"Pivot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... line ran from Neby Samwil to the east of Beit Iksa, through Lifta, to a point of about 1-1/2 miles west of Jerusalem, whence it was thrown back facing east. Thus, our main line had swung forward, circling on its pivot at Neby Samwil, with its extreme right flank refused. The refused right flank afforded protection against the fire coming from the city. The main directions of our advance, however, now menaced, not ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... from an incurable disease, and died in December, 1828, aged fifty-seven years. The Kings and regicides in their ferocious fear had made it an important part of their policy that Marie Louise should be the pivot on which the complete ruin of Napoleon should centre, so Neipperg was fixed upon as a fit and proper person to mould the ex-Empress into passive obedience to the wishes of her husband's inveterate enemies. Meneval notes that this man had already amours to his credit. ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... if Eve's serpent was so splendid," Mrs. Greyson laughed, twirling the stand yet faster upon its pivot. "Would I do for ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... of its toughness. K is in each case a small wooden knob on a piece of 3/16-inch brass rod; O a 1-1/2-inch brass screw; A a piece of sheet brass 3-1/2 inches long, marked off carefully, drilled 1/8 inch from the centre of each end for the pivot screws, and in four places for the holding-down screws, and bent up at the ends to form two standards. If you do not possess any brass strip, the lever may be supported on wooden uprights glued and ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... battle, which, judging by the movements which had preceded it, was possibly extending from here to the vicinity of Verdun, where the Crown Prince was said to be vainly endeavoring to break through, his army acting as a sort of a pivot on which the great advance had swung. I could not help wondering if, as often happens in the game of "snap the whip," von Kluck's right wing had got swung off the line by the very rapidity with which it must have covered that long arc in the ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... more." And poor Casey, a meek-faced little man with sloping shoulders, who had been running the elevator in the Chalmers Building up to a week ago, would patiently practise marching without moving, so that the rest of the line could wheel round him as a pivot. The petty tyrant who scolded at him was determined to have his own way; and Jimmie, who had had to do with many such tyrants in his long years of industrial servitude, was glad when this particular one got mixed up in his ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... brought an event that cast a glow of colour over the life of Paulina and the whole foreign colony. This event was none other than the marriage of Anka Kusmuk and Jacob Wassyl, Paulina's most popular lodger. A wedding is a great human event. To the principals the event becomes the pivot of existence; to the relatives and friends it is at once the consummation of a series of happenings that have absorbed their anxious and amused attention, and the point of departure for a new phase of existence offering infinite possibilities ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... and then for three days we dress our town in bunting and bang starting guns and finishing guns, and put on fancy dresses, and march in procession with Japanese lanterns, and dance, and stare at pyrotechnical displays. But the centre, the pivot, the axis of our revelry is always the merry-go-round ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Armageddon that all think must come, our sailors wait, not despising their enemy, knowing very well that they—the Fleet—are the pivot of the situation, that without the British Navy, not all the valour of the Allies in France or Russia could win the war, and that with it, Germany's hope of victory is vain. While the Navy lives, England lives, and Germany's ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... swings like they was on a pivot, and piles in after him. There wasn't anything to do then but stop under the gate, seein' as the club-house was a hundred yards or so off. I snaked Woodie out, though, and made him help me range the youngsters ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... passion and whose temper had never known a curb. He had never realized until this moment how beautiful Elsa was, and how madly he loved her. For he called the jealous rage within by the sacred name of love, and love to a Magyar peasant is his whole existence, the pivot round which he frames his life, his thoughts of the present, his dreams of ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... on right of Naval Brigade, protecting right; the force having got over open ground should arrive at daybreak on enemy; 9th Brigade having secured Table Mountain to swing round left and keep on high ground, and then advance east to west on A (on plan; not printed); Guards Brigade conform, being pivot; then Guards advance on east edge of Mount Blanc, guns clearing entire advance with shrapnel; cavalry to get round rear of ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... to their Government or to their high ideals. One of his intellectual pleasures, he added, had long been contemplation of the United States as it is and, even more, as its influence in the world will broaden. 'The world,' said Mr. Balfour, 'will more and more turn on the Great Republic as on a pivot.'" ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... at his own table, and a kind, forbearing, loving wife to set it before him. These would have given to his body and to his mind just what both needed, for the trials and temptations of the day; and they would have saved him, at least for the day, perhaps for life; for the pivot upon which the whole of a man's future destiny turns is often ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... occipital foramen being situated entirely at the base of the cranium of man and not carried up behind, as in the other vertebrates, causes his head to be posed at the extremity of the vertebral column as on a pivot, not bowed down forward, his face not looking towards the ground. This position of the head of man, who can easily turn it to different sides, enables him to see better a larger number of objects at one time, than the much inclined position ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... his grievance without looking to the right or to the left; at length, turning on his pivot, he perceived that the room was full of company, consisting of young Crotchet, and some visitors whom he had brought from London. The Reverend Doctor Folliott was introduced to Mr. Mac Quedy, the economist; Mr. Skionar, the transcendental poet; Mr. Firedamp, the meteorologist; and Lord Bossnowl, ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... shape of plans, nor even of definite desires. Then, suddenly, this vague uneasiness became the dominant factor in my daily life, as the result of one of those apparently haphazard chances upon which human progress and development so often seem to pivot. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... domesticated, perhaps too much so; his family was his world, the centre and pivot of which he was. The children were the radii. His wife attempted to be a centre, too, but never in the middle of the circle, for that was exclusively occupied by him, and therefore the radii fell now on the top of one another, now far apart, ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... it that way. If the change were not effected when the plough was swung round, the furrow would be made opposite. Next he leans heavily on the handles, still standing on the same spot; this lifts the plough, so that it turns easily as if on a pivot. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... 19th inst. between the Bahama Bank and Key Sal Bank we were boarded and taken possession of by a small schr. of about 30 tons, having one gun mounted on a pivot and 30 men. She manned us with twelve men, Spaniards, French, Germans and Americans, and carried us towards the Florida coast. Being arrived on the coast nearly opposite to Havana, the privateer went in shore ...
— Piracy off the Florida Coast and Elsewhere • Samuel A. Green
... necessitating the expenditure of considerable energy in performing either operation. She watched him tear down the old support wires and replace them with new ones, stretching a double strand from the top of the tall pivot posts to the free ends of the gates. Placing a short stick between the two strands of heavy wire he twisted until the shortening process had cleared the gate ends and they swung suspended, moving so freely ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... certainly had not learned to use cannon in shooting birds or hunting deer, and he knew less than the Englishman about the handling of artillery and muskets. The same intelligence that selected the rifle and the long pivot-gun for favorite weapons was shown in handling the carronade, and every other instrument ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... tracks she turned the light on the table and in every nook and corner of the room beyond. She slowly swung her body on a pivot, flashing the light into each shadow and over every inch of floor, turning always in ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... able to advance in line with the Germanic front that was pressing on from the west, and northward from the Carpathian range between Uzsok and the Jablonitza passes; otherwise his force would lag behind in the great drive, a mere stationary pivot. At that time he held about sixty miles of the Odessa-Stanislau railroad (which runs through the valley via Czernovice and Kolomea) with the Russians only twenty miles north of the line. If that position could be taken the Austrians would have the South Russian line of communications in their ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... and watch!" he enjoined me; and as the words passed his lips I saw the nine warriors throw themselves very cleverly from the backs of their bolting horses, wheel round as upon a pivot, and dash back until they were immediately in the path of the furious buffalo, which seemed now to have marked down as their destined victims the little body of men of whom the king and I formed a part. In the twinkling of an eye each warrior had selected ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... deposited in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, a mast-pivot, 15 inches in length and weighing between seven and eight pounds, which had passed obliquely through the body of a sailor. The specimen is accompanied by a colored picture of the sufferer himself in two positions. The name of the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... rays being indicated by dotted lines. The reflector and conical heater are sustained by a flat hub and eight radial spokes bent upward toward the ends at an angle of 45 deg.. The hub and spokes are supported by a vertical pivot, by means of which the operator is enabled to follow the diurnal motion of the sun, while a horizontal axle, secured to the upper end of the pivot, and held by appropriate bearings under the hub, enables him to regulate the inclination to correspond with the altitude of the luminary. The heater ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... away abstracted and downcast. It was all very well for him to say, "Keep the work up when I am gone." But how were they to do it? He was the pivot on which all their work had been turning; and without him what chance was there of keeping the house together ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... by setting the centres of the slots true to the lines passing through the axis) and set the pivots as follows: Place the pencil-point G so that it coincides with one of the points as C, and place the pivot E so that it comes directly at the point of intersection of the two slots, and fasten it there. Then turn the arm so that the pencil-point G coincides with one of the points of the minor axis as D, the arm lying parallel to B D, and place the pivot F over the centre of the trammel and ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... roll" is executed by taking a six-shooter—let us hope not one of those pitiful toys of the East—upon each forefinger, each weapon so hanging balanced on the trigger-guard and the trigger itself that it shall be ready to turn about the finger as upon a pivot, and shall be ready for instant discharge, the thumb cocking the weapon as it turns; yet so that it shall none the less be discharged only when the muzzle of the weapon is pointed away from the operator's person and not ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... again, Mr. Passford, we must be ready to return her fire," said the captain. "Have the pivot gun ready, and aim for her Armstrong, which seems to be sufficiently prominent on her deck to ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... stick having an apple at one end, and on the other a lighted candle, so that the unfortunate and liquorish wight who bit at this tempting bait generally burnt his nose on the rebound, as the stick bounced to and fro on its pivot. The hall was now cleared for the masks. In this play, the Black Knight himself generally joined, laughing heartily at and hurrying on the mis-haps of the revellers. Many horrible and grotesque-looking shapes and disguises soon made their appearance; but one, more especially than the rest, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... will look for relations, and he shall discover them. I will look for them in a way that will lead him to discover them. In drawing a circle, for instance, I will not use a compass, but a point at the end of a cord which turns on a pivot. Afterward, when I want to compare the radii of a semi-circle, Emile will laugh at me and tell me that the same cord, held with the same ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... fast, though she could not hold her own with the Bellevite, or even the Bronx; and you have a pivot gun amidships, and six broadside ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... ways. The red-coats below, he saw, had now almost gained the central passage. Their countless faces turned towards him, and they shouted. The white facade opposite was densely stippled with red. All these wonderful things concerned him, turned upon him as a pivot. These were the guards of the ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... the great Mousquetaire trilogy; the hardly less great collection of La Reine Margot and its continuations; the long eighteenth-century set which, in a general way, may be said to be two-centred, having now Richelieu (the Duke, not the Cardinal) and now Cagliostro for pivot; and Monte Cristo—with power to add to their number. In what will be said, attention will chiefly be paid to the books just mentioned, and perhaps a few more, such as La Tulipe Noire; nor is even ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... forced the turgid river to run within the narrow channels hewn by established custom, but, released from the bondage of convention, the soul of Elisabeth Durward was that of sheer primitive woman, and the pivot of all her actions her love for her mate and for the ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... found in literature. Round this last one, the whole ode seems to turn as on a pivot, and it alone had been sufficient to stamp Smollett a ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... eighty feet long; each accommodating several families. All were built of upright strong pine-planks, the interstices of which were filled with yak-dung; and they sometimes rest on a low foundation wall: the door was generally at the gable end; it opened with a latch and string; and turned on a wooden pivot; the only window was a slit closed by a shutter; and the roofs were very low-pitched, covered with shingles kept down by stones. The paths were narrow and filthy; and the only public buildings besides the convents were Manis and Mendongs; of these the former are square-roofed temples, containing ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... But my feeling died or slumbered when I was beyond the limits of his personal influence. When in his presence I was so pervaded by it that whether I went contrary to the dictates of his will or not I moved as if under a pivot; when away my natural elasticity prevailed, and I held the same relation to others that I should have held if I had not known him. This continued till the secret was divined, and then his influence was ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... the carp-pond, with its gold and silver fish, the pivot of attention of the pretty little garden court which stood handy to the kitchen. This juxtaposition was no accident; for such ponds are landscape and larder in one. Between meals the fish are scenery; at the approach of the dinner hour they turn into game. The inn guest having ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... fairly common is having the axes of the hinges out of alignment. Especially is this the case when three hinges are used to hang a wardrobe or other large door. It is absolutely necessary in all cases that the exact centres of the pivot-pins of the hinges should ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... The pivot of the foreign policy of Christian III. was his alliance with the German Evangelical princes, as a counterpoise to the persistent hostility of Charles V., who was determined to support the hereditary claims of his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... the court is admirably expressed in the phrase imputed to the empress who, pointing to the prince imperial, said, "This child will never reign unless we repair the misfortunes of Sadowa." Such was the ceaseless refrain. The word haunted French imaginations incessantly, and it was the pivot on which the imperial policy revolved; it exercised a spell scarcely less powerful and disastrous upon monarchists like Thiers and republicans like Gambetta. Long foreseen, the dread shock, like all grave calamities, came nevertheless as ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... steel or iron is magnetized, it is supposed that the molecules in it turn and arrange themselves with all their north-seeking poles towards the one end of the bar, and their south-seeking poles towards the other. If the bar is balanced freely on a pivot, it comes to rest pointing north and south; for, the earth being a huge magnet, its north pole attracts all the north-seeking poles of the molecules, and its south poles the south-seeking poles. (The north-seeking ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... be the central pivot of a whirlpool of excitement? God knows he loved peace even if Fate never permitted him to sample it. He laid the whole thing unconditionally at Brian's door. Let Brian, instead of shirking his usual numismatic responsibilities in ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... moving at speed—the 1st British Brigade were still doubling across the rear of Maxwell and Lewis to fill the gap between the latter and MacDonald. As they had wheeled round, the regiments gained on each other according to their proximity to the pivot flank. The brigade assumed a formation which may be described as an echelon of columns of route, with the Lincolns, who were actually the pivot regiment, leading. By the time that the right of Lewis's brigade was reached and the British ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... is the pivot that a great piece of machinery swings on. Collins said yesterday that the peace of Europe may hang upon this question. I laughed at him then, but it's not at all impossible that he may be right. Of course, ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... had, undoubtedly, ere this, been destroyed; in the former, it would, presumably, soon be transferred to the police agent's employer. To regain the paper, if it existed, would be no light task; yet it was the pivot upon which John Steele's fortunes hung. The principal signer was, in all likelihood, making his way out of London now; he would, in a few hours, reach the sea, and after that disappear from the case. At any rate, John Steele could have nothing to hope ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... sufferings and dangers from Philaster, Arethusa, and herself, and the only motive for her keeping silence is represented to have been a feeling of maidenly shame at her position. Such strained and fantastic motives are too often made the pivot of the action in Beaumont and Fletcher's tragi-comedies. Their characters have not the depth and truth of Shakspere's, nor are they drawn so sharply. One reads their plays with pleasure and remembers here and there a passage of fine poetry, or a noble or lovely trait. But their ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... laid on, or the season did not render it necessary. Near to this apartment was the Pasha's bed-chamber, a fine room, also lined with marble, and containing a fire-place, which in the warm weather revolved upon a pivot, and was concealed in a recess made on purpose in the wall. The bathing-rooms, close at hand, were of the most beautiful description, the principal apartment and the antechamber having roofs which might serve as models for all erections of the kind. These were fretted in small compartments, light ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... was, never can be caused by nothing, which can no more be a cause, properly so called, than 'it can be something, or equal to two right angles;' and therefore that everything could not have had a cause which the reader has seen is the very point assumed by Theists—the very point on which as a pivot they so merrily and successfully turn their fine metaphysical theories, and ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... our journeying all Europe turned on a Burgundian pivot, and the Fates were busy in that land. It was the stage of the world, on which the strong, the great, and the enterprising of mankind were playing; and I hoped that Max, who was strong and enterprising, would find his part in this Burgundian drama. I was willing to risk sacrificing ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... stilled and remained in frozen attitudes as it passed; a grocer's clerk, crossing the pavement, carrying a heavily laden basket to his delivery wagon, halted half-way as the figure came near, and then, making a pivot of his heels as it went by, behaved towards it as does the magnetic ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... round, grape, and canister, and tubs of wadding, while the combings of the hatchways were thickly studded with round shot. The tarpawling and lumber forward had disappeared, and there lay long Tom ready levelled, grinning on his pivot. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... head to foot there was no trace of the doctor in his appearance; he looked all over what at heart he was—the burly, good-humored, home-loving, land-loving country gentleman, who looked upon Great Datton, where his home was, as the pivot of the world. ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... apparatus, lenses, crucibles, and pieces of his own inventions. A perfect tangle of telegraph wires coming from all parts of the Union were focussed at one end of the room. An ash-covered forge, a cabinet organ, a rusty stove with an old pivot chair, a bench well stained with oils and acids, completed the equipment of this curious den, into which the sunlight filtered through the chemical jars and fell in coloured patches along the ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... further development of the Clement-Bayard monoplane; the type represented could be converted into a monoplane at will. The Lohner Arrow biplane with the Daimler engine was an early German tractor biplane built with a view to inherent stability, and proved very successful. The Pivot monoplane was of somewhat unconventional French construction, chiefly notable for the special spring chassis and pivoted ailerons at the main planes; this pivoting had nothing to do with the name of the machine, which ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... storm redoubling its violence, the hanged man revolved on his own pivot, turning every way at once towards the swarm, as if he wished to run after the birds; his teeth seemed to try and bite them. The wind was for him, the chain against him. It was as if black deities were mixing themselves up in the fray. The hurricane ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the winding staircase of the great tower, toilsomely turning and turning, and lowering [our] heads to avoid the stairs above, or the rough stone pivot around which they twist." About ninety steps bring us on to the roof of the Cathedral over the choir, and then, keeping along a passage by the parapet, we reach the belfry, and from thence go on by ladder to the bell-chamber, which contains six bells—dark—very—long ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... one Greek lyric devoted to what we should designate love, with perhaps something like an exception in Alcman. In fact, while moderns rarely make a tragedy or comedy, a poem or novel, without some love-concern which is the pivot of the whole, all the great poems and dramas of the ancients revolve on entirely different passions. Love, such as we speak of, was of rather rare occurrence. Women were in such a low position, that it was a condescension to notice them,—there ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... away, completely cowed. For one day he had had more than enough. The captain watched him for a moment, his great jaw thrust grimly out. Then, as on a pivot, he whirled ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... be turned forward or back as the load requires. The three points of lead, or admission and exhaust and compression, are fixed and independent of the changes and cut off. The motion of the main eccentric is given to a rocker arm, the pivot of which is at the bottom, and from the upper end the valve rod transfers the motion to the valve without reversing the motion, as is done sometimes in the slide valve to overcome the effects of the angularity of the connecting rod. The action of the rocker arm, therefore, so far as the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... "quintainne" was "a manikin mounted on a pivot and armed with a club in such a way that, when a man struck it unskilfully with his lance, it turned and landed a blow ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... like the bottom of a flatiron, with a blunt stern and a sharp nose, is the boat with which the boy in the country first makes acquaintance. It is propelled by two oars, usually fastened to the sides by pivot row-locks. This is a handy boat for getting about in, but it is quite impossible to learn the art of rowing from such a ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... the Emperors of China in ceremonies of state during the fourth century of our era. It contained a genius in a feather dress who pointed to the south, and was doubtless moved by a magnet floating in water or turning on a pivot. This rude appliance was afterwards refined into the needle compass for guiding mariners on the sea, and assisting the professors of feng- shui or geomancy in their ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... the ring, braced his feet and pulled. The square turned on its pivot with an ease which proved that it was frequently subjected to the same manipulation. As it turned, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... carriage or wagon, if it may be called such, appeared in as wretched a condition as the team and its driver. Sometimes a couple of horses, mules, or cows, &c., would be dragging a hogshead of tobacco, with a pivot, or axle, driven into each end of the hogshead, and something like a shaft attached, by which it was drawn, or rolled along the road. I have seen two oxen and two slaves pretty fully employed in getting along a single ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... sheath his weapon, though he still followed the eunuch, as his only remaining chance of escape. Even here they were instantly admitted, and without any apparent hesitation. The door turned slowly on its pivot, and Cedric found himself in a richly-decorated chamber, where, by the light of a single lamp, and with the smell of perfumed vapour in his nostrils, he saw a figure in costly vestments reclining on a ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... rivets. Closing in at top speed—barely six knots—the Merrimac gave the Congress a broadside before ramming the Cumberland and opening a hole "wide enough to drive in a horse and cart." Backing clear and turning the after-pivot gun, the Merrimac then got in three raking shells against the Congress, which grounded when trying to escape. Meanwhile the Cumberland was listing over and rapidly filling, though she kept up the fight to the very last gasp. When she sank with a roar ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... there, down upon his knees, and defending himself with his antlers; while one of the dogs lay sprawling on the ground and howling with pain. The other still kept up the fight, endeavouring to seize the elk from behind; but the latter spun round, as though his knees were upon a pivot, and always presented his horny spikes in ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... when worn full front, as it was in Dr Johnson's time, and as we remember the household troops used to wear it—but when, by a daring innovation of revolutionary times, it came to be turned round on its human pivot, and lay gently athwart the line of vision. Thus it is that our generals wear it in this nineteenth century; thus it was that the Great Duke got all through Spain with it; though Napoleon, who greatly reduced its dimensions, always ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... of the oar." (The word kaji to-day means "helm";—the single oar, or scull, working upon a pivot, and serving at once for rudder and oar, being now called ro.) The mist passing across the Amanogawa is, according to commentators, the spray from ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... Amherstburg," said Brock, "it is the pivot point, sir, and must be retained as our base. At Sandwich we already have earthworks completed. If destroyed by Hull they must be rebuilt, for the batteries there must cover our crossing and cannonade the fort while ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... your worship, Saviol Prokofitch. To be set up, for instance, on the parade in the open space. And as for expense,—the expense would be trifling: a stone column (indicates the size of each thing by gestures), a copper disc, round like this, and a pivot, an upright pivot (shows, gesticulating) of the simplest description. I will put it all up and carve the figures on the face myself too. And, your worship, when you are pleased to take a walk, or any other people are out walking, you will go ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky
... quakes up through one's pillow so as to be felt rather than heard. It is simply the pounding of the ponderous pestle of the kometsuki, the cleaner of rice—a sort of colossal wooden mallet with a handle about fifteen feet long horizontally balanced on a pivot. By treading with all his force on the end of the handle, the naked kometsuki elevates the pestle, which is then allowed to fall back by its own weight into the rice-tub. The measured muffled echoing ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... increasing purpose runs,' and that binds the epochs of humanity together—'the purpose of God in Christ Jesus.' The philosophy of history lies there, and it is a true instinct that makes the cradle at Bethlehem the pivot around which the world's chronology revolves. For the deepest thing about all the ages on the further side of it is that they are 'Before Christ,' and the formative fact for all the ages after it is that they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... sea-fog came on, and it was only now and then that we could see the Barrier over our heads. All of a sudden we were close upon a lofty iceberg, so that we had to put the helm hard over to go clear. The Fram steers splendidly, however, when she is in proper trim, and turns as if on a pivot; besides ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... his military skill against the wary old Marshal's, he was offering incentives to conspiracy. Distrusting the revolution, which was a force behind him, he placed such reliance on its efforts in his front as to make it the pivot of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... darkness spin the spheres; Within the shaded hollow of thy wings. The life of things, The changeless pivot of the passing years— These in thy bosom lie. Restless we seek thy being; to and fro Upon our little twisting earth we go: We cry, "Lo, there!" When some new avatar thy glory does declare, When some ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... little resemblance to our war vessels of to-day, so clumsily fashioned was she, being made of wood, with only one covered deck, and the open forecastle and quarter-deck above it, and had but two tiers of guns—the largest frigates carried sixty guns, besides a large pivot gun at the bow, and were noted for their speed, though in comparison to modern warships they were as a tortoise ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... The pivot upon which all right-thinking conduct involving relations with other people turns is the Golden Rule, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." It is to the moral what the sun is to the physical world, and just as we have never made ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... ivory, which latter method was practised until the introduction of swaged metallic plates. Where the crown only of a tooth or those of several teeth were lost, the restoration was effected by engrafting upon the prepared root a suitable crown by means of a wooden or metallic pivot. When possible, the new crown was that of a corresponding sound tooth taken from the mouth of another individual; otherwise an artificial crown carved from bone or ivory, or sometimes from the tooth of an ox, was used. To replace entire dentures a base-plate of carved hippopotamus ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... formidable flotilla: seven specially-built scows or "sturgeon-heads." Each runs forty to fifty feet with a twelve-foot beam and carries ten tons. The oars are twenty feet long. It takes a strong man to handle the forty-foot steering-sweep which is mounted with an iron pivot on the stern. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... the ball around the corners, do not stand still and pivot. Go after it, again with a series of short steps with your racquet head up and cocked, and your body in proper position so that you are ready to make a quick and ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... the names given to operations for the removal of portions of the cranium by circular saws which play on a centre pivot. When the motion is given to the saw simply by rotation of the hand of the operator, as is common in this country, it is called trephining; when (as used to be the case in this country, and still is on the Continent) the motion is given by an instrument ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... care of any motion in three dimensions. These rings were pivoted, too, so that an unbelievably intricate series of motions could be given to the solenoid within them all. But the device was broken, now. A pivot had given away, and shaft and socket alike had vanished. Tommy became absorbed. Some oddity ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... came to a standstill. It was turning as if on a pivot. It had been caught in one of the numerous eddies at the mouth of a small tributary stream. Vigorously he strove to gain the channel. He hugged the bank, hoping to free himself from the whirlpool, but his ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... know, was no other than the long twenty-four pounder, formerly belonging to Gerald's gun-boat, which, now removed to his new command, lay a mid ships, and mounted on a pivot, constituted the whole battery of the schooner. The apron was the leaden covering protecting the touch-hole, which, having unaccountably fallen off, had encountered the heavy foot of Tom Fluke, in his ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... certainly cares much more for a quarrel than for a play. And this quarrel about the censorship is one on which he feels so strongly that in a book embodying any sort of sympathy it would be much better to leave out Mrs. Warren than to leave out Mr. Redford. The veto was the pivot of so very personal a movement by the dramatist, of so very positive an assertion of his own attitude towards things, that it is only just and necessary to state what were the two essential parties to the dispute; the ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... true, my dear sisters, that you are of this opinion? Do not you thoroughly understand that if love is absent from marriage it should, on the contrary, be its real pivot? To make one's self lovable is the main thing. Believe my white hairs that it is so, and let me ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... as he termed it; then, grasping the eaves with both hands, he pulled himself along, the slip-noose over the cupola turning about on its pivot without ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... the one y' got on? Ain't no holes in it that I can see," looking at it carefully and turning her around as if she were on a pivot. ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... intrepidity, gave him a golden cup, with which he sailed over the ocean. This cup was the compass, which old writers have called Lapis Heracleus. Pisander says Oceanus lent him the cup, and Lucian says it was a sea-shell. Tradition affirms that the magnet originally was not on a pivot, but set to float on water in a cup. The old antiquarian is wildly theoretical on this point, and sees a compass in the Golden Fleece of Argos, in the oracular needle which Nero worshipped, and in everything else. Yet undoubtedly ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... but the work is often done by hand. The powder is then dried, and stored on boards or in flat boxes. This dough does not go through the process of fermentation. The shaping is almost exclusively done on the potter's wheel, which is set on a pivot working in a porcelain eye. As a rule, the wheel is turned by the potter himself, but in Hizen it is kept in motion by means of a band connected with its pivot and another wheel turned by a boy. In making ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... Nevertheless, here and there they seemed to touch upon what he was in search of. He was much fascinated, for instance, by the doctrine of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," and for its sake swallowed for a time, though not without wry faces, the dogmas, that self-interest is the true pivot of all social action, that population has a perpetual tendency to outstrip the means of living, and that to establish a preventive check on population is the duty of all good citizens. And so he lived on for some time in a dreary uncomfortable state, fearing for the future of his country, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... it was not till then that she became cognizant of all the circumstances which entered into its formation. Seldom have more nicely calculated combinations entered into the plots of criminals, and never was a plot depending on so many chances more completely successful. Yet the pivot of the whole, as often in more extensive schemes of homicide, is to be found in the reckless daring and utter disregard of personal safety manifested throughout. For this alone she seems to have made no calculations and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... of pride, threw up her chin, lifted her arms, and turned as if on a pivot, to show herself off in her elegance. She had on the wine-colored street-dress bordered with black fox; over its white satin waistcoat embroidered with gold hung in a splendid loop her pink corals. The restraining Paris corset gave to her luxuriant ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... is done by machinery, which is the custom in Europe, with large lenses, the polisher is slid back and forth over the lens by means of a crank attached to a revolving wheel. The polisher is at the same time slowly revolving around a pivot at its centre, which pivot the crank works into, and the glass below it is slowly turned in an opposite direction. Thus the same effect is produced as in the other system. Those who practice this method claim that by thus using machinery ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... part more than a league in width, and in some parts contracted to half that distance. This peninsula is so connected with the main land, as to represent a scale beam, the narrow isthmus answering to the pivot; which isthmus is formed by an acute angle of the Junk river on the eastern side, that falls into the sea at the S.E. extremity of the peninsula and an acute angle of the Montserado river on the western side, which falls into the sea at the N.W. ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... a watch as to shape and intention, and a small clock as to size. This instrument being several years older than Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of going either too fast or not at all. The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to. The stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied by thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... the design of Alfred Godfrey, of Clapton. According to this improvement, as represented at Figs. 1 and 2, a rack, A, is employed vibrating on the pivot a, and a pinion, a1, so arranged that instead of the pinion moving on a universal joint, or the rack moving in a parallel line from side to side of the pinion at the time the motion of the table is reversed, there is employed, for example, the radial arm, a2, mounted on the shaft, a3, supporting ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... Pivoting. Making pivot drills. Hardening drills. The drilling and fitting of new ...
— A Treatise on Staff Making and Pivoting • Eugene E. Hall
... was a hollow, oblong square, 12x36 inches, in which the pitcher could have obtained a good, firm foothold within the box, and not as now, outside of it, as he now has to, to secure a good standpoint for his pivot foot outside ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... skew bridge, with an almost right-angled approach; and the strange resultant of the nicely balanced forces that control an automobile skating on "pneus" over slippery mud twisted us round, suddenly and without warning. Instantly, oilily, the car gyrated as on a pivot, and behold, we were facing down the valley instead of up. Terry could not had done it had ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... distinguished from the chloritic spines and natural sandbanks that stud the bed. The only antiquities found in the "Muttali"' were a stone cut into parallel bands, and the fragment of a basalt door with its pivot acting as hinge in the upper part: it reminded me of the Graco-Roman townlets in the Hauran, where the credulous discovered "giant Cities" and similar ineptitudes. Our search for Midianite money was in vain; Mr. Clarke, however, picked up, near the sea, a silver "Taymur," ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... run into a brick wall, pawed, stamped, snorted, and went off once more into furiously insane caperings—a new set—all the time circling, with the little, black-and-gray, erect figure of the surprised ratel as a pivot. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars |
