"Equinox" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some time in the attitude of suffering. He knew what a restless night he had passed, and that a violent and incessant cough cut short his breathing. The king guessed that fatigue, and the first attacks of the equinox, had shaken his weakened frame, and that in short, at that critical moment, the action of his genius was in a manner chained down by his body; which had sunk under the triple load of fatigue, of fever, and of a malady which, probably, more ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... dry country. By digging, however, in the ground, several insects, large spiders, and lizards were found in a half-torpid state. On the 15th, a few animals began to appear, and by the 18th (three days from the equinox), everything announced the commencement of spring. The plains were ornamented by the flowers of a pink wood-sorrel, wild peas, oenotherae, and geraniums; and the birds began to lay their eggs. Numerous Lamellicorn and Heteromerous ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... contracts the interests of both employer and contractor may be wisely safe-guarded. For if a contract is skilfully drawn, each may obtain a release from the other without disadvantage. From astronomy we find the east, west, south, and north, as well as the theory of the heavens, the equinox, solstice, and courses of the stars. If one has no knowledge of these matters, he will not be able to have any comprehension of the theory ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... it would be no rest to us to go there. We have not decided to build; it may turn out too expensive; but we have taken lots of comfort in talking about it. We have been on several excursions, one of them to the top of Equinox. It is a hard trip, fully six miles walking and climbing. I have amused myself with writing some little books of the Susy sort: four in less than a month, A.'s sickness taking a good piece of time out of that period. They are ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... to make the necessary repairs to the ship and pass the equinox in good shelter, the San Carlos remained in the harbor of Monterey till October 13, 1775, when she started for San Blas, where she arrived on November 6th of ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera
... feast seems to have varied in different countries; thus in Greece it was celebrated in the Spring, the moment of the birth of Vegetation; according to Saint Jerome, in Palestine the celebration fell in June, when plant life was in its first full luxuriance. In Cyprus, at the autumnal equinox, i.e., the beginning of the year in the Syro-Macedonian calendar, the death of Adonis falling on the 23rd of September, his resurrection on the 1st of October, the beginning of a New Year. This would seem to indicate that here Adonis was considered, as Vellay suggests, less ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... ground, or wall, on which the shadow of the gnomon falls, the simplest plan is to use a watch, or whatever makeshift means of reckoning time be at hand. Calculations are troublesome, unless the plate is quite level, or vertical, and exactly facing south or north, or else in the plane of the Equinox. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... Associated Words:: heliography, heliometry, solar, solstice, solarize, anthelion, parhelion, halo, heliocentric, actinometer, actinometry, heliacal, heliograph, equinox, astronomy, astronomer, photosphere, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... year of this century will not be counted as a leap year. It is fortunate that the difference is one of eleven days, for as that is the number which is added every year to the epact our epacts are almost the same. As to the celebration of Easter, that is a different question. Your equinox is on March the 21st, ours on the 10th, and the astronomers say we are both wrong; sometimes it is we who are wrong and sometimes you, as the equinox varies. You know you are not even in agreement with ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... third month of our year; was before 1752 reckoned first month as in the Roman calendar, the legal year beginning on the 25th; it is proverbially dusty and stormy, and is the season of the spring equinox; it was dedicated to the Roman ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... same as for any other farm crop, and the plants, mainly of the Early Paris variety, were set out about the last of June, usually four feet apart each way. They were given good care, and generally began to head in September, at the time of the autumnal equinox, when there is usually a week or two of cool, rainy weather. Following this, early in October, there are generally a few hard frosts which injure some of the heads if they are not kept well covered and closely cut. The main cauliflower season then comes on, running through October and the first ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... best time for seeing some of the attractions of Belvoir; but Lady Bloomfield has written of her Majesty's proverbial good fortune in these excursions: "The Queen yachts during the equinox, and has the sea a dead calm; visits about in the dead of winter, and has summer weather." There were other respects in which Belvoir was in its glory in midwinter—it belonged to a hunting neighbourhood and a hunting ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... the six hours were taken as six complete hours, and not six hours wanting some minutes. And the aggregate miscalculation continued until the minutes added yearly, amounted to ten days and changed the date of the spring equinox. Pope Gregory XIII. (1572-1585) sought to remedy the error. He re-established the spring equinox to the place fixed by the Council of Nice (787). The year had fallen ten days in arrear from the holding of the Council until the year of the Gregorian correction, 1582. He again fixed ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... again. Being, however, defeated, they again sent offers of submission to Caesar, who simply demanded double the number of hostages he had originally required, as he was anxious to return to Gaul before the autumnal equinox. ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... cultivated fields, and the solitude he produces will be succeeded by a powerful and healthy population. The results of these events in the moral and political world may be compared to those produced in the vegetable kingdom by the storms and heavy gales so usual at the vernal equinox, the time of the formation of the seed; the pollen or farina of one flower is thrown upon the pistil of another, and the crossing of varieties of plants so essential to the perfection of the vegetable world produced. In man moral causes and physical ones modify each other; the transmission ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... unintermittent assiduity both night and day."[56] What hope of gain or advantage had they in those days? nay, or even now? for the hopes of parents are uncertain, and have to be long waited for. He who plants a vine in the spring equinox, gleans its vintage in the autumnal equinox; he who sows corn when the Pleiads set, reaps it when they rise; cattle and horses and birds have produce at once fit for use; whereas man's bringing up is toilsome, his growth slow; and as excellence flowers late, most fathers die before their sons ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... every day the year through, year after year. The bright summer sun glows upon it; the red sun of the frosty hours of winter looks at it from under the deepening canopy of vapour the blasts of the autumnal equinox howl over the vast city and whistle shrilly in the rigging; still at every tide the world of ships moves out into the river. Why does not a painter come here and place the real romance of these things upon canvas, as Venice has been placed? Never twice alike, the changing ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... still raining, they could not be very greatly in want of water. We fixed up our tent and retired for the night, the wind blowing furiously, as might reasonably be expected, for it was the eve of the vernal equinox, and this I supposed was our share of the equinoctial gales. We were compelled in the morning to remove the camp, as we had not a drop of water, and unless it descended in sheets the country could not hold it, being all pure red sand. The hill near us had no rocky ledges to catch water, so ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... not calm; the equinox still struggles in its storms. The wild rains of the day are abated; the great single cloud disparts and rolls away from heaven, not passing and leaving a sea all sapphire, but tossed buoyant before a continued, long-sounding, high-rushing moonlight tempest. The moon reigns glorious, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... delight, were it not for the consciousness which it seems to contain of being the immediate precursor of winter with all its horrors. There is no sufficient constancy with us of the recurrence of such a season, to make any special name needful. But now and again there comes a day, when the winds of the equinox have lulled themselves, and the chill of October rains have left the earth, and the sun gives a genial, luxurious warmth, with no power to scorch, with strength only to comfort. But here, as elsewhere, this luxury is laden with melancholy, because ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... hitherto used. An account was brought that the infant sovereign of Persia had died at Ispahan, and consequently that the throne was vacant. It has always been the usage of the kings of Persia to observe the Nuroze, or vernal equinox, as a great festival; and on it all the chief officers, civil and military, of the government appear at court. Nadir issued an order that not only these, but every person of rank and consideration in the kingdom, should meet him on the day of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... you will readily recognize them again, provided you have a clear picture of the principal stars of the Northern Heavens. First, you see the Ram, the initial sign of the Zodiac; because at the epoch at which the actual Zodiac was fixed, the Sun entered this sign at the vernal equinox, and the equator crossed the ecliptic at this point. This constellation, in which the horns of the Ram (third magnitude) are the brightest, is situated between Andromeda and the Pleiades. Two thousand years ago, the Ram was regarded as the symbol of spring; but owing to the secular ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... not get beyond plovers and lovers. I am still, however, harassed by the unauthentic Muse; if I cared to encourage her—but I have not the time, and anyway we are at the vernal equinox. It is funny enough, but my pottering verses are usually made (like the God-gifted organ voice's) at the autumnal; and this seems to hold at the Antipodes. There is here some odd secret of Nature. I cannot speak of politics; we wait and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clumsy, ugly, goat's-skin umbrella, but which, after all, was the most necessary thing I had about me next to my gun. As for my face, the color of it was really not so mulatto-like as one might expect from a man not at all careful of it, and living within nine or ten degrees of the equinox. My beard I had once suffered to grow till it was about a quarter of a yard long; but, as I had both scissors and razors sufficient, I had cut it pretty short, except what grew on my upper lip, which I had trimmed into a large pair of ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... cantentur abunde." Historia, tom. i. p. 225. Now since Bartholomew Columbus was a fairly educated man, writing this note in England on a map made for the eyes of the king of England, I suppose he used the old English style which made the year begin at the vernal equinox instead of Christmas, so that his February, 1488, means the next month but one after December, 1488, i. e. what in our new style becomes February, 1489. Bartholomew returned to Lisbon from Africa in the last week of December, 1487, and it is not likely that ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... hard thunder-storm last night. The last few days have begun the vernal equinox. It rained torrents all night and stopped at dawn. The wind was northeast and cool. Cloudy overhead, with purple horizon all around—a forbidding day. But we decided to go fishing, anyhow. We had new, delicate three-six tackles to try. About seven ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... help arrived yet, and the enthusiastic Polish Chivalry being good for nothing against regular musketry,—King Stanislaus finds that he will have to quit Warsaw, and seek covert somewhere. Quits Warsaw this day; gets covert in Dantzig. And, in fact, from this 22d of September, day of the autumnal equinox, 1733, is a fugitive, blockaded, besieged Stanislaus: an Imaginary King thenceforth. His real Kingship had lasted precisely ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... against our rocks Hurl breakers in a fleecy mass, Like wolves that chase stampeding flocks Over the brink of a crevasse, While thunders down the Alpine pass The deluge of the equinox. ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... by, and the equinox was upon us, with its rapid changes of sun and storm, when one of these tempests, accompanied by hail of unusual size, shattered to fragments the skylight of the bath-room. This hail-storm was succeeded by a deluge of rain, which flooded not only the adjacent closet, but the chamber I occupied, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... however, the equinox brought no storm with it, and the lighted fires have continued to burn with such fierceness that not only the swamp, but the surrounding country, is in danger ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 51, October 28, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... other and putting on his cap. "See you later, Miss Jane. Morgan's back ag'in to work, thanks to you, doctor. That was a pretty bad sprain he had—he's all right now, though; went on practice yesterday. I'm glad of it—equinox is comin' on and we can't spare a man, or half a one, these days. May be blowin' a livin' gale 'fore the week's out. Good-by, Miss Jane; good-by, doctor." And he ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sugar harvest. It is the sequel of the bitter frost; a sap-run is the sweet good-by of winter. It denotes a certain equipoise of the season; the heat of the day fully balances the frost of the night. In New York and New England, the time of the sap hovers about the vernal equinox, beginning a week or ten days before, and continuing a week or ten days after. As the days and nights get equal, the heat and cold get equal, and the sap mounts. A day that brings the bees out of the hive will bring the sap out of the maple-tree. It ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... perhaps fortunately, have little time for mourning. As the first hint of the long winter came in on the September's equinox, poor Sara had to rouse herself, and she began to look about her with despairing eyes. Friends, so far, had been most kind, and the little family had never actually suffered; but now that the few summer resources for picking up an ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... this same state we won't describe: we would Perhaps from hearsay, or from recollection: But getting nigh grim Dante's "obscure wood,"[539] That horrid equinox, that hateful section Of human years—that half-way house—that rude Hut, whence wise travellers drive with circumspection[jz] Life's sad post-horses o'er the dreary frontier Of Age, and looking back ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... voice, and an aggressive manner, but he had the merit of knowing how to assimilate the ideas of other men, and to pass them on in a way which was intelligible and even interesting to the lay public, with a happy knack of being funny about the most unlikely objects, so that the precession of the Equinox or the formation of a vertebrate became a highly humorous ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had grown very long; the sun had passed the vernal equinox, and yet it looked upon unbroken snowfields. Then, about the middle of April, the snow passed quickly away in blazing sunshine, in a thousand rivulets, in a flooded river. The roads were heavy with mud, but the earth was left green, the bud of spring having been nurtured ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... very severe, so that they were enveloped in all kinds of toil and danger to no purpose (forasmuch as it was now past the autumnal equinox, and the snow, which had already fallen in those regions, covered the mountains and the plains), and so, instead of proceeding, Julian undertook a work ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... evolution always obtain the maximum benefit from each condition designed by them, and as the experiences in the same social conditions are very different in the case of a man from what they are for a woman, the human spirit takes birth twice during the 2100 years measured by the precession of the equinox as already explained, it is born once as a man and another time as a woman. Such is the rule, but it is subject to whatever modifications may be necessary to facilitate reaping what the spirit has sown, as required under the law of ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... declines 23-1/2 deg. below the equator, at which point he arrives on December 21, we have the winter solstice and the shortest days. Intermediate between those two seasons are spring and autumn. When the Sun, on his journey northward, reaches the equator, we have the vernal equinox, and at this period of the year the days and nights are of equal length all over the globe. In a similar manner, when, on his return journey, the Sun is again on the equator, the autumnal equinox ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... the monstrous turbot, the light odor of the sea evoked in his mind, prone to unexpected suggestions, that corner of Breton, that poor village of sailors, where he had been belated the other autumn until the equinox, and where he had rendered assistance in some dreadful storms. He suddenly called to mind that terrible night when the fishing-boats could not come back to port, the night that he had passed on the mole amid a group of frightened women, standing ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... temples; that is to say, the arrangement of the building in such a way that its principal axis shall point exactly in a desired direction. Some of the Babylonian temples were oriented so that the sun should shine to the western end of them on the day of the spring equinox when the inundation of the rivers began on which the prosperity of the country so much depended. The temple was thus an astronomical instrument of a high degree of accuracy, and the priests who directed its building ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... as straight as the string of a plumb-line. The sun was bisected by the line of the horizon, and appeared to be moving about them in a circle, with only its upper half visible. As Jupiter's northern hemisphere was passing through its autumnal equinox, they concluded they had ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... in compliment to the brides, were celebrated after the Persian fashion, and during the vernal equinox. For at no other period, by the ancient laws of Persia, could nuptials be legally celebrated. Such an institution is redolent of the poetry and freshness of the new world, and of an attention to the voice ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... is only seven nautical leagues from Cumanacoa. It scarcely ever rains in the first-mentioned place, while in the latter there are seven months of wintry weather. At Cumanacoa, the dry season begins at the winter solstice, and lasts till the vernal equinox. Light showers are frequent in the months of April, May, and June. The dry weather then returns again, and lasts from the summer solstice to the end of August. Then come the real winter rains, which cease only in the month of November, and during which ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... like a magician's glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains, small gains for those who ask the world to solve them; it cannot solve itself. Methinks now this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but see! aye, he enters the sign of storms, the equinox! and but six months before he wheeled out of a former equinox at Aries! From storm to storm! So be it, then. Born in throes, 't is fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs! So be it, then! Here's stout stuff for woe to work on. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... dotted line running upwards to the Spring Equinox of the Earth shows the course taken ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... terrible wind, which blows in the Mexican Gulf, from the autumnal to the vernal equinox, are known not only to the sailors, but to all those who have lived some time in this city. The variation in the barometer is the surest sign. A land breeze from the north-west first blows gently, then varies to the north-east, then changes to the south. The heat is then ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... have required the stimulus of necessity to make them break through an initial indolence of nature. When Johnson found fault with Gray for having times of the year when he wrote more easily, from the vernal to the autumnal equinox, he added that a man could write at any time if he set himself doggedly to it. True, no doubt! But to write doggedly is not to court favourable conditions for artistic work. It may be a finer sight for a moralist to see a man performing an ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... satisfactory explanation from science. It could not have been due to a solar eclipse, as has been suggested in ignorance, for the time was that of full moon; indeed the Passover season was determined by the first occurrence of full moon after the spring equinox. The darkness was brought about by miraculous operation of natural laws directed by divine power. It was a fitting sign of the earth's deep mourning over the impending death of her Creator.[1322] Of the mortal agony through which the Lord passed while upon the cross the Gospel-scribes ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... The equinox has brought with it darkness and Northern storms, and night will quickly close the short and dismal polar day. The sky of a dull and leaden blue is faintly lighted by a sun without warmth, whose white disk, scarcely seen above the horizon, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... in the pious book of travels ascribed to Sir John Mandeville, so widely read in the Middle Ages, it is declared that Jerusalem is at the centre of the world, and that a spear standing erect at the Holy Sepulchre casts no shadow at the equinox. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... break of day; aurora; first blush of the morning, first flush of the morning, prime of the morning; twilight, crepuscule, sunrise; cockcrow, cockcrowing[obs3]; the small hours, the wee hours of the morning. spring; vernal equinox, first point of Aries. noon; midday, noonday; noontide, meridian, prime; nooning, noontime. summer, midsummer. Adj. matin, matutinal[obs3]; vernal. Adv. at sunrise &c. n.; with the sun, with the lark, "when the morning dawns". Phr. "at shut of evening flowers" [Paradise ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the muse in shady bowers, waiting the call and inspiration of genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the equinox, sagaciously observing how much the wild freedom and liberty of imagination is cramped by attention to established rules, and how this same imagination begins to grow dim in advanced age, smothered and deadened by too much judgment. When ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... Why art thou about to rush away over the mountains? At the autumnal equinox a wild boar wounded thee! Thou art dead, and the fountains weep and the trees droop, and the winter wind is whistling through ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... these his soldiers behaved so ill that he was forced to punish their cowardice by decimation. His supplies failed, and he had to feed his troops on barley instead of wheat. Meantime the autumnal equinox was approaching, and the weather was becoming cold. The Medes and Parthians, under their respective monarchs, hung about him, impeded his movements, and cut off his stragglers, but carefully avoided engaging him in a pitched battle. If he ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... of October At the equinox, Stirred up in his hollow bed Broad ocean rocks; Plunge the ships on his bosom, Leaps and plunges the foam,— It's oh! for mothers' sons at sea, That they were safe ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... three occasions in the course of five years, and usually about the time of the equinox, this remark had driven him to frenzy; he flourished his knives and shouted, "That ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... desecration of those old heathen burying barrows on Stone Horse Head quieted off for the time being. Deadham, meanwhile, in act of repossessing its soul in peace and hibernating according to time-honoured habit until the vernal equinox. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... great importance of the event a line is drawn across the tablet although no interruption takes place in the official order of the Eponymes. Here then we have notice of a solar eclipse which was visible at Nineveh which occurred within 90 days of the (vernal) equinox (taking that as the normal commencement of the year) and which we may presume to have been total from the prominence given to the record, and these are conditions which during a century before and after the era of ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... spiked that cake on the horn of his nose, and he ate it, and he went away, waving his tail, to the desolate and Exclusively Uninhabited Interior which abuts on the islands of Mazanderan, Socotra, and Promontories of the Larger Equinox. Then the Parsee came down from his palm-tree and put the stove on its legs and recited the following Sloka, which, as you have not heard, I will now proceed ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... front in columns of battalions in mass, proper intervals for deployment had not been preserved, and time was necessarily lost before the troops could be put in line. Indeed, some of them were not regularly deployed at all. They had left their bivouac at sunrise which, as it was about the equinox, was not far from six o'clock. They had marched across the country without reference to roads, always a very slow mode of advancing, and doubly so with undrilled men. The untrained regiments must, in the nature of things, have been very much like ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... with as good intentions as yours. Neither should the husband, without imperative reason, consent to such a life unless he is sure his wife can withstand the temptation of social dissipation which sweeps across such places with the force of the Atlantic Ocean when driven by a September equinox. Many wives give up their homes for these public residences so that they may give their entire time to operas, theatres, balls, receptions and levees, and they are in a perpetual whirl, like a whip-top, spinning round and round and round very prettily until it loses its equipoise ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... moon which in our latitude, at the autumnal equinox, rises for an evening or two about ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... only just come to him. After shunning Anthony Trollope for fifty years, we came to him, almost as with a rush, long after our half-century was past. Now, James Payn is the solace of our autumnal equinox, and Anthony Trollope we read with a constancy and a recurrence surpassed only by our devotion to the truth as it is in the fiction of the Divine Jane; and Jane Austen herself was not an idol of our first or even our second youth, but became the cult ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... of the religious feasts among the Indians, is a good historical proof that they counted time by and observed a weekly Sabbath, long after their arrival in America. They began the year at the appearance of the first new moon of the vernal equinox, according to the ecclesiastical year of Moses. 'Till the seventy years captivity [19] commenced, the Israelites had only numeral names for their months, except Abib and Ethanim; the former signifying a green ear of corn, the latter ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... equinox implies the condition that the night is equal to the day. To a resident on the equator the night is no doubt equal to the day at all times in the year, but to one who lives on any other part of the earth, in either hemisphere, the night and the day are not generally equal. There is, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... the final embarcation, but at the last moment their inexperience of the sea nearly compromised the success of the expedition. Even if they were not absolutely ignorant of the ebb and flow of the tide, they certainly did not know how dangerous the spring tide could prove at the equinox under the influence of a south wind. The rising tide then comes into conflict with the volume of water brought down by the stream, and in the encounter the banks are broken down, and sometimes large districts are inundated: this is what happened that year, to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... distance of the sun could be measured at the beginning of the year, the moon being used as a mere pointer for the purpose. At a later date, however, this mode of determining time was abandoned, and the new year was made directly dependent on the vernal equinox. The month was subdivided into weeks of seven days, each of which was consecrated ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... it or you would deserve to be unfortunate, for you must remember that I used to go to your house, with the sacred unscrupulousness of friendship, when you were in prosperity, and when I was struggling against all the winds of heaven, and overtaken by the high tides of the equinox, drowned in debts. I have it now in my power to make the sweet and tender reprisals of gratitude . . . You will have some days' happiness every three months: come more frequently if you will; but you are to come, that is settled. I did this in the old times. At St. Cyr, ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... see this Fellow, that is gone before, He's a Souldier, fit to stand by Caesar, And giue direction. And do but see his vice, 'Tis to his vertue, a iust Equinox, The one as long as th' other. 'Tis pittie of him: I feare the trust Othello puts him in, On some odde time of his ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... entertainment for such guests, and that on stormy nights, the blue chamber was occasionally illuminated, and sounds of diabolical merriment were overheard, mingling with the howling of the tempest. Some treated these as idle stories, until on one such night, it was about the time of the equinox, there was a horrible uproar in the Wild Goose, that could not be mistaken. It was not so much the sound of revelry, however, as strife, with two or three piercing shrieks, that pervaded every part of the village. Nevertheless, no one thought of hastening to the spot. On the contrary, ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... beginning of the Christian Era, the constellation Aries, or Ram, occupied the equinoctial place, being in the first degree of that constellation. About 2150 B.C. the first degree of Taurus, or Bull, contained the Equinox. When the constellation Taurus, or the Bull, was in the first division, or the equinoctial place, the people used a symbol representing a bull, described as giving fecundity, a deity of vegetation as at Dodona, in their religious ceremonies. One ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... to hear it, and eventually told him. For in becoming the consort of a nature myth connected with the Moon Jurgen had of course exposed himself to the danger of being converted into a solar legend by the Philologists, and in that event would be compelled to leave Cocaigne with the Equinox, to enter into autumnal exploits elsewhere. And Anaitis was quite heart-broken over the prospect of ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... health, and that a reader of nice observation might ascertain from the book in what latitude, season, or circumstances, it had been written. The opponents are powerful. Reynolds ridiculed the notion of thoughts shooting forth with greater vigour at the summer solstice or the equinox; Johnson called it a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... Heaven, Ned, and Things on Earth, and Things under the Earth. The old Story, whereof you have alreadie seen many Parcels; but, you know, my Vein ne'er flows so happily as from the autumnal to the vernal Equinox. Howbeit, there is Something in the Quality of this Air would arouse the ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... in that state of despondency which overwhelming sickness induces;—and they have a picture of the Good Intent's cabin and state-room during the voyage to which I refer. Nor was this all. The weather was boisterous, being the vernal equinox; the winds cross and tempestuous; and the waves of the sea so tremendous that the little vessel sunk, and rose, and rolled, as if each succeeding shock were the last ere she sank for ever into the roaring abyss; while each convulsion of the bark ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... even faintly be distinguished at a distance of a hundred paces. The barometers suffered no change, the three I had with me remained in statu quo." "The heat is over by the middle of September, and after the autumnal equinox, there are a few days of what is best described as a dense dry fog. This was undoubtedly the haze referred to by Marco Polo." (Major Sykes, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... equal firmness and contempt the offer of a tribute; but he allowed the Gothic ambassadors to seek their fate from the mouth of Justinian himself; and consented, with seeming reluctance, to a truce of three months, from the winter solstice to the equinox of spring. Prudence might not safely trust either the oaths or hostages of the Barbarians, and the conscious superiority of the Roman chief was expressed in the distribution of his troops. As soon ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... Latin tract, called the De Pascha computus, written in Africa in 243, sets it by private revelation, ab ipso deo inspirati, on the 28th of March. He argues that the world was created perfect, flowers in bloom, and trees in leaf, therefore in spring; also at the equinox, and when the moon just created was full. Now the moon and sun were created on a Wednesday. The 28th of March suits all these considerations. Christ, therefore, being the Sun of Righteousness, was born on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... to the matter."{25} Professor Lake also, in his article in Hastings's "Encyclopaedia," seeks to account for the selection of December 25 without any deliberate competition with the Natalis Invicti. He points out that the Birth of Christ was fixed at the vernal equinox by certain early chronologists, on the strength of an elaborate and fantastic calculation based on Scriptural data, and connecting the Incarnation with the Creation, and that when the Incarnation came to ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... "PRINCESSE ET SOEUR:"—but Bernis, I suppose, looks into the practical difficulties; which are probably very considerable, to the Official French eye, in the present state of Europe and of the public mind. From September 22d, or autumnal equinox, 1755, onward to this Britannic-Prussian phenomenon of January, 1756, the Pompadour Conclave has been sitting,—difficulties, no doubt, considerable. I will give only the dates, having myself no interest in such a ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... with his father all the winter; and when the spring equinox drew near, all the Athenians grew sad and silent, and Theseus saw it, and asked the reason; but no one would answer him ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... wedding. Their conjunction in this manner lends colour to the idea that they are held to be mother and son. In Rajputana Gauri is worshipped as the corn goddess at the Gangore festival about the time of the vernal equinox, especially by women. The meaning of Gauri, Colonel Tod states, is yellow, emblematic of the ripened harvest, when the votaries of the goddess adore her effigies, in the shape of a matron painted the colour of ripe corn. Here she is seen as Ana-purna (the corn-goddess), the benefactress of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... this system of chronological computation, based upon the ages of the patriarchs, was the great length of life to which those worthies attained. It was generally supposed that before the Flood "there was a perpetual equinox," and no vicissitudes in Nature. After that event the standard of life diminished one-half, and in the time of the Psalmist it had sunk to seventy years, at which it still remains. Austerities of climate were affirmed to ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... the instruction at St. Denis and the consecration at Chartres were followed on the day of the vernal equinox by a third and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Italy is thus vividly described: "It was now the beginning of the month of October; already the gales which attend upon the equinox swept through the woods and trees; the delicate chestnut woods, which last dare encounter the blasts of spring, and whose tender leaves do not expand until they may become a shelter to the swallow, had already changed ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... is their night for sleep. A year (of human beings) is equal to a day and night of the gods. The division (as regards the gods) consists in this: the half year for which the sun travels from the vernal to the autumnal equinox is the day of the deities, and the half year for which the sun travels from the latter to the former is their night. Computing by the days and nights of human beings about which I have told thee, I shall speak of the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... of the seasons, the year is divided into eight parts, the first of forty-five days from the date of the rising of the west wind (February 7) to the date of the vernal equinox (March 24), the second of the ensuing forty-four days to the rising of the Pleiades (May 7), the third of forty-eight days to the summer solstice (June 24), the fourth of twenty-seven days to the rising ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... Sunday the 17th of February, and quitted it on Tuesday the 9th of April. Wood and water are also to be procured almost at every anchoring-place beyond Freshwater Bay. Our sufferings I impute wholly to our passing the streight just as the sun approached the equinox, when, in this high latitude, the worst weather was to be expected; and indeed the weather we had was dreadful ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... apocryphal details, are added. Thus the Clementine writer calls John a 'Hemerobaptist,' i.e., member of a sect which practised daily baptism. He talks about a rumour which became current in the reign of Tiberius, about the 'vernal equinox,' that at the same time a King should arise in Judaea who should work miracles, making the blind to see, the lame to walk, healing every disease, including leprosy, and raising the dead; in the incident of the Canaanite woman ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... retains the same character, and the same division of the seasons as in the plains of India; the summer solstice being every year marked by the same prevalence of rain which continues to fall without intermission until the autumnal equinox. But a new, a totally different climate begins at Kashmir, whose elevation I estimate to be 5350 feet, nearly equal to that of the cities of Mexico and Popayan" ('Correspond. de Jacquemont', t. ii., p. 58 et 74). The warm and humid air of the sea, as Leopold von Buch well ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... of her feelings, "we certainly were very unlucky. Another week, only one other week, would have been enough for us. I think if we had had the disposal of events—if Mansfield Park had had the government of the winds just for a week or two, about the equinox, there would have been a difference. Not that we would have endangered his safety by any tremendous weather—but only by a steady contrary wind, or a calm. I think, Miss Price, we would have indulged ourselves with a week's calm in the Atlantic ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the fall "line storm" clears off warm, it signifies that storms through that fall and winter will clear away with mild weather, i.e., the way in which the storm closes at the autumnal equinox will rule the weather following storms until the vernal equinox storm. Then the same saying applies to the "line-storm" of March, and the spring and summer after ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... their Indian corn about the latter end of this month. The weather during the former and latter part of it was wet. About the time of the equinox, the tides in the cove were ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... of the astrologers is that the sky has changed since the rules of the art were established. The sun, which at the equinox was in Aries in the time of the Argonauts, is to-day in Taurus; and the astrologers, to the great ill-fortune of their art, to-day attribute to one house of the sun what belongs visibly to another. However, that is not a demonstrative reason against astrology. The masters ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... rains of the autumnal equinox, come the Mvula za Chintomba, the "Chuvas grandes" of the Portuguese, lasting to the end of November. They are heavy, accompanied by violent tornadoes and storms, greatly feared by the people. The moisture of the atmosphere, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... by the lone sea-shore, Where billows toil for ever 'mid the rocks, Scourged on by winds in stormy equinox, Rise! rise in haste, or slumber evermore! The stern Earth calls thee, and the Ocean mocks; Roll thy poor sightless orbs about the sky, Through tears of blind and powerless agony; Rise! rise in haste, ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... The spring equinox was approaching, as Mr Abney frequently reminded his cousin, adding that this had been always considered by the ancients to be a critical time for the young: that Stephen would do well to take care of himself, and to shut his bedroom ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... suddenness of these, utterly surpassing all my experience. One day I have a large fire, and the next, windows and doors open in search of cool air: in the course of the afternoon a change of twenty degrees is a common occurrence. The Indian summer has not yet set in, but when the influence of the equinox is over, we shall have, I hope, a few of those divine days that made last fall ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... this posture for four months, that is to say, from the middle of June to the middle of October; for though the rains went off, at least the greatest violence of them, about the equinox, yet, as the sun was then just over our heads, we resolved to stay awhile till it passed a little to ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... later and September was drawing to an end. The weather was beautiful, but the foliage in the park began to show a great deal of read and yellow and since the equinox, which had brought three stormy days, the leaves lay scattered in every direction. In the circular plot a slight change had been made. The sundial was gone and in the place where it had stood there lay since yesterday a white marble slab with nothing on it but "Effi Briest" and a ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... equinox Venus is in the sign of the Pisces, which immediately precedes that of Aries, in which is the Sun. The time indicated is therefore an hour or more before sunrise on Easter ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... open fields, and under the soft, warm sunshine, and the softer light of a full moon. The loveliest season of the whole year—that transient but delightful interval between the storms of the "wild equinox, with all their wet," and the dark, short, dismal days which precede the rigor of winter—is now with us. The sun rises through a soft and hazy atmosphere; the light mist clouds melt gradually before him; and his noontide light rests ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the voice. May 9th usually is cold and rainy. The latter part of May and nearly all June, rose cold or June cold is prevalent. About August 1st come the dog days and hay fever. In fact, from August 1st until the autumnal equinox is an anxious time for the singer. From November 11th-25th there is apt to be alternate cold and warm weather ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... from me; I had recourse to old Liese, who was once my nurse, but is now a wise woman, and a great enchantress. She promised to help me and give Anselmus wholly into my hands. We went at midnight on the Equinox to the crossing of the roads; she conjured certain hellish spirits, and by aid of the black Cat we manufactured a little metallic mirror, in which I, directing my thoughts on Anselmus, had but to look in order to rule him wholly in heart ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... marks the autumnal equinox and also the time when the sowing of wheat and other spring crops begins. Many Hindus still postpone sowing the wheat until after Dasahra, even though it might be convenient to begin before, especially as the festival goes by the lunar month ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... only these words: 'Dear Porthos, set out, if you would wish to arrive before the Equinox. I ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Psalms of David are in use, but they are held to be inferior to their own book. They abstain from garlic, beans, and several kinds of pulse, and likewise most carefully from every description of food between sunrise and sunset during a whole moon before the vernal equinox; in addition to which, an annual festival is kept, called the feast of five days. Much respect is entertained for the city of Mecca, and a still greater reverence for the Pyramids of Egypt, in one of which they believe that their great progenitor, Saba, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the Equinox, 1762], An hour before sunrise, there began, quite on the sudden, a vivid attack on the Brucken-Muhle and on Amoneburg, by cannon, by musketry, by all methods; and, in spite of the alert and completely obstinate resistance, would not cease; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... supposed that the Sun and Moon and the planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and Venus) were points which restrained the motion of the sky in its revolution. (See Book VI., 576.) (11) Mercury. (See Book IX., 777.) (12) That is, at the autumnal equinox. The priest states that the planet Mercury causes the rise of the Nile. The passage is difficult to follow; but the idea would seem to be that this god, who controlled the rise and fall of the waves of the sea, also when he was placed directly ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... as our experience went, it appears, that the sea to the north of Beering's Strait is clearer of ice in August than in July, and perhaps in a part of September it may be still more free. But after the equinox the days shorten so fast, that no farther thaw can be expected; and we cannot rationally allow so great an effect to the warm weather in the first half of September, as to imagine it capable of dispersing ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... remark by saying: "There, that's better!" and rising from the open fireplace where she had relighted the candle from the carefully covered embers. It had been so mild until now that only a fragment of fire had been kept upon the hearth, where, however, it was never permitted to wholly die "from equinox to equinox." Fortunately for the comfort of the household, there was woodland sufficient still belonging to the estate to supply all necessary fuel, and in cold weather this impoverished gentlewoman enjoyed her blazing wood fires—a luxury which even wealthy ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... no doubt intended to indicate the vernal equinox as the birthday of Rama. For the month Chaitra is the first of the two months assigned to the spring; it corresponds with the latter half of March and the former half of April in our division of the year. Aditi, the mother ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... flutters like a tiny flower stirred by faint air. The wind is "a cordial of incredible virtue" (Emerson)—sharp and chill, but with a milder tincture. To-day, though brisk and snell on the streets, the sunshine had a lively vigour, a generous quality, a promissory note of the equinox. I felt it from first rising this morning—the old demiurge at work! As I sat in the bathtub (when a man is fifty he may be pardoned for taking a warm bath on winter mornings) my mind fell upon the desire of wandering: it ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... gooseberries, but all the fruit, that I have seen, is small. They attempt to sow nothing but oats and barley. Oats constitute the bread-corn of the place. Their harvest is about the beginning of October; and, being so late, is very much subject to disappointments from the rains that follow the equinox. This year has been particularly disastrous. Their rainy season lasts from autumn to spring. They have seldom very hard frosts; nor was it ever known that a lake was covered with ice strong enough to bear a skater. The sea round them is always ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... jeered. "That fat-headed old tub! He knows about as much about mining as a hog does about the precession of the equinox. No; miracles may happen but, short of that, he'll never get ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... when the blustering winds were again celebrating the return of the equinox, Michael, who had been sleeping heavily all day, suddenly started up and astonished his wife by an eager request that she would send at once for George Hendrick ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... days. The peasant hastens home to his hay-harvest; the merchant must quickly regulate the produce and manufactures he has purchased, and load his ships with them, so that they may sail and reach their destination before the storms of the autumnal equinox. ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... consequently contained an error which, steadily increasing, amounted to ten days at the time of its correction. This was done by Gregory XIII, in a brief issued in March, 1582; he reformed the calendar, directing that the fifth day of October in that year be reckoned as the fifteenth. The vernal equinox, which in the old calendar had receded to March 11, was thus restored to its true place, March 21. The "new style" calendar is also known as the Gregorian, from its founder; the system adopted by Gregory ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... 47. The autumnal equinox now approached, and the Euboean gulf, called Coela, is reckoned dangerous by mariners. Choosing, therefore, to remove thence before the winter storms came on, they returned to Piraeus, from whence they had set out for the campaign. Apustius, leaving there thirty ships, sailed ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... Bithynia, and was marked by the flames of Nico and Nicomedia, which they wantonly burnt. [117] Some obscure hints are mentioned of a doubtful combat that secured their retreat. [118] But even a complete victory would have been of little moment, as the approach of the autumnal equinox summoned them to hasten their return. To navigate the Euxine before the month of May, or after that of September, is esteemed by the modern Turks the most unquestionable instance of rashness ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... of muscle. He has a fine Geneva[261] watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac[262] he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice[263] he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His notebooks impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... world." Jesus, suspecting some treachery, at first refused; but when the caravan of pilgrims had set out, he started on the journey, unknown to every one, and almost alone.[4] It was the last farewell which he bade to Galilee. The feast of Tabernacles fell at the autumnal equinox. Six months still had to elapse before the fatal denouement. But during this interval, Jesus saw no more his beloved provinces of the north. The pleasant days had passed away; he must now traverse, step by step, the ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... autumn, on which the day and the night are each twelve hours at all places on the earth. When the night and day are equal in spring, the point which the sun occupies on the heavens is termed the vernal equinox. There is similarly another point in which the sun is situated at the time of the autumnal equinox. In any investigation of the celestial movements the positions of these two equinoxes on the heavens are of primary importance, and Hipparchus, with the instinct of genius, perceived their significance, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... is consequently an hour after Ave Maria, from which the Romans reckon consecutively till the twenty-fourth hour. As the sun sets earlier or later, according to the season of the year, the hours vary of course, and the same period of the day that is indicated by the twelfth hour at the time of equinox, is indicated by the eleventh hour in midsummer, and the thirteenth hour in midwinter. This is very annoying to travellers from the north of Europe. "What o'clock is it?" you ask; and are told in reply, "It is the eighteenth hour and three quarters." ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie |
