead of it, was a rather steep slope. Mollie had neglected to leave the emergency brake set, and when the motor started there was vibration enough to send the car over the little space that separated it from the slope. Then it simply rolled down. That ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... have hit upon the same idea of receiving the indications transmitted by the vibration of the luminous fascicle directly upon their travel. The method consists in the use of that peculiar property of selenium of becoming a good conductor under the action of a luminous ray, while in darkness it totally prevents the passage of the electric ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... | The Vagabonds of Space are cast into | | the hands of the vibration-maddened | | natives of Titan, satellite of Saturn. ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... steamer seemed uproarious and distracting. There was a weirdness in not being able to see her. Suddenly all was still. She had stopped, but so close to them that the steam, blowing off, sent its rumbling vibration right over their heads. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... high mountains. The market is small, and in its midst is a spring fountain, the waters from which pours into a great metallic basin. When an alarm of fire is raised, they strike several times on this cup-formed basin, which gives out a very loud vibration. Nothing is known of the origin of this work. Some say that the devil placed it once during the night on the spot where it stands. In those days people were as yet fools, nor was the devil any wiser, and they ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... mother had the two corner seats in the roomy tonneau, and I settled myself on the flap which lets down when the door is closed. In doing this, I was not unconscious of the fact that if the fastening of the door gave way owing to vibration or any other cause, I should indubitably go swinging out into space; also, that if this disagreeable accident did occur, it would be my luck to have it happen when the back of the car was hanging over a precipice. Nevertheless I kept a calm face. These things usually befall ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... known, on the hills farther south. We returned to our lodgings, but not to sleep, for our sleeping apartment was within a few feet of the church clock, on the side of a very low steeple. As we were obliged to keep our window open for fresh air, we could hear every vibration of the pendulum, and the sound of the ponderous bell kept us awake until after it struck the hour of twelve. Then, worn out with fatigue, we heard nothing more until we awoke early ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... almost a score of years into the past. For, as Tommy pumped away, Miss Phoebe struck a low bass note on the organ and held it to test the volume of air that it contained. The church ceased to exist, so far as Father Abram was concerned. The deep, booming vibration that shook the little frame building was no note from an organ, but the humming of the mill machinery. He felt sure that the old overshot-wheel was turning; that he was back again, a dusty, merry miller in the old mountain mill. And now evening was come, and soon would come ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... lest they should be run over by a motor-car. Norwich Guildhall does not approve of electric tram-cars, which run close to its north side and cause its old bones to vibrate in a most uncomfortable fashion. You can perceive how much it objects to these horrid cars by feeling the vibration of the walls when you are standing on the level of the street or on the parapet. You will not therefore be surprised to find ominous cracks in the old walls, and the roof is none too safe, the large span having tried severely the strength of the old oak beams. It ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... commemorated the one great sacrifice to which all former sacrifices had pointed, and in which they were all fulfilled. There the communion of Saints was, as in no other way on earth, realized. There, as by one simultaneous vibration thrilling through the saintly dead, and the living communicants, the spiritual bond unites together in one unbroken living Communion, those of the Church expectant who are departed in the true faith of Christ's Holy Name, and those of us who are still striving in the Church militant ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... interest to indicate them according to wave-length or frequency. These groups vary in range of wave-length, but the actual intervals are not particularly of interest here. Beginning with radiant energy of highest frequencies of vibration and shortest wave-lengths, the following groups and subgroups are given in their order of ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being, past and present, in one unspeakable vibration; melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learned lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... ask you to sit down and remain quite still while I make the exposure," he said to me and the inspector. "A very little vibration is enough to destroy the sharpness of ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... spell of it was broken. From the end of the shadow, which reached almost to the base of the cliff on which Philip sat, there came a sound. It was a clear, metallic sound that left the vibration of steel in the air, and Philip leaned over the edge of the rock. Below him the shadow was broken into a pool of rippling starlight. He heard the faint dip of paddles, and suddenly a canoe shot from the shadow out into the clear light ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... surf of war. Gun after gun now joins the great chorus, swelling and falling in a hideous symphony of discordant sounds. The whole horizon is lit up and aflame. The sky quivers and reflects the flash of the great guns, as with the constant vibration of heat lightning. Flares and Verey lights of greenish yellow and white turn the night into ghastly day, and like the lurid flames of an inferno light up the battlefield, while the rifles crackle in the glare. Here a parachute-light like a great star hangs suspended ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... scarcely moving, though from the vibration it was evident that the engines were working almost at top speed. Washington came back and reported that the big screw was revolving properly and that all the ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... a gentle jolt, a faint grinding sound, a vibration increasing. Lighted lanterns, red and ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... produced by the sun, just as truly as tides produced in an ordinary ocean. But now note the significant coincidence between the period of the throb produced by the sun-raised tides, and that natural period of vibration which belonged to our earth as a mass of molten material. It therefore follows, that the impulse given to the earth by the sun harmonized in time with that period in which the earth itself was disposed to oscillate. A well-known dynamical principle here comes into play. ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... into the transmitter: the person at the other end will hear none of our words. We may speak just the same as though he were hearing, but nothing will be accomplished. There must be a proper connection: there must be a responsive vibration at the ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... her coming and departure, in that so slight vibration of air caused by her advance and her retreat, swayed as a reed in the wind, stood for a moment seeking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... the only weapon which could be used, under the circumstances. It had no effect whatever on any material structure and could be used inside an activated conveyer without deranging the conductor-mesh, as, say, a bullet or the vibration of an ultrasonic paralyzer would do, and it was instantly fatal to anything having a central nervous system. It was a good weapon to use outtime for that reason, also; even on the most civilized time-line, ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... proceed? Literature nods; Science shakes her head. No, nothing but literature lies beyond the ripples which splashed musically upon the shore, terminating forever the last vibration from that immeasurable catastrophe. ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... up hard and fast and then stop short in the middle. It is an appalling thing to do and that night Nilsson took those two notes at the last in chest tones. 'Great heavens!' I gasped, 'what is she doing? What is the woman thinking of!' Of course I knew she was doing it to get volume and vibration and to give that trying climax some character. But to say that it was a fatal attempt is to put it mildly. She absolutely killed a certain quality in her voice there and then and she never recovered it. Even that night she had to cut out the ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... sandy hair more than one pair of eyes gleamed from time to time with a sudden anger, with an intelligence made for higher things than spade and oar. As they sat there they were like the notes of a piano, and Kosmaroff played the instrument with a sure touch that brought the fullest vibration out of each chord. He was a born leader; an organizer not untouched perchance by that light of genius which enables some to organize the souls ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... would read and re-read those occasional letters, written amidst the stress of life at high pressure, and bearing evidence of that life of thought and work, in their tense, full-packed phrases. With what a throb of longing and envy Hadria used to feel the vibration through her own nerves! It was only when completely exhausted and harassed that the response was lacking. To-night everything seemed to be obliterated. Her hope, her interest were, for the moment, tired out. Her friends would be disappointed ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... her with his big brown eyes. He was thrilling with the vibration of her voice and the touch of her hand on ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... the rate of molecular vibration which goes on in nerve-centres. But the rate of such vibration which goes on in sensory and motor nerves may be very much more rapid. For while a nerve-centre is only able to originate a vibration at the rate of about nine beats per second, a motor-nerve, as we have already ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... puppet, puppet-show; "one of the small figures on the face of a large clock which was moved by the vibration of the ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson |
