"Compasses" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 5 gives log 5 - log 4 log 5/4, and so for others. In order to multiply two numbers, say 2 and 3, we have log 2 x 3 log 2 log 3. Hence, setting off the distance 1,2 from 3 forward by the aid of a pair of compasses will give the distance log 2 log 3, and will bring us to 6 as the required product. Again, if it is required to find 4/5 of 7, set off the distance between 4 and 5 from 7 backwards, and the required number will be obtained. In the actual scales the spaces ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... by the way, the place that holds a ship's compasses, deserves a word of mention. It was a little house, about the bigness of a common bird-cage, with sliding panel doors, and two drawing-rooms within, and constantly perched upon a stand, right in front of the helm. It had two chimney stacks ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... others have with cheapness seen and ease In varnish'd maps, by th' help of compasses, Or read in volumes and those books with all Their large narrations incanonical, Thou hast beheld those seas and countries far, And tell'st to us what once they were, and are. So that with bold truth thou can'st now relate This kingdom's fortune, and that empire's fate: Can'st talk to us of Sharon, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... place—unless, indeed, the last borrower had forgotten to put it back. For measuring the height of plants he had a seven-foot deal rod, graduated by the village carpenter. Latterly he took to using paper scales graduated to millimeters. For small objects he used a pair of compasses and an ivory protractor. It was characteristic of him that he took scrupulous pains in making measurements with his somewhat rough scales. A trifling example of his faith in authority is that he took his "inch in terms of millimeters" from ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... his bust. He was older, and considered himself much my superior, and, indeed, undertook to be my instructor. I was to begin. His first canon was that I was to use no measurements, and he quoted Michael Angelo's saying—'A sculptor should carry his compasses in his eyes, not in his fingers,' I humbly submitted to his authority, and finished the bust without a single measurement. He was very triumphant at what he called the success of his method. I begged permission of him, now that the bust was completed, to verify my work by the dividers. He graciously ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... work of emptying Himself of His glory. We have no means by which we can estimate the darkness and the depth of the misery from which we have been delivered, nor the height and the radiance of the glory to which we are to be lifted. And until we can tell and measure by our compasses both of these two extremes of possible human fate, till we have gone down into the deepest abyss of a bottomless pit of growing alienation and misery, and up above the highest reach of all unending progress into light and glory and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... fireplace in the winter evenings, dropping his knife or his compasses a moment to read aloud to his mother, who sat ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... about her.' The psalmist said, 'The Angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him.' And all these representations concur in this one thought, that we are safe, enclosed in God, and that He, by His power, compasses us about. And so no foe can get at us who cannot break down or climb over the encircling wall of defence. An army in an enemy's country will march in hollow square, and put its most precious treasures, or its weaker members, its sick, its women, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... of the said invention which may be enumerated, it is particularly advantageous for rendering visible clock or watch faces and other indicators—such, for example, as compasses and the scales of barometers or thermometers—during the night or in dark places during the night time. In applying the invention to these and other like purposes there may be used either phosphorescent grounds with dark ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... the watchmaker, long and lank, with grey bushy eyebrows meeting over his nose, wandered, with the gait of a heedless pair of compasses, across from his own shop to Redford the bookseller's, at whose door a small group was ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... sighted no shore-lights to warn them: but the weather was hazy. Five minutes before the catastrophe Mr. Rands had remarked that the wind was increasing, but had deferred shortening sail. The ship was an old one, but newly rigged throughout. Her compasses had been adjusted and the ship swung at Greenhithe, just before the voyage. Mr. Murchison, the captain, was a trusted commander of the H.E.I.C.: he came originally from Liverpool, and had worked his way up in the company's ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... intelligence has learned a most valuable lesson when it has recognised its own impotence at the outset of an inquiry and its own limitations at the end thereof. Knowledge, Good, Justice, Immortality are conceptions so mighty that our tiny minds have no compasses to set upon them. Better far a distrust in ourselves than the somewhat impudent and undoubtedly insistent claim to certitude advanced by the materialistic apostles of modern non-humanitarianism. When questioned about the ultimates all human ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... the car for compasses. Be that as it may, we found him in that latitude, simultaneous as Jules and me was ong route for Waterloo to rejoin our respective ships—or Navies I should say. Jules was a permissionaire, which meant being on leaf, same as me, from a French cassowary-cruiser at Portsmouth. A party ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... while sleeping in a tent, I often awakened to hear something scamper up its steep side and then laughed to see the shadow of a comical little body toboggan down the canvas. Our pocket-knives, compasses and all other small objects were never safe unless securely packed away out of reach of ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... generally end in ruin; and the man who compasses the destruction of his neighbor, is often caught in his ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... shaken from his perch like an over-ripe plum, but all went well until they were hanging the curtains in the best bed-room, when Martha, stooping to recover a dropped ring, shut the steps up like a pair of compasses. ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... guessed so; he wa'n't sure of nothin'. However, they cleared it away, and incidentally 'Bije yanked the prayer meetin' out of the scuppers and set 'em to work. Then Nat suggests gettin' the spare compass and, lo and behold you! there wa'n't any. Compasses cost money and money's made to ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... horrid din continued. Through the wild chorus she fancied she heard a human voice faintly calling for help. Unable longer to restrain her excited feelings, she snatched up a long pair of cooper's compasses—the first weapon that offered itself—and sallied out into the woods, accompanied by the men, armed ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... word of definitions, problems, or any other form of demonstration but super-position. I do not profess to teach Emile geometry; he will teach me; I shall seek for relations, he will find them, for I shall seek in such a fashion as to make him find. For instance, instead of using a pair of compasses to draw a circle, I shall draw it with a pencil at the end of bit of string attached to a pivot. After that, when I want to compare the radii one with another, Emile will laugh at me and show me that the same thread ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... time when we first entered Sir James Lancaster's Sound, the sluggishness of the compasses, as well as the amount of their irregularity produced by the attraction of the ship's iron, had been found very rapidly, though uniformly, to increase as we proceeded to the westward; so much, indeed, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... way of the regulation sight-seeing the visitor to Rome compasses most of his duty in this respect on his initial sojourn and goes the rounds that no one ever need dream of repeating. Once for all the visitor to Rome goes down into the Catacombs; makes his appallingly hard journey ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... possibility of any other sentence than that of an honourable acquittal; and when it was read to him in his dungeon, he was thrown into an agony of surprise and indignation, and taking up a pair of compasses with which he had been sketching a chart of the Coromandel coast, he struck at his proud, indignant heart; but his arm was held by one of the functionaries in attendance. With indecent precipitation he was executed on that very day. He was dragged ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... stop watch, my lord." Excellent observer!" And what about this new book that the whole world makes such a rout about?" "Oh, it is out of all plumb, my lord, quite an irregular thing! Not one of the angles at the four corners was a right angle. I had my rule and compasses, my lord, in my pocket." Excellent critic! "And for the epic poem your lordship bid me look at; upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and trying them at home upon an exact scale of Bossu's, 'tis out, ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... necessary. Mr Morgan, take three men and the passengers, and put provisions and water in the boats with compasses, and lower them down ready. As soon as each boat is ready place one of the gentlemen armed by her, and he is to shoot down any man who turns coward and rushes for the boats before orders are given. Now, sir, you ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... is the chief of the body, and as the body without a chief is worse than a beast, unless the chief has a good understanding with the body, and unless everything be as well regulated as if it were measured with a pair of compasses, we see certain confusions arrive; the animal part then endeavours to get the better of the rational, and, we see one pull to the right, another to the left; one wants something soft, another something hard; in short, everything goes topsy turvy. This is to show that here below, ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... Family were particularly careful not to wander too far from their mountain home. Mr Sudberry forbade everyone, on pain of his utmost displeasure, to venture up among the hills without McAllister or one of his lads as a guide. As a further precaution, he wrote for six pocket compasses to be ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... his tutor's charge To Leipzig, for such studies as they held More worthy of his princely blood, he searched The Almagest; and, while his tutor slept, Measured the delicate angles of the stars, Out of his window, with his compasses, His only instrument. Even with this rude aid He found so many an ancient record wrong That more and more he burned ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... way, A boat, with rudder, sail, and oar, At anchor floated near the shore. 100 He stopp'd, and turning to his train, Thus pertly vents his vaunting strain: 'What blundering puppies are mankind, In every science always blind! I mock the pedantry of schools. What are their compasses and rules? From me that helm shall conduct learn. And man his ignorance discern.' So saying, with audacious pride, He gains the boat, and climbs the side. 110 The beasts astonished, lined the strand, The anchor's weighed, he drives ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... closer shall my love draw us, beautiful one! until it compasses your hate and unites ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... thick, cut out with the turning saw. It should be held in the vise for this operation. Place this cut out shield (1) on a piece of board of similar thickness but somewhat larger and with a pair of compasses mark out another 1/2 in. or so larger all around. (2) Also mark the same ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... add anchors, chains and ropes, small boats, poles and sweeps, parallel rulers, dividers and charts, anchor-lights, lanterns and side-lights, compasses, barometers and megaphones, fenders, grapnels and boathooks—until the landlubberly owners are almost frightened back to solid land; and then all is ready for a ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... Lifeboat Institution had most kindly presented to the Rob Roy one of its best lifeboat compasses. The card of this compass floats in a mixture of spirits, so as to steady its oscillations in a boat, and a deft-like lamp alongside will light it up for use by night. Only a sailor knows the peculiar feeling of regard and mystery with which the ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... air, the goodness of which I want to ascertain, be exceedingly small, so as to be contained in a part of a glass tube, out of which water will not run spontaneously, as a fig. 15; I first measure with a pair of compasses the length of the column of air in the tube, the remaining part being filled with water, and lay it down upon a scale; and then, thrusting a wire of a proper thickness, b, into the tube, I contrive, by means of a thin plate of iron, bent to a sharp angle c, ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... should be mounted in a frame, before the pattern be traced and the ground be then divided out in the following way: take a strong thread, make a knot at one end, stick a pin into it and tighten the knot round it; with a pair of compasses, divide one of the sides into two equal parts, stick the pin with the knot round it in at the middle and the same on the opposite side, putting in a second pin by means of which you stretch the thread; carry other threads across in ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... P. 170. On Giotto drawing without compasses a circle with a crayon, "not a brush, with which, as Professor Ruskin explained, the feat would have been impossible. See 'Giotto and his Works in Padua.'" "Don't; but practice with a camel's-hair brush till you can do it. I knew nothing of brush-work proper when I wrote ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... procure. When you engage one of them to execute a piece of work his first request is usually for a piece of iron hoop to make his wire-drawing instrument; an old hammer head, stuck in a block, serves for an anvil; and I have seen a pair of compasses composed of two old nails tied together at one end. The gold is melted in a piece of a priuk or earthen rice-pot, or sometimes in a crucible of their own making, of common clay. In general they ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Bible is not a riddle, neither inconsistent with itself; but if you take off one leg of a pair of compasses the measuring ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... and find a kind of diagrammatic knowledge sufficient to meet all he requires. To discard what is irrelevant to the purpose is one of the most difficult but most important things to be learned. Instead of using "Euclid" as a means of teaching scholars to reason, they are expected to use compasses carefully to make circles round—a matter of no importance whatever for the matter in hand—but it diverts their attention from the true object of study. There is a lesson for others in the highly emphasised remark once addressed by a great advocate to his junior who was taking an ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... another figure of one going down the steps following her, resembling Architecture, showing a scheme or model for building of the City, held in the right hand, and the left holding a square and compasses. Behind these two stands another figure, more obscure, holding up an hat, denoting Liberty. Next behind the king is the Duke of York, holding a garland, ready to crown the rising City, and a sword lifted up in the other hand to defend her. Behind this a third figure, with an earl's ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... let slip the propitious moment. The drifting could not be so wearingly slow but that after another year had elapsed we should be far beyond the point from which the sledge expedition ought to set out. If I measure the distance we have drifted from November of last year with the compasses, and mark off the same distance ahead, by next November we should be north of Franz Josef Land, and a little beyond it. It is conceivable, of course, that we were no farther advanced in February, ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... cities of Yun-nan and Ta-li I find by measurement on Keith Johnston's map to be 133 Italian miles. [The distance by road is 215 English miles. (See Baber, p. 191.)—H.C.] Taking half this as radius, the compasses swept from Yun-nan-fu as centre, intersect near its most southerly elbow the great upper branch of the Kiang, the Kin-sha Kiang of the Chinese, or "River of the Golden Sands," the MURUS USSU and BRICHU of the Mongols and Tibetans, and manifestly the auriferous BRIUS ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... hour they arrived at their destination, and entered the shop, which smelt strongly of tar; coils of rope of all sizes were piled up one upon another by the walls, while on shelves above them were blocks, lanterns, compasses, and a great variety of gear of whose use the boys were ignorant. The chandler was standing at ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... inner meaning be dark or dubious. The philosophy of friendship deals with those mathematical and physical conceptions of distance, likeness, and attraction—what if the law of bodies govern souls also, and the geometer's compasses measure more than it has entered into his heart to conceive? Is the moon a name only for a certain tonnage of dead matter, and is the law of passion parochial while the law of gravitation is universal? Mysticism will observe no ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... fond of drawing, and often went into the fields for the purpose of taking sketches of trees, houses, &c., which he would show to his parents. On one occasion he had retired into a shed at the back of his father's house, and was so much absorbed in planning something with his compasses, as not to be for a long time aware of his father's presence. He had several masters, who endeavoured to teach him everything that was good; and he was educated with several little boys about his own age. One evening his father asked him what he ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... is full of tremendous pathos; it compasses the sublime, and in its most torrential moments the composer never quite loses his mental equipoise. He, too, can evoke tragic spirits, and at will send them scurrying back to their dim profound. It has but one rival in ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... blunt, and the Points of the most curious Mathematical Instruments do very seldome arrive at so great a sharpness; how much therefore can be built upon demonstrations made onely by the productions of the Ruler and Compasses, he will be better able to consider that shall but view those points and ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... to have undergone similar perversions, not always with euphonious success, as witness the following: "The Bachnals" into "Bag of Nails," "The God Encompasseth Us" into "Goat and Compasses;" both of the former existed in Victorian days, as does the latter at the present time. Many of these old tavern signs are to be seen to-day in the museum at the ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... uncontrolled touch leads to false perceptions. Modern psychophysics has pointed to a large group of false perceptions due to illusions of pressure, stabs, or other contact with the skin. The best known, and criminalistically most important experiments, are those with open compasses. Pressed on the less sensitive parts of the body, the back, the thigh, etc., they are always felt as one, although they are quite far apart. The experiments of Flournoy, again, show how difficult it is to judge weights which are not helped ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... idea could be formed of it. The judge major, Simon, certainly was not two feet high; his legs spare, straight, and tolerably long, would have added something to his stature had they been vertical, but they stood in the direction of an open pair of compasses. His body was not only short, but thin, being in every respect of most inconceivable smallness—when naked he must have appeared like a grasshopper. His head was of the common size, to which appertained ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... appreciating the artist's work so highly, he skinned the chieftain's thighs, and covered his cartouch box with it!—I was astonished to see with what boldness and precision Aranghie drew his designs upon the skin, and what beautiful ornaments he produced: no rule and compasses could be more exact than the lines and circles he formed. So unrivalled is he in his profession, that a highly finished face of a chief from the hands of this artist, is as greatly prized in New Zealand as a head from the pencil of Sir Thomas Lawrence ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... to take walks with the guards about the country. In this way the men who were to escape were able to learn about the roads and the best hiding places. They managed to secure maps and compasses by bribing ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... that are used by men testing the earth's magnetism carry very sensitive compasses. Explain why such ships are made entirely ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... in my Uncle Toby's room, being somewhat of the smallest, for that infinity of great and small instruments of knowledge which usually lay crowded upon it, he had the accident in reaching over for his tobacco box to throw down his compasses, and in stooping to take the compasses up, with his sleeve he threw down his case of instruments and snuffers; and in his endeavouring to catch the snuffers in falling, he thrust his books off the table. 'Twas to no purpose for a man, lame as my Uncle Toby was, to think of redressing ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... weighing it down, send the water to the pumps. This the captain was very willing to do; and so, at two o'clock in the afternoon the signal was given, by the firing of the gun, whose report tore and broke down all the binnacle and compasses. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... land of his silken butterfly. Upon his knocking at the door, an old servant, the only one in the house, opened it, and led him into a chamber in which his old master was sitting upon a cushion, before a large table covered with a black cloth. Rolls of parchment with unknown characters, compasses, a sextant, a triangle, and other instruments, lay scattered round in disorder. He received Jussuf with friendly nods, without rising from his cushion, motioning him to sit down opposite, and ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... Prudence. A man with a book and a pair of compasses, wearing the noble cap, hanging down towards the shoulder, and bound in a fillet round the brow, which occurs so frequently during the fourteenth century in Italy in the portraits of men occupied in any ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... their Long boat and sent her down to Mentinacus,[3] where they tooke a Sloope belonging to Colonel Minot,[4] one Shallop belonging to Capt. Lane,[5] and three Scooners. They brought the Sloop and Shallop and (as we are Informed) the Sailes and Compasses of the three Scooners to Menhagen, whereupon they manned the last mentioned Sloope with ten hands and soe went after Capt. Cars Sloope, lying at Peniquid,[6] which they alsoe took a little distance from said Peniquid, but finding the Mast and Bowspreat not Serviceable they left her there, and ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... were furnished with all the tools necessary for their crafts. Da Gama also selected the most experienced masters and pilots, who now, instead of being guided by their charts, would have to depend upon their own sagacity, their compasses, and lead-lines, for running down strange coasts and entering hitherto unknown harbours. To save the officers and trained seamen as much as possible from risking their lives, da Gama begged the King to order six men who had been condemned to death to be put on board each ship, ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... my mother said. Under that, the miscellany began—a quadrant, a tin canikin, several sticks of tobacco, two brace of very handsome pistols, a piece of bar silver, an old Spanish watch and some other trinkets of little value and mostly of foreign make, a pair of compasses mounted with brass, and five or six curious West Indian shells. I have often wondered since why he should have carried about these shells with him in his wandering, guilty, and ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which ought to have been reserved for her own capering—to come. When it does, she throws up her arms and steps upon tiptoe about three paces, looking exactly like a crane with a sore heel. Making her legs into a pair of compasses, she describes a circle in the air with one great toe upon a pivot formed with the other; then bending down so that her very short petticoat makes a "cheese" upon the ground, spreads out both arms ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and confusion. There were eighteen men to man the six boats. Some were hooking on the falls, others casting off the lashings; boat-steerers appeared with boat-compasses and water-breakers, and boat-pullers with the lunch boxes. Hunters were staggering under two or three shotguns, a rifle and heavy ammunition box, all of which were soon stowed away with their oilskins ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... the morning following, to examine whether I had any thing concealed about my person. They, with their usual rudeness, searched every part of my apparel, and stripped me of all my gold, amber, my watch, and one of my pocket compasses; I had fortunately, in the night, buried the other compass in the sand; and this, with the clothes I had on, was all that the tyranny of ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... unpretentious ways, And not with show and noise. One keeps expecting To see Life suddenly appear somewhere On the horizon, like a new domain, A country yet untrodden. Yet the distance Remains unpeopled; slowly then our eyes Perceive its traces ling'ring here and yonder, And that it compasses, embraces us, And bears us, is in us, and nowhere fails us. The words I say can give thee little pleasure, Too much renunciation rings in them. But not to me, by Heaven! My sweet child, Not like a beggar do I feel before thee, (With a long ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... tradition, which only appears as a tradition in one of the dynastic histories of the fifth century A. D., is not given at all in the earlier standard history, and it is by no means proved that the undoubtedly early Chinese knowledge of the loadstone extended to the making of compasses. Yet, as Renan has justly pointed out in effect, in his masterly evidences of Gospel truth, a weak tradition is better worth considering than no tradition at all. Besides, there is some slight indirect confirmation of this, for in 880 B.C. ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... navigation, is not a little extraordinary. The Siamese boast of having used the compass above a thousand years before it was known in Europe: But the Jesuits very justly observe, that the Siamese and Chinese compasses are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... sowl an' it's not let alone a compass, but a pair a compasses I have, that my brother the carpinthir left me for a keepsake whin he wint abroad; but, indeed, as for the points o' thim I can't say much, for the childer spylt thim intirely, rootin' holes ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... a chart which he had open on a table before him, together with a pair of compasses and ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... a little city, self-contained and independent. Each has its church, of which it was in the earliest times the burial-ground; and each within its limits compasses an apothecary's shop, a blacksmith's and shoemaker's shop, a caffe more or less brilliant, a greengrocer's and fruiterer's, a family grocery—nay, there is also a second-hand merchant's shop where you buy and sell every kind of worn out thing at the lowest rates. Of course there is a coppersmith's ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... from swollen feet." A person with no recognized position, but one who occasionally does inferior work of this nature for us, recently surprised Kin Yen without warning, and found him in his sumptuously appointed picture-room, busy with compasses and tracing-paper. About the place were scattered in elegant confusion several of his recent masterpieces. From the subsequent conversation we are in a position to make it known that in future this refined and versatile person will confine himself entirely to ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... built himself a large square hut near the seashore—that is to say, he had, with the expenditure of a great amount of midnight oil, a pair of compasses, a box of paints, and a T-square, evolved a somewhat complicated plan whereon certain blue oblongs stood for windows, and certain red cones indicated doors. To this he had added an elevation in ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... drew our attention to the small figure of a man working upon a dizzy height some three thousand feet above us, his legs, like a pair of compasses, comically revealing a triangle of blue sky between them, whilst we with difficulty made out the figures of two women ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... will give the best idea of what this is. It consists of a pair of needle-pointed spring compasses, capable, by means of an adjusting screw, of measuring with the greatest accuracy all surcharges up to 40 millimetres in length. In addition to the measure a millimetre gauge is obtained by running the head of the screw along a piece of paper, a series of lines ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... she knows it to be thus that she will be remembered; feels this to be the moment of her immortality. Her form is all but in profile, swaying far forward, but her face is full-turned to us. Her arms float upon the air. Below the stark ruff of muslin about her waist, her legs are as a tilted pair of compasses; one point in the air, the other impinging the ground. One tiptoe poised ever so lightly upon the earth, as though the muslin wings at her shoulders were not quite strong enough to bear her up into the ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... schooners, the fore-and-afters, the Bluenose blunt-prows, came in early before the fog smooched out the loom of the trees and before it became necessary to guess at what the old card compasses had to reveal on ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... keel—8 feet beam, to draw 2-1/2 feet water. Carpenters tools, including hatchets and long saws. Iron work and nails. Pitch and oakum. Cordage rigging, and sails. 2 Boat compasses. 2 Spying-glasses for day or night. 2 Small union flags. 6 Dark lanterns. 2 Tons of Carolina rice. Cooking utensils. ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... his scientific traps. His books, his herbals, his set of pigeon-holes, his instruments of precision, his chemical apparatus, his collection of thermometers, barometers, hygrometers, rain-gauges, spectacles, compasses, sextants, maps, plans, flasks, powders, bottles for medicine-chest, were all classed in an order that would have shamed the British Museum. The space of six square feet contained incalculable riches: the doctor ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... he whispered to me; "our compasses have been tampered with. There exists some vile conspiracy on board to cast the ship away—of that there can be no doubt. We must keep our counsel, however, this time, Marsden, and try and ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... interior. They were lost, in one sense of that term—charmingly, romantically lost—that is to say, neither Ned nor Tom had the most distant idea of where they were, or what they were coming to, but both of them carried pocket-compasses, and they knew that by appealing to these, and to the daily jotting of the route they had travelled, they could ascertain pretty closely the direction that was necessary to be pursued in order to strike the ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... the L., and continue down it and the busy and picturesque Rue Montorgeuil, noting (L.) No. 78, the curious house at the sign of the Rocher de Cancale. 72-64 were part of the roomy sixteenth-century posting house of the Golden Compasses, and have quaint reliefs carved on their facades. We may enter at 64, the spacious old coaching yard, still used by market carts and waggons. The courtyard on the opposite side, No. 47, was the office of the old sedan-chair ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... specialised, capable of appreciating light touch, e.g. with a wisp of cotton wool, as a well-localised sensation, and the finer grades of temperature, called cool and warm (72-104 F.), and of discriminating as separate the points of a pair of compasses 2 cms. apart. These are the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... consideration whereof set me upon my contrivances how I might secure to myself as much of the gingerbread as would keep good for the next two or three days, and yet none of the rest in a manner be wasted. I had a little pair of pocket-compasses, which I usually carried about me for the purpose of making draughts and measurements, at which I was always very ingenious, of the various engines and mechanical inventions in which such a town as Birmingham abounded. By the means of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... distraught ambition compasses, And is encompass'd; whilst as craft deceives, And is deceiv'd: whilst man doth ransack man And builds on blood, and rises by distress; And th' inheritance of desolation leaves To great-expecting hopes: he looks thereon, As from the shore ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... sitting there tete-a-tete with a muffin, which lay on a china plate surrounded by manuscripts, letters, pamphlets, books and blotting-paper. He was engaged in tracing lines upon an immense sheet of foolscap with the aid of a ruler and a pair of compasses, and when he perceived his visitors, he merely rolled his glassy eyes at them, shook his large head as if in rebuke, and then returned to his occupation ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... spectator E, and although here drawn in perspective it appears to him as in the other figure. Also, it is at the same time a perspective and a geometrical figure, and can therefore be measured with the compasses. Or in other words, we can touch the square fj, because it is on the surface of the picture, but we cannot touch the square ghmb at the other end of the cube and can only measure it ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... on to blow only a little harder we'll have to take to 'em. So do you and the stooard putt your heads together an' git up as much provisions as you think the boats will safely carry. Only necessaries, of course, an' take plenty o' water. I'll see to it that charts, compasses, canvas, and other odds and ends ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... They had an abundance of warm clothing for winter, plenty of ammunition, two or three dozen traps, tools of various kinds, nails, screws; etc. In the line of scientific instruments there were two sextants, four chronometers, a number of barometers, thermometers, compasses, etc. With the exception of the Emma Dean, which had on board only instruments and clothing, the boats were loaded in such a way that if one should be lost the expedition would still possess a ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... is no ship employed in long voyages which does not possess at least two compasses, as she has two chronometers. It is necessary to compare these instruments with each other, and, consequently, control ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... the note, I felt almost inclined to write "M. de Platon" in order to put the whole thing in a consistent key; for somehow "Plato" by itself, even in the French form, transports one into such a very different world that adjustment of clocks and compasses becomes at once necessary and difficult. "Galimatias" is good, "autrefois" is possibly better, the "evils inflicted on the human race" better still, but egaye perhaps best of all. The monkey, we know, makes itself gay with the elephant, and probably ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... gentleman comprised chronometers, barometers, telescopes, compasses, charts, maps, sextants, quadrants, and specimens of every kind of instrument used in the working of a ship's course, or the keeping of a ship's reckoning, or the prosecuting of a ship's discoveries. Objects ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... and only I observed that hardly one lighter or boat in three that had the goods of a house in it, but there were a pair of virginalls in it." Why "a pair"? For the same reason that induces many persons to say "a pair of stairs," and "a pair of compasses," that is, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Jean Lafitte, will box the compass, indeed box an entire box of compasses, for no river is more winding. Yet in time we shall reach its end, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... the flesh avenged in kind,' which I dare not speak about more plainly here. I see many young men in my congregation, many strangers in this great city, living, I suppose, in lodgings, and therefore without many restraints. If you were to take a pair of compasses and place one leg of them down at the Free Trade Hall, and take a circle of half a mile round there, you would get a cavern of rattlesnakes. You know what I mean. Low theatres, low music-halls, casinos, haunts of yet viler sorts—there the snakes are, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... lost. A part of those who had any strength left, seeing that their utmost efforts to save the ship were likely to be in vain, applied to the officers for the boats, which were promised to be in readiness for them, and the boatswain was directly ordered to put the masts, sails, and compasses in each. The cooper was also set to work to fill a few quarter-casks of water out of some of the butts on deck, and provisions and other necessaries were got up from ...
— "The Gallant, Good Riou", and Jack Renton - 1901 • Louis Becke
... since A.D. 265. In A.D. 600 the Chinese had invented the art of printing, which in Europe was not invented until 850 years later. The Chinese were acquainted with the magnetic needle 1100 years before Christ, and made compasses, and they knew of gunpowder long before Europeans. Three thousand years ago the Chinese were proficient in the art of casting bronze. In the interior of the country are still to be found most beautiful objects in bronze—round bowls on feet decorated with lions and dragons, vases, dishes, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... She is in charge of experienced navigators. Her compasses and other instruments are the most ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... adjoining the church, close beside the altar, is shown to the visitor, where that prince of bigots, Philip II., passed the last days and hours of his life. It is a scantily furnished apartment, with no upholstery, hard chairs, and bare wooden tables; with a globe, scales, compasses, and a few rude domestic articles, writing material, half a dozen maps, and three or four small cabinet pictures on the walls, forming the entire inventory. A large chair in which he sat, and the coarse hard bed on which he slept and died, are also seen ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... say that their attention has been called to the practice of seamen wearing steel stretchers in their caps, and to the danger which may result from these stretchers becoming strongly magnetised, and being worn by men close to the ship's compasses. Instances have been reported of compasses being considerably deflected in this manner, and their Lordships have now directed that the use of steel stretchers in caps is to be immediately discontinued.' I wonder if the deflection of the compass of the ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... Russian Survey be correct, the long sides measure close upon 5 miles and 500 yards; the short sides, 3 miles and 1200 yards. Hence the whole perimeter was just about 18 English miles, or less than 16 Italian miles. If, however, a pair of compasses be run round Taidu and Yenking (as we have laid the latter down from such data as could be had) together, the circuit will be something like 24 Italian miles, and this may have ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the Dutch compasses varied as they used to do a whole point, while those of Genoa, which used to agree with them, varied but a very little, though afterwards sailing farther east they varied more, which is a sign that we were 100 leagues ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... rummaging about for souvenirs in half-destroyed dugouts where dead bodies lay. They were "swapping" souvenirs—taken from prisoners—silver watches, tobacco-boxes, revolvers, compasses. Many of them put on German field-caps, like schoolboys with paper caps from Christmas crackers, shouting with laughter because of their German look. They thought the battle was won. After the first wild rush the shell-fire, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... barbarian, who writes a tedious commentary, in ten books of rambling verse, on the first chapter of Genesis! That slovenly imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the creation by making the Messiah take a pair of compasses from heaven's armory to plan the world; whereas Moses represented the Deity as producing the whole universe by his fiat! Can I think you have any esteem for a writer who has spoiled Tasso's hell and the devil; who transforms Lucifer, sometimes into a toad, and at others into a pygmy; ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Lammle, laughing airily, and, full of affectionate blandishments, opening and closing Georgiana's arms like a pair of compasses, than my little Georgiana Podsnap. So this young Fledgeby goes to that Alfred Lammle ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the point round which a circle is described by a pair of compasses). The central portion or ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... to see with what boldness and precision Aranghie drew his designs upon the skin, and what beautiful ornaments he produced; no rule and compasses could be more exact than the lines and circles he formed. So unrivalled is he in his profession, that a highly-finished face of a chief from the hands of this artist is as greatly prized in New Zealand as a head from the hands of Sir Thomas Lawrence is amongst ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... we resumed our east course with a gentle breeze and fair weather. After sun-rise, being then in the latitude of 58 deg. 30' S., longitude 15 deg. 14' west, the variation, by the mean results of two compasses, was 2 deg. 43' east. These observations were more to be depended on than those made the night before, there being much less sea now than then. In the afternoon, we passed three ice-islands. This night was spent ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... that they made, he saw, were definite harmonious patterns their dark figures traced upon the shining valley floor. Like the points of compasses, with stems invisible, and directed from the sky, their movements marked the outlines of great signatures of power—the sigils of the type of life they would evoke. It would come as a Procession. No individual outline could contain it. It needed for its visible expression—many. ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... several things of less value, but not all less useful to me, which I omitted setting down before: as, in particular, pens, ink, and paper; several parcels in the captain's, mate's, gunner's, and carpenter's keeping; three or four compasses, some mathematical instruments, dials, perspectives, ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... masts in ships, and yards, and his son made sails for them: but Perdix his nephew excelled him; for he first invented the saw and its teeth, copying it from the back-bone of a fish; and invented, too, the chisel, and the compasses, and the potter's wheel which moulds the clay. Therefore Daidalos envied him, and hurled him headlong from the temple of Athene; but the Goddess pitied him (for she loves the wise), and changed him into a partridge, which flits for ever about the hills. And Daidalos fled to Crete, ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... nine verses hath yet moe then the eight, and the staffe of ten more then the ninth and the twelfth, if such were allowable in ditties, more then any of them all, by reason of his largenesse receiuing moe compasses and enterweauings, alwayes considered that the very large distances be more artificiall, then popularly pleasant, and yet do giue great grace and grauitie, and moue passion and affections more vehemently, as it is well to be obserued by Petrarcha ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... seeks to control certain mental processes by isolating them and regulating their action. This may be effectively done in the study of certain processes. For instance, by passing the two points of a pair of compasses over different parts of the body, the tactile sensibility of the skin may be compared at these different parts. By this means it may be shown that the tip of the finger can detect the two points when only one twelfth of an inch apart, while on the middle of the back they may require to ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... The infection which had tainted lyric and didactic poetry had but slightly and partially touched the drama. While the noble and the learned were comparing eyes to burning-glasses, and tears to terrestrial globes, coyness to an enthymeme, absence to a pair of compasses, and an unrequited passion to the fortieth remainder-man in an entail, Juliet leaning from the balcony, and Miranda smiling over the chess-board, sent home many spectators, as kind and simple-hearted as the master and mistress of Fletcher's Ralpho, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... alike in heart and arm, became, nominally, commander, but really the cat's-paw, of his crew, at whose bidding the ship was steered. When Abraham Lincoln was called to the helm he found the once stanch, strong vessel in a leaky, damaged condition, with her compasses deranged, her rudder broken, and the luminous star by which Washington guided his course dimmed by a cloud of disunion and doubt. When the belching cannon opened upon Sumter, then it was that the ship of State was found to be all but ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... for them it was the introduction to a future which had a sun in it, rayful and radiant with the beams of hope and promise. Let those who denounce and deplore this harsh unpeopling come and stand upon the cold, bleak summit of one of these Sutherland mountains. Let them bring their compasses, or some other instrument for measuring the angles, sines and cosines of human conditions. Plant your theodolite here; wipe the telescope's eye with your handkerchief; look your keenest in the line of the lineage ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... this they supped, and went to rest. Next morning Alka called her daughter, and said, "Bring me the gazelle." When it was brought her, she said, "Bring me the wings of an eagle." Taka gave them to her, and she bound them on the back of the gazelle. She then took a pair of compasses, which she fixed in the ceiling of the room. She next took two other pairs of compasses, which she fixed in the ceiling of the room. She next took two other pairs of compasses, and tied one between the fore feet, and the other between the hind feet of the gazelle. She ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... minutely technical. He would assemble his class in a little morning room, with books before them, and a case of mathematical instruments, pens and pencils. His pupils wrote what he saw fit to dictate, and he taught them how to use the compasses. Next came botany, which was not a new study to his pupils. There his brothers assisted him. They made a joint hortus siccus under his instruction. Edwin contributed many specimens from Scotland, and Marmaduke made a little collection of mosses. But they had to thank the curate for yet higher ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... lunch, I hurried out to transact such of my business as had been interrupted by the stirring events of the morning, leaving Thorndyke busy with a drawing-board, squares, scale, and compasses, making accurate, scaled drawings from his rough sketches; while Polton, with the brown-paper parcel in his hand, looked on at him with an ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... be very kind of you," said she, "if you would look after my goods while I put the horse and cart up. I'm only going a couple of yards, to the Golden Compasses, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... the guns waited. A large barrel of water had been put there for the Turkish gunners. This was drained to the last drop. The guns were curiously examined. 'Besides the intricate mechanism and beautifully finished gear, there were some German sextants and range-finders, compasses like those on a ship's binnacle, and other instruments on a lavish scale,' says Hasted. But this inspection was cut short, for now came the counter-attack. The Turks began to shell the captured gun-position. Then, from the railway-embankment, nearly a mile to the Leicestershires' ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... the door and re-entered the room. The boy was there, sitting upon the office stool hard at work with a pair of compasses. ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... thy power, boy. It is not the power I question, but the will. We live in dangerous days. Art willing to partake of the peril which compasses the steps of those who tread in the old ways ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... compasses and an unusually accurate sense of location, the older man had staked their course with admirable directness, and as the moon rose they drew rein at the appointed destination, a wild and rocky valley whose caves offered a natural protection ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... lord,' said the abbot, 'that our lord the King has too many enemies not declared, who compass his destruction while he compasses their soul's health. This is so shameful that we think it no time for the King's lovers to be asleep. Therefore I, with this woman, who, of all persons living in the world, is most dear to him (as he to her), have come to warn your lordship of the Marquess his abominable ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... between the two Orders admits of no denial. Thus Yarker writes: "The symbolic tracing of the Rosicrucians was a Square Temple approached by seven steps ... here also we find the two pillars of Hermes, the five-pointed star, sun and moon, compasses, square and triangle." Yarker further observes that "even Wren was more or less a student of Hermeticism, and if we had a full list of Freemasons and Rosicrucians we should probably be surprised at the numbers who ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... lay in the shade and discussed the direction they should travel from this point. It was not until this time they discovered that their pocket compasses pointed the north as being in a totally different direction from what they had supposed. Phineas Roebach had declared the native settlement of Aleukan to be directly north and west of the place where he had tapped the mud-spouter. But now, although he was positive of the contour of the ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... desired merely as truth, and that it is not the justness of our conclusions, which alone gives the pleasure. For these conclusions are equally just, when we discover the equality of two bodies by a pair of compasses, as when we learn it by a mathematical demonstration; and though in the one case the proofs be demonstrative, and in the other only sensible, yet generally speaking, the mind acquiesces with equal assurance in the one ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... like compasses,—and the way he grasped his gown-wings seemed to turn him to a pair of scales. His lowering smile embraced the room, deprecating strong expressions. "After all," he seemed to say, "we are men of the world; we know there 's not very much in anything. This is ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the physician's patience and understanding. Psychoanalyses which last more than a year, are no rarity. It cannot be applied to the seriously degenerated; to people who have passed far beyond middle life, because among the last named the accumulated material compasses too much; to those who are entangled in a state of great fear and who live in deep depression. Analysis can be applied to the neuroses of children. It is desirable in those cases for the physician to be supported by a trusted person, as for example a woman assistant, but preferably ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... mirror name, Reflecting all creation on its limpid face; 'Tis closed within a narrow frame, Yet compasses high heav'n's blue vault of endless space. This crystal is of priceless worth, But yet the poor possess it, nor possession pay; It is the brightest gem on earth, It gives and yet receives its heaven-born brilliant ray. What is this mirror bright and clear, Free ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller |
