"Velocity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moves quickly as it grows older, with an accelerated velocity, like that of a falling stone; and it is hard for us of the present day to picture the England of King Albert Edward. The restlessness and poverty of the masses; the agitations in Ireland, feebly, blindly protesting with dynamite and other ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... winged horses in the chamber adjoining mine," said Clotilde. So Juan got on one of the animals without knowing where to go. The horse flew from the tower with such velocity, that Juan had to close his eyes. His breath was almost taken away. In a few seconds, however, he was landed in a country ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... forces against the enemy while they were still in disorder, and by quickly traversing the interval between the two lines, deprived the scythe-bearing chariots[239] of all opportunity of being effective. The efficacy of the chariots depends mainly on the space they traverse, by which they acquire velocity and momentum; but when the space is small their attack is ineffectual and feeble, just like missiles that have not been propelled with due force. Now this happened to the barbarians. The first chariots were driven on without any vigour, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... — N. transience, transientness &c. adj[obs3].; evanescence, impermanence, fugacity[Chem], caducity[obs3], mortality, span; nine days' wonder, bubble, Mayfly; spurt; flash in the pan; temporary arrangement, interregnum. velocity &c. 274; suddenness &c. 113; changeableness &c. 149. transient, transient boarder, transient guest [U.S.]. V. be transient &c. adj.; flit, pass away, fly, gallop, vanish, fade, evaporate; pass away like a cloud, pass away like a summer cloud, pass away like a shadow, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of his works with equal velocity. Three columns of the Magazine in an hour was no uncommon effort, which was faster than most persons could have transcribed that quantity' (ib.). According to Hawkins (Life, p. 99), 'His practice was to shut himself up in a room assigned to him ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... by shouting, "'Tis the madness of the fawn who gazes with adoration on the lurid glare of the anaconda's eye," or murmurs, "Farewell, my lovely bird; I'll soon return to pillow in thy nest," we need all the stimulus of his irony and his velocity to carry us over such marshlands ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... [Footnote: Phil. Transact., 1861, 183.] that the tannin molecule is of considerable size, since its diffusion velocity is 200 times less than that of common salt. Patern [Footnote: Zeits. phys. Chem., 1890, iv. 457.] was the first to determine the molecular weight of tannin, employing Raoult's method; he found that tannin in aqueous solution behaves like ...
— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser
... white tails of rabbits previously unseen revealed their owners' whereabouts as they scampered to cover. But Trenholme was sportsman enough to realize that the weapon fired was a rifle; no toy, but of high velocity, and he wondered how any one dared risk its dangerous use in such a locality. He fixed the sound definitely as coming from the wood to the right—the cover quitted so hurriedly by the pheasants—and instinctively his glance turned to the ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... observers, though many clocks were stopped and other instruments deranged. There appears to be no doubt that a force of terrific magnitude was applied in a tangential direction to the surface of the earth, in such a direction as to oppose its axial rotation, with the effect that the surface velocity was diminished by about one part in three hundred, resulting in a lengthening of the day by five minutes, ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... — N. transience, transientness &c adj.^; evanescence, impermanence, fugacity [Chem], caducity^, mortality, span; nine days' wonder, bubble, Mayfly; spurt; flash in the pan; temporary arrangement, interregnum. velocity &c 274; suddenness &c 113; changeableness &c 149. transient, transient boarder, transient guest [U.S.]. V. be transient &c adj.; flit, pass away, fly, gallop, vanish, fade, evaporate; pass away like a cloud, pass away ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a nice point, as I perceived a word beyond the line of demarcation would have inflamed them in a trice. One happened to differ with another on a political point, which produced a loud and rapid stamping with the feet, accompanied by a course of pirouets on the heel with the velocity of a dervish, which fully proved what might be effected on their tempers had I been disposed to try the experiment. They called themselves the Ex-Imperial Guard. On retiring I shook hands with them, and with as low a bow as the little King of Rome, said "Messieurs les Gardes d'Honneur, ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... velocity, swiftness, rapidity, celerity, haste, expedition, dispatch, posthaste; impetuosity. Associated Words: tachymeter, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Macbeth having proposed the object to herself, and arrayed it with an ideal glory, fixes her eye steadily upon it, soars far above all womanish feelings and scruples to attain it, and stoops upon her victim with the strength and velocity of a vulture; but having committed unflinchingly the crime necessary for the attainment of her purpose, she stops there. After the murder of Duncan, we see Lady Macbeth, during the rest of the play, occupied ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... dances of the northern warriors round the great fires of pine- trees, are commemorated by Olaus Magnus, who says, they danced with such fury, holding each other by the hands, that, if the grasp of any failed, he was pitched into the fire with the velocity of a sling. The sufferer, on such occasions, was instantly plucked out, and obliged to quaff off a certain measure of ale, as a penalty for "spoiling ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... roadstead not a vessel remained; all had weighed and preferred being under what canvas they could bear. At last we were within two cables' lengths of the beach, and even at this distance from it we were surrounded with the breakers; the surf broke many feet high, and roared as it rushed up with a velocity that was appalling, dashing the foam right to the door of Bramble's cottage, which was forty or fifty yards higher than it generally gained to even in very bad weather. We now lowered our sails, stowed them in the boat, and got our oars to pass, backing against the surf to prevent it from forcing ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... of course I play scales a good deal and in various ways. When I 'go into training,' I find the best means to attain velocity is to work with the metronome. One can't jump at once into the necessary agility, and the metronome is a great help in bringing one up to the right pitch. You see by the firmness of these muscles at the back and thumb side of my hand, that I am ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... people in the streets stopped to look at, and strangers would say as he passed, "I wonder who that man is?" Of unusual height and stature, with a face beaming in kindness, once seeing him he was always remembered, but the pulpit was his throne. With a velocity of utterance that was the despair of the swiftest stenographers, he poured forth his impassioned soul, making every theme he ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... broad arches of light to the zenith; while rays of brilliant crimson color ranged themselves perpendicularly from earth to sky, shooting up and down with great velocity and tremulousness. In the zenith these arches slowly widened, their rays multiplying until the whole sky was hidden, and then, deepening in intensity of color, became a veritable sea of blood, flowing steadily westward. Over the vast ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... several small uninhabited islands; but the banks of the river appearing to be covered with houses, I again renewed my signals with my waistcoat and a shirt, which I took out of the trunk, hoping, as the river narrowed, they might be perceived; the distance was too great. The velocity with which I was going convinced me of my near approach to the dreadful rapids of La Chine. Night was drawing on; my destruction appeared certain, but did not disturb me very much: the idea of death had lost ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... Its conditions were investigated from photometric data, by Professor E. C. Pickering in 1880;1 and their realization was finally demonstrated by Dr H. C. Vogel's spectroscopic measures in 1889.2 Previously to each obscuration, the star was found to be moving rapidly away from the earth; its velocity then diminished to zero pari passu with the loss of light, and reversed its direction during the process of recovery. Algol, in fact, travels at the rate of 26.3 miles a second round the centre of gravity of the system which ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... first caused unnatural merriment, and then havoc. I escaped from the inferno below, and found a pandemonium on deck. The limited space allotted to the troops was crammed, and at every roll figures were propelled to and fro like high-velocity projectiles. Shell-fire was nothing to it for danger. I got hold of something and smoked, while darkness came on with rain, and the horrors intensified. I bolted down the pit to get some blankets. One ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... was caused in getting about from place to place through the uncongenial presence of a couple of hostile high velocity guns which were commonly known as "Quick Dick" and "Silent Sue," his consort. They were so named on account of the rapidity with which the shells arrived, and there was little or no warning of their coming. Their chief object was to harass the neighbourhood, for (p. 026) ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... or never. If they once commenced dressing, farewell to hope! Well, I did it. Heaven only knows how I got through the terrible ordeal. I only remember that desperation gave strength and speed to my limbs, and I ran with incredible velocity. A moment of terrible confusion ensued as I grasped at my scattered habiliments. There came a scream of laughter from the wicked naiads who were sporting in the waves. I fled over the hills—my bundle in my arms—and never once stopped till ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... beds of sand and stones occur together. The banks are clothed with jungle, and are occasionally skirted with tall grasses, but the churs or islands disappear it may be said with the sands, and are only formed in lower and more distant parts from the mountains, where the velocity of the current is less. Temperature at 6 A.M. 66 degrees, 4 P.M. 76 degrees, (water of B. pooter 64.65,) 7 P.M. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... place, in all of which the English were victorious. The Spaniards proved ignorant of marine evolutions, and the English sailed around them with a velocity which none of their ships could equal, and proved so much better marksmen that nearly every shot told, while the Spanish gunners fired high and wasted their balls in the air. The fight with the Armada seemed a prototype of the much later sea-battles ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... irritable disposition. A sumptuous dormitory is being erected on the top floor, where slow music will be discoursed every afternoon, from three to seven, by a Czecho-Slovak orchestra. A roof-garden is being laid out for the recreation of the staff, and the velocity of the numerous lifts has been keyed up to concert pitch. Steam heat will be conveyed from the basement to radiators on every floor, and each room is being provided with a vacuum-cleaning apparatus, a wireless telephonic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... 250 miles apart, making a group of about 30,000 in a space equal to that of the earth. If such calculations are reliable, the query must arise, How much effect can such a meteoric shower every day in the year exert on the orbital motion of the earth, in retarding its velocity? The effect must be greatly increased if, according to Prof. Newton, the velocity of meteors striking the earth is about thirty miles a second, varying from ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... of September and decrease in April, without noticing the March-June freshets, reported by all the natives to measure about one-third of the autumnal floods. His elements are taken from Tuckey, who found off the "Diamond Rock" a velocity of 3.50 knots an hour, and from Vidal's Chart, showing 9,000 English feet or 1.50 nautical miles in a Thalweg fifty fathoms deep. Thus he assumes only two nautical miles for the current, or sixty inches per second, which must be considerably increased, and ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... elderly gentleman whooping, and kicking up his legs on loose gravel, with great violence, was heard to proceed from the same direction as the former sounds; and before they had subsided, a large cucumber was seen to shoot up in the air with the velocity of a sky-rocket, whence it descended, tumbling over and over, until it fell at Mrs ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... wrote to me on the subject; and showed, by calculations, that the mere gradual expansion of the water of the blood was not sufficient, of itself, to produce a current as rapid as that of the blood was proved to be, even on the lowest estimate of its velocity. This did not shake my faith in the great fact that circulation was created by respiration. It must be so; for in life, such respiration as produces heat is the invariable antecedent of circulation, and nothing else is. There was something, then, which ...
— Theory of Circulation by Respiration - Synopsis of its Principles and History • Emma Willard
... state of their faculties. "We now despise those who, in the Copernican controversy, could not conceive the apparent motion of the sun on the heliocentric hypothesis; or those who, in opposition to Galileo, thought that a uniform force might be that which generated a velocity proportional to the space; or those who held there was something absurd in Newton's doctrine of the different refrangibility of differently colored rays; or those who imagined that when elements combine, their sensible qualities must be manifest in the compound; or those who were reluctant to ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... think of the Frontier Guards as a gang of scientifically illiterate dirk-and-pistol bravos. He fiddled for a while with instruments on the panel; an automatic computer figured the distance to the planet, the boat's velocity, and the time ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... enemy's cannon posted at the windmills was beginning to give way. With rapid decision he committed to General Horn the pursuit of the enemy's left, while he flew, at the head of the regiment of Steinbock, to repair the disorder of his right wing. His noble charger bore him with the velocity of lightning across the trenches, but the squadrons that followed could not come on with the same speed, and only a few horsemen, among whom was Francis Albert, Duke of Saxe Lauenburg, were able to keep up with the king. He rode directly to the place ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... before they were out of range. The last shot was at 325 paces. In all I fired seven shots, and hit six times. This was the best shooting I did in Africa—or anywhere else—and is a first-rate argument for the Springfield and the high velocity, ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... activity upon his feet, and, as if rebounding from the floor, he sprung upwards again, so as almost to touch the roof. In this last gambaud the torch which he bore was extinguished; but this extraordinary warder whirled it round his head with infinite velocity, so that it again ignited. The bearer, who appeared to intend the accomplishment of this object, endeavoured to satisfy himself that it was really attained by approaching, as if cautiously, its left hand to the flame of the torch. This practical ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... As we slowly and toilsomely ascended, the velocity of the wind fiercely increased; down the mountain-side, at a hundred miles an hour, came clouds of blinding, flinty dust, making the blood run from one's lips and cheeks as he plodded on against great odds. With the biting wind, howling and hissing in the ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... sought, however, to bind it perpetually together with that which was stronger than triple bars of brass and steel—the ceaseless current of kind offices, renewing and renewed in an eternal flow, and gathering volume and velocity as it rolled. It was a function intended not for the injury of any. It declared its purpose to be the benefit of all. Concessions which were made between the different States in the Convention prove the motive. Each gave to the ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... eagle. Birdwood came out to meet me on this very unhealthy spot; indeed, in spite of my waving him back, he walked right on to the end of the deserted pier. Just as we were getting near his quarters, a couple of shrapnel burst at an angle and height which, by the laws of gravity, momentum and velocity ought to have put a fullstop to this chronicle. Actually, we walked on—through the "Valley of Death"—past the spot where the brave Bridges bit the dust, to the Headquarters of the 4th Australian Infantry Brigade. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... sky the majestic summit of Chimborazo, while other peaked and round-topped mountains reared their heads proudly around. At length the summit of the sierra was reached, and our mules commenced a descent into the valley, drawing their legs together and sliding down with fearful velocity. I had bean anxious before, I was doubly so now; but the animals with wonderful sagacity kept the centre of the path, and in time I lost all sensation of fear, and could ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... and was told that "they were the eight-and-twenty virtues which chiefly characterized his serene Highness." Prominent in this long list, and they were all faithfully enumerated, were "Philosophy, Audacity, Acrimony, Virility, Equity, Piety, Velocity, and Alacrity." The two last-mentioned qualities could hardly be attributed to the archduke in his decrepit condition, except in an intensely mythological sense. Certainly, they would have been highly useful virtues to him at that moment. The prince who had just taken Gertruydenberg, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... lower course of the Euphrates, the stream rarely acquires a velocity of more than three miles an hour, while the lower Tigris attains double that rate in times of flood. The water of both great rivers is mainly derived from the northern and eastern highlands in Armenia and in Kurdistan, and stands at its lowest level in early autumn and in January. ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... carried (Fig. 15) by a long, vertical, hollow rod which is plunged into the river. A cord that passes over a pulley, P, allows of the apparatus, properly so called, being let down to a certain depth in the water. What is registered is the velocity of the vanes that are set in action by the current, and to effect such registry each revolution of the helix produces in the box, C, an electric contact that closes the circuit in the cable, F, attached to the terminals, B. This cable forms part ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... it is suspended so that the centre of its mass is not placed directly under the point of suspension, because then the alternating influences of weight and velocity are constantly impressing it with motion. Weight carries it down as far as it can go towards the earth's attraction; acquired velocity then carries it onwards; but as the onward movement is constrained to be upward against the direction of the earth's attraction, that ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... outward bound for a Southern or exotic winter had departed; and the glittering machine, every part assembled, refurbished, repolished, and connected, having been given preliminary speed-tests at the horse show, and a tuning up at the opera, was now running under full velocity; and its steady, subdued whir quickened the clattering pulse of the city, keying it ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... particular, when the sudden sound of a horn made both the donkey and the pony prick up their ears. In a few moments a stage coach was in sight, and in a few more the horn and the rattling wheels approached with great velocity towards the two equestrians. George would have jumped off to save himself from being run over, but the donkey saved him for the present the trouble. All his energies were suddenly roused, and he darted forward in a pelting gallop; the butcher's pony did the same. Away they both ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... spring-cushion, on which the baby is laid; two little elastic bands on this cushion secure the arms, whilst other bands secure the head, ankles, and waist. By turning a small handle the machine is very gently set in motion, but by pressing down a knob its velocity may be increased at will. So agreeable is the action of the machine, that when the motion is altogether stopped the child will often cry, or rather coo, that ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... conception of ether furnishes a similar case. Science is not responsible for the notion of a quivering gelatinous substance pervading space, but only for certain laws that, e. g., describe the velocity of light in terms of the vibration. It is true that there is such a thing as ether, not as gratuitously rounded out by the imagination, with various attributes of immediate experience, but just in so far as this concept is employed in verified ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... wearisome any time after the first half-hour of social intercourse. At Hyde Lodge Charlotte had a great deal more of Lingard and condensed and expurgated Gibbon than was quite agreeable; she had to get up at a preternatural hour in the morning and to devote herself to "studies of velocity," whose monotony became wearing as the drip, drip, drip of water on the skull of the tortured criminal. She was very tired of all the Hyde-Lodge lessons and accomplishments, the irregular French verbs—the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... rising, too, and there was no doubt that with darkness it would attain the velocity of a gale, and the storm the proportions of a sub-Arctic blizzard. Snow was already falling heavily, and presently it would be driving and swirling in dense, suffocating clouds. Winter had fallen like ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... her back to one of the band-wheels. It had begun to revolve; in the moment it increased its speed; and he saw a glittering web on its surface. With an exclamation of horror, he pulled her toward him; but he was too late. The wheel, spinning now with the velocity of midday, caught the whole silver cloud in its spokes, and Natalie was swept suddenly upward. Her feet hit the low rafters, and she was whirled round and round, screams of torture torn from her rather than uttered, her body describing a circular right angle to the shaft, the bones breaking ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... generators devised during recent years for the manufacture of gaseous combustibles, the use of which is so often convenient. The motor that it supplies is the most powerful single cylinder one that has hitherto been constructed. It is of 100 indicated h.p., and its normal angular velocity is 100 revolutions per minute. On trial it has yielded 112 indicated h.p., and 76.8 effective h.p., corresponding to an organic rendering of 69 per cent. This motor, elaborated by Messrs. Delamare-Bouteville & Malandin, of Rouen, operates by compression and in four periods, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... went past like a wheeled thing gathering velocity down an ever steeper and steeper slope. It was extraordinary how quickly it flew, and the moment came for the good-bye. She looked at him, and her heart seemed to beat up in her throat. If only he would have thrown his arms around her and been very sorry to go! She wanted a long good-bye ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... further up, and, at high water anchored near the end of the first reach, and made preparations for its further investigation. The tide then began to ebb at the rate of three miles per hour, and continued with nearly that velocity during the whole tide. During the ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... the lower block, and stepped off just as I did so some one called out "hold on." It was too late. I tried to "hold on" with all my might, but my heels went up, and my head went down so rapidly that my hold broke, and I plunged head foremost into the water, some twenty-five feet below, with such velocity that it seemed to me I never would stop. When I came to the surface again, being a fair swimmer, and not having lost my presence of mind, I swam around until a bucket was let down for me, and I was drawn up without a scratch or injury. I do not believe there was a man ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... accomplished, I next took a maul and, shouting to Billy to "stand by", proceeded to knock away the spur shores. There was now a moment's hesitation on the part of the cutter, of which I took advantage to jump clear; and then she began to move, slowly at first but with rapidly increasing velocity, while I dashed the bottle of wine against the craft's cut-water, and named her the Dolphin, in accordance with ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... to which he attached a torpedo. On the night of October 27th, with thirteen companions, he ran quietly up the Sound and was not discovered until his boat struck the boom, when a terrific fire was opened upon him. Backing a short distance, he ran at the boom with such velocity that his boat leaped across it into the water beyond. In an instant more his torpedo struck the side of the "Albemarle" and exploded, tearing a great hole in her hull, which sank her in a few minutes. At the moment the torpedo went off the "Albermarle" ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... there are laws, susceptible of modification in practice, which regulate their growth. It was natural, therefore, that he should join with eagerness in the reforming movement which set in with such irrestrainable velocity after the death of Lewis XV. He was bitter and destructive with the bitterness of Voltaire; he was hopeful for the future with the faith of Turgot; and he was urgent, heated, impetuous, with a heavy vehemence all his own. In a word, he was the incarnation of the revolutionary spirit, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... spectacle of a train of carriages and wagons filled with passengers and goods, drawn along a railway by a steam engine. At eight o'clock in the morning the train started with its load—22 vehicles—hauled by Stephenson's "Locomotion," driven by Stephenson himself. "Such was its velocity that in some parts of the journey the speed was frequently 12 miles an hour." The number of passengers reached 450, and the goods and merchandise amounted to 90 tons—a great accomplishment, and George Stephenson and Edward Pease were proud ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... every-day life, but especially from all the sciences and school-knowledge of the time. The material is abstract, but Donne gives it full poetic concrete picturesqueness. Thus he speaks of one spirit overtaking another at death as one bullet shot out of a gun may overtake another which has lesser velocity but was earlier discharged. It was because of these last two characteristics that Dr. Johnson applied to Donne and his followers the rather clumsy name of 'Metaphysical' (Philosophical) poets. 'Fantastic' would have been a better word. 4. In vigorous ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... on a second watch the time which passes between the flash and the crack, and reckoning a mile for every four seconds and a half, and a little more. For sound travels at the rate of 1142 feet in a second of time, and the velocity of light through such small distances is not to be estimated. In these circumstances a person will be safer by lying down on the ground, than erect, and still safer if within a few feet of his horse; which being then a more elevated animal will receive the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... the fury of the notes could be approximately imagined by these outsiders under the moon, from the occasional kicks of toes and heels against the door, whenever the whirl round had been of more than customary velocity. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... have occupied more than a thousand or two of years. Upheavals of strata and disruptions may be the work of but a short time, or they may be more gradual. And as to the effect of water, that depends on its volume and velocity; no certain rule can be given. Our own direct experience shows that very great changes may take place in ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... feet in the spring, during the neaps reaches only thirteen feet. Late in the afternoon the incoming tide promised to assist us in ascending the river, the downward current of which runs with torrent-like velocity, and with a depth abreast the city of from sixteen to twenty fathoms. Against this current powerful steamers run one hundred and eighty miles up the river to Montreal in eighteen hours, and descend in fourteen hours, including two hours' stoppages at Sorel and Three Rivers. At ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... stood behind the parlour door. In great terror she brought it to the garden, her hand firmly clutched on it, nor could she let it go.' When Mrs. Welton took the stick, 'it drew her with very considerable velocity to nearly the centre of the garden,' where a well was found. Mr. Welton is not likely to have known of the lately published savage examples. The coincidence with the African and Melanesian ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... his associates had developed their ionic drive in 2337, after decades of research. It permitted man to approach, but not to exceed, the theoretical limiting velocity of the universe: ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... strong. The muscular arms of the Indians would throw an arrow with almost the velocity and precision of a rifle bullet. These barbed weapons would tear their way through the birch bark of the canoes as if they were but sheets of brown paper. With appalling suddenness this cloud of war was marshalling its forces. It was sufficiently ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... then return home, either taking the bag with you or leaving it behind, according as circumstances shall dictate. N. B.—I have seen the time when it was eligible and appropriate to leave the sack behind and walk off with considerable velocity, without ever leaving any ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... deacon's, nor the parson's, either, please remember, then, that awkward, shuffling, homely-looking Old Jack was thus suddenly transformed by the royalty of blood, of pride and of speed given him by his Creator from what he ordinarily was into a magnificent spectacle of energetic velocity. ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... such a scale as this. That huge, sweeping river of wind of which I have spoken had, as it appears, whirlpools within it which were as monstrous as itself. Without a moment's warning I was dragged suddenly into the heart of one. I spun round for a minute or two with such velocity that I almost lost my senses, and then fell suddenly, left wing foremost, down the vacuum funnel in the centre. I dropped like a stone, and lost nearly a thousand feet. It was only my belt that kept me in my seat, and ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... light at the earth's surface, it is almost invariably good aloft; and he has again and again verified the well-established fact that all clouds herald their approach and are accompanied by increased wind velocity. ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... waves moved with great velocity and brilliance. Indeed something seemed to be rushing away from the wreck, clad in long winding sheets of flame. It might have been a continuation of the waves in that direction, or it might have been some dolphin or shark flying from ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... the action to the word, and before he realised what he was doing the effect of the lever was to lift the side of the big stone, so that it remained poised for a few moments and then fell over, gliding slowly for a few feet, and then gathering velocity it made a leap right into a heap of debris which it scattered, and then another leap and another, followed by roll, rush, and rumble, till, always gathering velocity, amidst the rush and rattle of stones, it made one final bound of a couple of hundred feet at least, and fell far below us on a projecting ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... on a narrow ledge of rock at the entrance to a huge cavern. Not two feet below rushed the stream which had carried me; it came down through an opening in the wall at a sharp angle with tremendous velocity, and must have hurled me like a cork from its foaming surface. Below, it emptied into a lake which nearly filled the cavern, some hundreds of yards in diameter. Rough boulders and narrow ledges surrounded ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... or larger of the two, rose like the straight trunk of a pine from the hull, simple in its cordage, and spreading a single sheet of canvas, that, in itself, was sufficient to drive the fabric with vast velocity through the water. The hull was low, graceful in its outlines, dark as the raven's wing, and so modelled as to float on its element like a sea-gull riding the billows. There were many delicate and attenuated lines among its spars, which were intended to spread ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... these modern explosives, the organic nitrates, is the way they will stand banging about and burning, yet the terrific violence with which they blow up when shaken by an explosive wave of a particular velocity like that of a fulminating cap. Like picric acid, TNT stains the skin yellow and causes soreness and sometimes serious cases of poisoning among the employees, mostly girls, in the munition factories. On the other hand, the girls working with cordite get to using it as ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... also here an acting cause to account for that balance so often observed in nature,—a deficiency in one set of organs always being compensated by an increased development of some others—powerful wings accompanying weak feet, or great velocity making up for the absence of defensive weapons; for it has been shown that all varieties in which an unbalanced deficiency occurred could not long continue their existence. The action of this principle is exactly like that of the centrifugal governor of the steam engine, which checks and ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... Honore de Balzac has recorded in Louis Lambert, in which he has painted in the person of his hero his own formative years in the college school of Vendome. "His eye would take in seven or eight lines at once, and his mind would grasp the meaning with a velocity equal to that of his glance; sometimes even a single word in a phrase was enough to give him the essence of it. His memory was prodigious. He retained thoughts acquired through reading with the same fidelity as those suggested to him in the course ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... stage, and the representation of a serpent so lively as to frighten half the ladies who see it. It is, indeed, curious in its kind, being wholly a piece of machinery, that enters, performs its exercise of head, body, and tail in a most surprising manner, and makes behind the curtain with a velocity scarcely credible. It is about a foot and a half in circumference of the thickest part, and far exceeds the former custom of stuffing a bag into such likeness. It is believed to have cost more than L200; and when the multitude of wings, springs, etc., whereof it consists, are considered, the charge ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... armchair, placed against the wall at the further end of the salotto, ran violently out into the middle of the room towards us.' Other chairs rushed about 'with still greater velocity.' The heavy table then tilted up, and the moderator lamp, with some pencils, slid to the lower edge of the table, but did not fall off. Mr. Aide looked under the table: Home's legs were inactive. Home said that he thought the table would 'ascend,' and Alphonse Karr dived under ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... heartfelt sincerity, his own fears at the sight and sound of the mischievous engine that discharged a torrent of fire. 'It came flying through the air, like a winged, long-tailed dragon, about the thickness of a hogshead, with a report of thunder, and the velocity of lightning; and the darkness of the night was dispelled by this deadly illumination. The use of the Greek, or as it might now be called the Saracen fire, was continued to the middle of the Fourteenth Century, when the scientific or casual compound ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... Precisely how it happened I could not possibly say, it occurred so suddenly, and moreover I only saw the last part of it; but I imagine that the lad must have lost, or inadvertently released, his hold upon the side of the companion at the critical moment when the velocity of the ship's roll was at its highest. Be that as it may, Julius no sooner stepped out on deck than he went with a run straight to the lee rail of the poop, fetched up against it with a force that must have knocked the breath out of him, and then— although the rail was breast-high to him—in ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... crises of life time gallops with such incredible velocity that it seemed to Emma Jane only a breath before she was being dragged through the fields by the other Daughters of Zion, the guileless little Thirza ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... weapon), they set off up the steep mountain sides, tugging the gun after them. Lieut. Downes led the American forces. They had hardly reached the mountain tops, when the fighting began. The Happahs were armed with spears, and with slings, from which they threw heavy stones with terrific velocity. They seemed to know no fear, and stood gallantly before the advancing Americans, fairly darkening the air with clouds of stones and spears. The Americans, though few in number,—forty, opposed to nearly four thousand savages,—pressed forward, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... accelerated velocity of human evolution is also one of the laws established and proved by modern ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... labour ceases. The eggs are no longer there, but some strength remains; and that strength is expended as the safety of the species demanded in the beginning. The wheels of action go on turning in the absence of the motives for action; they continue their movement as though by a sort of acquired velocity. What clearer proof can we hope to find of the unconsciousness of ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... Scientific Notions Sciences of Observation Knowledge of the Ancients regarding Light Defects of the Eye Our Instruments Rectilineal Propagation of Light Law of Incidence and Reflection Sterility of the Middle Ages Refraction Discovery of Snell Partial and Total Reflection Velocity of Light Roemer, Bradley, Foucault, and Fizeau Principle of Least Action Descartes and the Rainbow Newton's Experiments on the Composition of Solar Light His Mistake regarding Achromatism Synthesis of White Light Yellow and Blue Lights produce White ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... advancing flood had not the racing motor car drowned all other sounds. There was, however, no need to look behind; they knew the wave was there and that it was sweeping down the valley of the Lumano with frightful velocity. ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... grouse or a partridge will fall to a falcon or tiercel, and the sparrow-hawk did not attempt to carry, but held on his way. I jumped down and picked up the body of the lark and the head; the two being entirely disunited. The velocity and force of the stoop must have been tremendous. I have often seen grouse and partridges ripped up the back and neck, and the skull laid bare, but I never saw a head taken clean off before." A sparrow-hawk has been known to pursue a finch between the legs of a man, and to dash through a window-pane ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... and then a joyous laugh followed from the girl; the first produced by a desperate effort of their pursuers, and the last by its failure, the scow, which had now got fairly in motion, gliding ahead into deep water with a velocity that set the designs of their enemies at naught. As the two men were prevented by the position of the cabin from seeing what passed astern, they were compelled to inquire of the girls into the state of ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... is both sweet and gay. It is astonishing that in so complex and rapid a movement of the fingers the musical proportions can be preserved, and that throughout the difficult modulations on their various instruments the harmony is completed with so sweet a velocity, so unequal an equality, so discordant a concord, as if the chords sounded together fourths and fifths. They enter into a movement and conclude it in so delicate a manner, and play the little notes so sportively under the blunter sounds of the bass strings, enlivening with wanton levity, ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... easily determined," answered the Professor. "Ten thousand miles would be 16.6 miles, per second, at that velocity. If the article should be only one inch square it would take 18,000,000 horsepower to transport it that distance in the time given. This calculation is sufficient to show the absurdity ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... rain on the clap-board roof was deafening. At the lower end of the porch the water swished in with all the velocity of a gigantic wave breaking over a ship at sea. The wind howled, the thunder roared and almost like cannon-fire were the successive crashes of lightning among the trees out there in the ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... with a hissing blast, to the terror of horses and cattle. It was complained of as a nuisance; and an action at law against the colliery lessees was threatened unless it was stopped. Stephenson's attention had been drawn to the much greater velocity with which the steam issued from the exit pipe compared with that at which the smoke escaped from the chimney. He conceived that, by conveying the eduction steam into the chimney, by means of a small pipe, after it had performed its ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... rending and cleaving beneath their feet, horses, when under the terryfying influence of a stampede, could not bound away with greater velocity or more majestic beauty of movement. I have seen many an interesting race, but never any thing half so exciting as the flight of a drove of frightened horses. The spectator, who may possibly have a nag among them which he has been unable to get into a canter by dint ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... And the storm flashes with tremulous elan: When the wind hath invaded a cloud, and, whirling there, Hath wrought (as I have shown above) the cloud Into a hollow with a thickened crust, It becomes hot of own velocity: Just as thou seest how motion will o'erheat And set ablaze all objects,—verily A leaden ball, hurtling through length of space, Even melts. Therefore, when this same wind a-fire Hath split black cloud, it scatters the fire-seeds, Which, so ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... what this pain of loss is like; I say, what it is like, for it fortunately surpasses human imagination to conceive its dire reality. Suppose that we could see the huge planets and the ponderous stars whirling their terrific masses with awful, and if it might be so, clamorous velocity, and thundering through the fields of unresisting space with furious gigantic momentum, such as the mighty avalanche most feebly figures, and thus describing with chafing eccentricities and frightful deflections, their mighty centre-seeking and centre-flying ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... the year 1909, one of the most striking signs of progress lies in the fact that, though unable at first to fly even in the lightest winds, the aviator of to-day will fight successfully against a 60 miles-an-hour wind, and will do battle if need be, once he is well aloft, with a gale which has a velocity of 90 miles an hour. He will ascend indeed, and fly, in any wind that permits him to take his machine from the ground into the air, or which the motor of his craft will allow it to make headway against. ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... Mr. Palmer, are entitled to a circumstantial notice from myself—having had so large a share in developing the anarchies of my subsequent dreams, an agency which they accomplished, first, through velocity, at that time unprecedented; they first revealed the glory of motion: suggesting, at the same time, an under-sense, not unpleasurable, of possible though indefinite danger; secondly, through grand effects for the eye between lamp-light and the darkness upon solitary roads; thirdly, through ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... silkily on his lip. Unlike other white men in the tropics, he was there because he liked it. His protective skin pigmentation was excellent. He had been born to the sun. One he was in ten thousand in the matter of sun-resistance. The invisible and high-velocity light waves failed to bore into him. Other white men were pervious. The sun drove through their skins, ripping and smashing tissues and nerves, till they became sick in mind and body, tossed most of the Decalogue overboard, descended to ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... out of danger, Far from it. The storm was increasing in violence, and the hailstones seemed to double in number. Then, too, being forced upward as she was, the airship's bag was pelted all the harder, for the speed of the craft, added to the velocity of the falling chunks of hail, made them strike on the surface of the ship ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... that we KNOW very little. It has been widely believed that the velocity of light is the limiting velocity, and many of our leading authorities hold this view—but it cannot be proved, and is by no means universally held. In this connection, it would appear that J. J. Thompson, ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... towards each of its extremities, and flattened on each of its sides. This is precisely the form of the lower part of the hull of a ship; and it enables both the animal and the vessel, with comparative ease, to penetrate and divide the resisting medium for which they have been adapted. The velocity of a ship, however, in sailing before the wind, is by no means to be compared to that of a fish. It is well known that the largest fishes will, with the greatest ease, overtake a ship in full sail, play round it without effort, and shoot ahead of it at pleasure. This arises from their great ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... glutton, who instantly dropped riddled with shot like a sieve, while a cloud of dusky feathers rose from him into the air. The other, hearing the earthly thunder and Jacky's exulting whoop, gave a sudden whirl with his long wing and shot up into the air at an angle and made off with great velocity; but the second barrel followed him as he turned and followed him as he flew down the wind. Bang! out flew two handfuls of dusky feathers, and glutton No. 2 died in the air, and its carcass and expanded wings went whirling like ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... the story-book of Friar Bacon, who is generally supposed to have been a wizard, but in reality was a great philosopher. Young man, in less than twenty years, by which time I shall be dead and gone, England will be surrounded with roads of metal, on which armies may travel with mighty velocity, and of which the walls of brass and iron by which the friar proposed to defend his native land are types." And yet he makes little of the practical difference between the England of railways and the England ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... few yards when she heard a sudden, sharp whistling in the air near her. Startled, she glanced quickly to one side, and clutched the baby more closely to her—too late; she saw not the arrow, such was its velocity, but felt the baby give one spasmodic bound. She flew along the road, the child screaming as she ran. As she neared the mission, and the houses clustered around it, the inmates started from their various occupations and gazed in astonishment at Juana as she sped by, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... The velocity with which light traverses space is 186,300 miles a second, at which rate it has taken the rays from Sirius which we may see to-night, nine years to reach us. The proper motion of Sirius through space is about one thousand miles ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... couple, measured in foot-pounds, which the dynamo must exert in order to drive the car, and w the necessary angular velocity. Taking the tare of the car as 50 cwt., including the weight of the machinery it carries, and a load of twenty people as 30 cwt., we have a gross weight of 4 tons. Assume that the maximum required is that the car should carry this load at a speed of seven miles an hour, on an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... a white demon, and but for the dust would have appeared to be sailing in the air. Its motion was steadily forward, holding to the road as if on rails. And its velocity was astounding. Long, gray veils, like pennants, streamed in the wind. A low rushing sound became perceptible, and it grew louder, became a roar. The car shot like an arrow past the alfalfa-field, by the bunk-houses, ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... interested in this scientific side, had himself made researches in that direction. Engineering and other journals had printed some of his schemes, including that of an apparatus based upon the notion of exterior ballistics: the resistance of the air proportional to the square of the velocity and, according to this velocity, the exact proportion of the angle of incidence to the angle of projection. Theoretically, it was perfect; in reality there might be some unexpected hitch. It was a question for the venturesome ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... allowing the bridle to dangle on the neck of his horse, as it advanced slowly towards the dogs. A shot from one of the party was heard, on which the puma was seen to leap to the ground and bound off with such velocity as to show that he was very unwilling to stand our fire longer. The dogs set off in pursuit with the utmost eagerness and a deafening cry; the hunter who had fired came up, and said that his ball had hit the monster, and had probably broken one of his ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... clouds increased; it was hard to believe them inanimate. You might have fancied them an army of gigantic souls playing at football with the sun. They seemed to sway in confused splendor; the opposing squadrons bore each other down; and then suddenly they scattered, bowling with equal velocity towards north and south, and gradually fading into the pale evening sky. The purple pennons sailed away and sank out of sight, caught, doubtless, upon the brambles of the intervening plain. Day contracted itself into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... perversity of the "dead foul winds" (as he described his bitter fate to Ball) that prevented him from piercing the Straits of Gibraltar against the continuous easterly current that runs from the Atlantic and spreads far into the Mediterranean with malicious fluctuations of velocity. Many a gallant sailing-ship commander has been driven to despair in other days by the friendly levanter failing them just as they were wellnigh through the Gut or had reached the foot of the majestic Rock, when ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... of the earth. As we can easily see, in an earthquake jar traveling from the opposite end of the earth, there should be no insurmountable difficulty in recognizing the jar, which is a direct upthrow from one which would tilt it to the right or left. Now there is a law of Laplace by which the velocity of spread of sound waves through gas may be calculated. That this law should hold at temperatures and pressures so high as those that must exist in the middle of the earth is, of course, a question, but it will be interesting to see how nearly the actual velocity of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... directly above it, and in the line of its greatest power. But at the time, I thought only of preserving my life. The balloon at first collapsed, then furiously expanded, then whirled round and round with horrible velocity, and finally, reeling and staggering like a drunken man, hurled me with great force over the rim of the car, and left me dangling, at a terrific height, with my head downward, and my face outwards, by a piece of slender cord about three feet in length, which hung accidentally through ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... first breath of the syllable, the door flew open with a specially prepared bang, and Bea shot in with an instantaneous and voluntary velocity that carried her to the centre ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... mad velocity, now uncontrolled, jamming poor Davy's leg between the rudder beam and the wheel post, while Johnny lay sprawling on the deck, holding on like grim death to a stray end of the mizzen-halliard that had ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... projectile is 88 pounds, and its remanent velocity at the moment of impact is 1,295 feet. Under this enormous live force, the masonry gradually crumbles, and carries along the earth of the parapet, and opens a breach ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... revolving round it at various distances. On one of these planets we dwell. Vast, indeed, are the distances of the planets when measured by our terrestrial standards. A cannon-ball fired from the earth to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and continuing its course ever since with a velocity of eighteen hundred feet per second, would not yet be half-way to the orbit of Neptune, the outer planet. And yet the thousands of stars which stud the heavens are at distances so much greater than that of Neptune that our solar system is ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... productive and valuable to a certain degree, is attended with grave danger, as the German airmen have repeatedly found to their cost. Success is influenced very materially by the accuracy of the airman's judgment. A slight miscalculation of the velocity and direction of the wind, or failure to detect any variations in the climatic conditions, is sufficient to prove his undoing. German airmen who essayed journeys of discovery in this manner, often failed to regain their lines because they ventured too far, misjudged ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... stood ready to devour me. Then it seemed as if a heavy cloud passed by, and with a fearful leap I sprang upon it and floated through the sky until it began gradually to grow thinner and thinner and I lay unsupported in mid-air. Then I began to sink, first slowly, but gradually increasing in velocity until I seemed to go swifter than the wind, and at every moment expected to be dashed to pieces. But as I neared the earth I began to descend slower; when, lo! I softly alighted at the door of our camp, and there I found Duncan and Lewis. Indeed it seemed ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... compelled to take further draughts of the same strong bowl, found that, instead of at all contributing to his recovery, they had the novel effect of making the counting-house spin round and round with extreme velocity, and causing the floor and ceiling to heave in a very distressing manner. After a brief stupor, he awoke to a consciousness of being partly under the table and partly under the grate. This position not being the most comfortable ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... intermediate principle to a certain degree compatible with the correctness of both parties. The question under discussion was whether the measure of vis viva is equal, as the Cartesians thought, to the product of the mass into the velocity, or, according to the Leibnitzians, to the product of the mass into the square of the velocity. Kant's unsatisfactory solution of the problem—the law of Descartes holds for dead, and that of Leibnitz for living forces—drew upon him the derision of Lessing, who said that ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... organised by Mr. Palmer, are entitled to a circumstantial notice from myself, having had so large a share in developing the anarchies of my subsequent dreams: an agency which they accomplished, 1st, through velocity at that time unprecedented—for they first revealed the glory of motion; 2dly, through grand effects for the eye between lamplight and the darkness upon solitary roads; 3dly, through animal beauty and power so often displayed in the class of horses selected for this mail ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... from the warrior as to the course of the creek, etc., but when they saw the horse approaching they scampered off, and the bedizened warrior projected himself into the friendly branches of the nearest tree with the most astonishing velocity. Perceiving that it was useless to try to approach them, without actually running them to earth, we left them; and crossing the river easily over its stony bed, we continued north-west towards a mountain in the ranges that traversed the horizon in that direction. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... braced and connected by a wooden platform, would have been drawn under by the deadly clutch of that swirling vortex. No open boat could have lived in it for a minute; and even the raft, spinning round and round with dizzy velocity, was sucked downward until it was actually below the level of the surrounding water. But, sturdily resisting the down-dragging force, its wonderful buoyancy finally triumphed, and as its rotary motion became less rapid, Cabot sat up and ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... so long accustomed to open the path of victory! Prince Schwartzenberg soon passed the Aube and marched upon Vitry and Chalons. Napoleon, counting on the possibility of defending Paris, threw himself, with the velocity of the eagle, on Schwartzenberg's rear by passing by Doulevant and Bar- sur-Aube. He pushed forward his advanced guards to Chaumont, and there saw the Austrian army make a movement which he took to be a retreat; but it was no such thing. The movement was ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... other hand, the system of requisitions, either for immediate supplies or for secondary magazines, gives far greater velocity and impetuosity to an active army; and if it be so regulated as to repress pillage, and be levied with uniformity and moderation, it may be relied on with safety in well-cultivated countries; but in more barren and less populous districts, an army without ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... bursting five or six hundred yards away, in the direction of the new British trench; but at that distance they do not count. Then a railroad train seemed to have jumped the track and started to fly. Fortunately and unfortunately, sound travels faster than big shells of low velocity; fortunately, because it gives you time to be undignified in taking cover; unfortunately, because it gives you a fraction of a second to reflect whether or not that shell has your name and your number on ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... he hoped to attain a thousand miles an hour velocity. That meant, say, breakfast in New York, lunch in London, tea in Novo-Sibirsk, dinner in Yokohama—as soon as the myriad planes which would follow this one in design and capabilities took off on ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... by the brook to his half-built nest. Sometimes the pair of them cling to the mortar they have fixed under the eave, and twitter to each other about the progress of the work. They dive downwards with such velocity when they quit hold that it seems as if they must strike the ground, but they shoot up again, over the wall and the lime trees. A thrush has been to the arbour yonder twenty times; it is made of crossed laths, and overgrown with "tea-plant," and the nest is ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... to a mere chrysalis, having cords wound all over my body which glued my arms to my flanks, I was lifted like a bundle and lowered by a rope through the window to the ground. The descent—for I spun round and round with horrible velocity—made me extremely giddy; probably I lost my senses for a time. My next discovery was of being carried swiftly over the ground by one who ran rather than walked; of my captor mounting what I supposed to be the city wall, with me on his back, dropping lightly on the other side and ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... conduction of nervous impulses is concerned. This may reasonably be concluded in the light of the evidence offered by the injuries of the spinal cord, in which several segments usually suffered if the velocity of the bullet was great, and also if the fact is remembered that, when thickening takes place, a considerable length of ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... Mongols of the waters, who live upon fish and hunting, and have neither flocks nor herds. Farther north, likewise, there is no city, but a poor people of herdsmen, who are called Kerkis. The Orangin are there also, who bind smooth bones under their feet, and thrust themselves with such velocity over the ice and snow, as to overtake beasts in the chase. There are many other poor nations in those parts, inhabiting as far to the north as the cold will permit, who join on the west with the country of Pascatir, or the Greater Hungary, of which I have made mention ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... no experience at all in gliding, we deemed it unsafe to attempt to leave the ground. But on the day following, the wind having subsided to 14 miles per hour, we made about a dozen glides. It had been the original intention that the operator should run with the machine to obtain initial velocity, and assume the horizontal position only after the machine was in free flight. When it came time to land he was to resume the upright position and alight on his feet, after the style of previous gliding experiments. But in actual trial we found it much better to employ ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... spires, that I could almost fancy we had been transported to one of the floating cities of Fairyland. The rapid motion, too, of our ship, in what appeared a dead calm, added much to the magical effect of the scene. A light but steady breeze urged her along with considerable velocity through a maze of ponds and canals, which, from the immense quantity of ice that surrounded them, were calm and unruffled as the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... principles. If any wing were a rigid plane surface, it appears to me that there are only two ways in which it could be made to produce flight. Firstly, on the principle that the resistance in a fluid, and I believe also in air, increases in a greater ratio than the velocity (? as the square), the descending stroke might be more rapid than the ascending one, and the resultant would be an upward or forward motion. Secondly, some kind of furling or feathering by a rotatory motion of the wing might take place on raising the wings. I think, however, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... passes into a mixer, where it is stirred and kept from caking until it is put into the centrifugal machines, which actually spin off the crystals. These machines are lined with gauze, and as they whirl at tremendous velocity they force out through this gauze the liquid part of the sugar and leave the sugar crystals inside the machine. When these are quite dry the bottom of the receptacle opens, and the granular sugar is dropped through into ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... oddly your letters travel. That of the 30th March arrived on the 15th, instant; and yesterday, those of the 6th and 13th by the same mail. To solve this phenomenon, I am led to believe that they have moved with a velocity proportioned to the spirit which was infused in them by the writer. Thus, the first crawled with a torpor corresponding with its character. It reminded me of the letter of a French lady, which I have shown you as a model ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... ejected thirty seconds after we first saw the object. As the object fell it drifted slightly north of due west against the prevailing wind. The speed, horizontal motion, could not be determined, but it appeared to be slower than the maximum velocity F-80 aircraft. ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... whatever it touches, for the irradiating, smiting efficiency, the flash and the bolt, of the other? Imogen is perhaps the most completely expressed of Shakespeare's women; for in her every faculty and affection is fused with imagination, and the most exquisite tenderness is combined with vigor and velocity of nature. Her mind darts in an instant to the ultimate of everything. After she has parted with her husband, she does not merely say that she will pray for him. Her affection is winged, and in a moment she is enskied. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... observations of a type formerly regarded as impossible. The chemical analysis of a faint star is now so easy that it can be accomplished in a very short time—as quickly, in fact, as an equally complex substance can be analyzed in the laboratory. The spectroscope also measures a star's velocity, the pressure at different levels in its atmosphere, its approximate temperature, and now, by a new and ingenious method, its distance from the earth. It determines the velocity of rotation of the sun and of nebulae, the existence and periods of orbital revolution of binary ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... breaking the Strett screens, an impact velocity of about six miles per second was necessary. The time required to attain this velocity was about ten seconds, and the flight ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... they were indispensably obliged to carry with them. Their feet were placed within the opening of the little cave; which was no sooner done, than they perceived themselves borne into it with great force and velocity. Futurity was there revealed to them; but not to all in the same manner. Some saw, others heard, wonders. From thence they returned quite stupified, and out of their senses, and were placed in the chair of Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory; not without great ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... the nearest robot came within a dozen feet, matching Mel's own velocity. Suddenly, from a small opening in the machine, a slender metal tentacle whipped out and wrapped about him like the coils of a snake. The second robot approached and added another binding. Mel's arms and legs ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... distracted hens flew squalling over the wall and scattered about, under, over, and before the horse, as only distracted hens could do. It was too much for Bob's nerves; and, taking matters into his own hands, or feet, rather, he broke into a run, and rattled the old lady over the stones with a velocity ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... adjustment, and the impossibility of the packing rings adapting themselves to the varying pressures of the steam on the piston. A number of attempts have been made to produce a self packing or steam expanding piston, which will act always with the pressure of the steam and the velocity of the engine. The advantages of such a piston will be readily appreciated by practical engineers, especially drivers of locomotives, working, as they nearly all do, at a very high pressure of steam. The general complaint ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... winning-post, was evidently the emulous desire of each. As they approached near and nearer, the snow flew from their shovels with a force and velocity which would certainly have reminded Mr. Coffin of a steam snow-plough, had he ever seen or heard, of such a thing, which he most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... piece of wood on the head of a whale-boat, round which the harpooner gives the line a turn, in order to veer it steadily, and check the animal's velocity. Also a strong timber fixed vertically into the ground, part being left above it, on which to fasten ropes. Also a lighter sort of dolphin for attaching vessels to. Wharves have bollards to which vessels are secured ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... shutter passes in front of the objective, it will first allow of the passage of the rays which come from the sky, then, on continuing its travel, it will unveil the landscape, and lastly the ground. As it is submitted to the law of the fall of bodies and has a uniformly increasing velocity, it follows that the time of exposure will uniformly decrease between A' and B', and that the sky will pose longer than the foreground. Such a result is contrary to all photographic rules, which require that objects shall pose so much the longer the less they are lighted. This position of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... We were there to make a report. Each day we kept a record of the velocity and direction of the wind, the humidity of the air, the distance across King Street and the height of the C.P.R. Building. All this we ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock |
