"Invention" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very pretty. There was a little piece o' swamp on the island where good rushes grew plenty, and she'd gathered 'em, and braided some beautiful mats for the floor and a thick cushion for the long bunk. She'd showed a good deal of invention; you see there was a nice chance to pick up pieces o' wood and boards that drove ashore, and she'd made good use o' what she found. There wasn't no clock, but she had a few dishes on a shelf, and flowers set about in shells fixed to the walls, so it did look sort of homelike, though ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... illustration may be derived from the following, passage in South's Sermons, in which I have ventured to supply the words between crotchets that seemed to be wanting to complete the sense. Now whether these three, judgement memory, and invention, are three distinct things, both in being distinguished from one another, and likewise from the substance of the soul itself, considered without any such faculties, (or whether the soul be one individual substance) but only receiving these ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... experiment; discouragement, hope, effort and final success—this is the history of many an invention; a history in which excitement, competition, danger, despair and persistence figure. This merely suggests the circumstances which draw the daring Boy Inventors into strange experiences and startling adventures, and which demonstrate the practical ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... would have been less unfortunate, if he could have "suppressed" the work of Mr. Gallatin to which he has the effrontery to refer as an authority for his ridiculous assertion, that the "so-called picture-writing" of the Aztecs was a Spanish invention. As Mr. Gallatin's essay is within the reach of any of our readers who may be inclined to consult it, we shall content ourselves with a single remark on the subject. That learned writer, who had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... invented hot coffee was a genius! The chord of the ninth and the diminished seventh were ordinary discoveries; any musician was bound to stumble across them sooner or later. But this," and he poured the ground coffee into the pot, "is a positive invention of genius!" ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... positively asserted by astronomers that at least twelve hundred years were required, "during which time the observations must have been taken with the greatest care and regularly recorded," to arrive at the knowledge necessary for the invention of the Neros, and that such observations would have been impossible without the aid of ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... to be filled with hot air, after Montgolfier's plan, and round which the platform for the travellers was arranged. The upper part was a huge gas balloon. 'My idea is,' said De Rozier, 'that by this invention much gas will be saved, for when I wish to descend I shall simply cool the hot air in the Montgolfier instead of letting out the gas. Then, to rise again it would only be necessary to rekindle the fire. This ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... by imagining the little people had put the mechanism in some shelter for me, had I not felt assured of their physical and intellectual inadequacy. That is what dismayed me: the sense of some hitherto unsuspected power, through whose intervention my invention had vanished. Yet, for one thing I felt assured: unless some other age had produced its exact duplicate, the machine could not have moved in time. The attachment of the levers—I will show you the method later—prevented any one from tampering with it in ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... thing. The fact is that originality (unless in minds of very unusual force) is by no means a matter, as some suppose, of impulse or intuition. In general, to be found, it must be elaborately sought and, although a positive merit of the highest class, demands in its attainment less of invention than negation. ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... a common observation among mankind, that love is the most fruitful source of invention; and that in this case the imagination of a woman is still more fruitful of invention and expedient than that of a man; agreeably to this, we are told, that the women of the island of Amboyna, being closely watched on all occasions, and destitute of the art of ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... speed, dissolved into its separate parts, practically disintegrated, and left an astonished driver floundering by himself upon the sand, we may assume that no noticeably greater speed can be attained except by some wholly different method or new invention. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... rests on very slender grounds. (Bibliotheca Nova, tom. ii. p. 3.) The work by which he is best known to Spanish scholars, is his "Anales del Rey Don Fernando el Catolico," which still remains in manuscript. There is certainly no Christian country, for which the invention of printing, so liberally patronized there at its birth, has done so little as for Spain. Her libraries teem at this day with manuscripts of the greatest interest for the illustration of every stage of her history; but which, alas! in the present gloomy condition of ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... fisherman and tackle-maker, had made me a double split-bamboo rod, and I had brought the much-talked-of B-Ocean reel. This is Boschen's invention—one he was years in perfecting. It held fifteen hundred feet of No. 24 line. And I will say now that it is a grand reel, the best on the market. But I did not know that then, and had to go through the trip with it, till we were both ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... well-known fact that the Egyptians had cultivated geometry for that express purpose thirty centuries before he was born. As to his inventing sun-dials, the shadow had gone back on that of Ahaz a long time before. In reality, the sun-dial was a very ancient Oriental invention. And as to his being the first to make an exact calculation of the size and distance of the heavenly bodies, it need only be remarked that those who have so greatly extolled his labours must have overlooked how incompatible such discoveries are with a system ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... details were plainly beyond a frightened lad's power of invention, and Lackington ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... this was an instance where "necessity was the mother of invention." He realized that if he could run some of his front material over to the back he would relieve the pressure at the front, present a more varied contents there, and make his advertisements more valuable by putting them next ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... among those having such communication most frequently. Its presence is probably the result simply of borrowing a convenient feature from those who invented it to meet a necessity. The conditions under which the houses were built have hardly been such as to stimulate the Tusayan to the invention of such a device. The uniform height of the second-story roofs seen in this village, constituting an almost unbroken level, is a rather exceptional feature in pueblo architecture. Only one depression occurs in the whole length ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... that man to go without grievous scathe. In mechanics, there are many machines that work prettily enough in speculation and on paper, where the inventors do not consider the difficulties of imperfect material, careless handling, climate, and other influences, that render the invention of no practical avail. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... meeting, produce a piece of our own composing, in order to improve by our mutual observations, criticisms, and corrections. As language and expression were what we had in view, we excluded all considerations of invention by agreeing that the task should be a version of the eighteenth Psalm, which describes the descent of a Deity. When the time of our meeting drew nigh, Ralph called on me first, and let me know his piece was ready. I told ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Skinner's authoritative support to the substance of the thesis maintained above is very welcome, strengthened as it is by the point which he makes in the first of the following sentences: "The deliberate invention of an incident, which had no point of contact in the authentic record of his life, is a procedure of which no assured parallel is found in the book. We must at least believe that a trustworthy tradition lies behind the passage in ch. xi; and the conclusion ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... principles—the man of art, not the less nobly gifted, is possessed and carried away by them. The principles which art involves, science evolves. The truths on which the success of art depends lurk in the artist's mind in an undeveloped state, guiding his hand, stimulating his invention, balancing his judgment, but not appearing in regular propositions." "An art (that of medicine for instance) will of course admit into its limits, everything (and nothing else) which can conduce to the performance ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Topics of the Day, Foreign Comment, Science and Invention, Letters and Art, Religion and Social Service, Current Poetry, Miscellaneous, Investments ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... beginning and have the country become a Union of States, the opposers of slavery had to compromise the use of terms, and take measures that seemed expedient. They fondly hoped as time rolled on, to legislate the freedom of slaves. But the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, in 1793, immensely increased the value of slave labor, and forever fastened the institution upon the southern planters, so far as future legislation was concerned. It had been so difficult to separate the cotton ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... a grant to the patentee, his heirs or assigns, for the term of seventeen years, of the exclusive right to make, use and vend the invention or discovery throughout the United States and the Territories, referring to the specification ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... fable of the 500 men of the rear guard, who, it is pretended, saw them die! I make no doubt that the story of the poisoning was the invention of Den——. He was a babbler, who understood a story badly, and repeated it worse. I do not think it would have been a crime to have given opium to the infected. On the contrary, it would have been obedience to the dictates of reason. Where is the man who would ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... of invention was suppressed. There was no anxiety to achieve, no desire for individual excellence. With invention ceasing the Age of Brain went out—that Age of Brain that brilliant period in the world's history which only covered one hundred years, ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... amused in the evening, when upon deck, by a little drummer, who invariably collects all the sailors round him, and spins them long, endless stories of his own invention, to which they listen with intense interest. On he goes, without a moment's hesitation, inventing everything most improbable and wonderful; of knights and giants and beautiful princesses, and imprisoned damsels, and poor peasants becoming great kings. He is a little ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... Here we must put aside all idea of "Four Great Roads." That category is probably the invention of antiquaries, and certainly unconnected with Roman Britain (see ERMINE STREET). Instead, we may distinguish four main groups of roads radiating from London, and a fifth which runs obliquely. One road ran south-east to Canterbury and the Kentish ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... historian is compared with himself), as to form in the eyes of all competent judges a characteristic mark of the genuineness, independency, and (if I may apply the word to a book), the veraciousness of each several document; a mark, the absence of which would warrant a suspicion of collusion, invention, or at best of servile transcription; discrepancies so trifling in circumstance and import, that, although in some instances it is highly probable, and in all instances, perhaps, possible that they are only apparent and reconcilable, no ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... had it not come too late? He knew the boundless possibilities of his invention—but they had still to be realised. To do this would cost thousands of pounds, and he had just one half-crown and a few coppers. Even these were not really his own, for he was already a week behind with his rent, ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... the abstract beautiful which is generally supposed to be the marking characteristic of the artistic temperament. But he had a wonderful faculty of executing with his hands whatever his mind had conceived, and a mind singularly active in invention and in devising means for the execution of a mechanical end. Had circumstances not made him a sculptor, he might have been—probably would have been—a successful inventor, mechanician or engineer. Throughout ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... "This invention has millions in it, millions," said the Tennessee Shad, promoter. "It is simple, but revolutionary. Every room in the school must be ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... amenaena karaena]; or rather is but the shadow of a shade; for he has taken the character of Martinus Scriblerus, as he found it in the memoirs of that unsubstantial personage. The adventures indeed in which the author has engaged him, though they did not require much power of invention, are yet sufficiently ludicrous; and we join, perhaps, more willingly in the laugh, as it is aimed at general folly and not at individual weakness. The wit is not condensed and sparkling as in the Dunciad; the writer's chief resource consisting in an adaptation of passages ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... befriended Hariot, the universal philosopher, as he has been called. Hariot has been credited with the invention of the system of notation in Algebra. He discovered the solar spots before, and the satellites of Jupiter almost simultaneously with, Galileo. Hariot, who numbered Bishops among his admirers, was accused by zealots of atheism, because his cosmogony was ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Indians of Aryan speech.[362] But can we assume that a king of Oudh really led an expedition to the far south, with the aid of ape-like aborigines? It is doubtful, and the narrative of the Ramayana reads like poetic invention rather than distorted history. And yet, what can have prompted the legend except the occurrence of some such expedition? In Rama's wife Sita, seem to be combined an agricultural goddess and a heroine of ancient romance, embodying ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."[990] God had provided for honorable marriage, and had made the relation between husband and wife paramount even to that of children to parents; the severing of such a union was an invention of man, not a command of God. The Pharisees had a ready rejoinder: "Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?" Be it remembered that Moses had not commanded divorce, but had required that in ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... an invention that has proved invaluable to travellers: they have been used in all quarters of the globe, and are found to stand every climate. A full-sized one weighs only 40 lbs. They have done especial service in Arctic exploration; the waters of the Great Salt Lake, in the Mormon ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... heaven and a new earth." The new theory of Copernicus was, indeed, one of the choicest flowers of the Renaissance, and though timidly enunciated, it revolutionised the world's geography. Further, the discovery of the polarity of the magnet, and the invention of the astrolabe, gave to the mariners of the fifteenth century a sense of security lacking to their fathers, while the kindling flame of the New Learning led them upon the most daring quests. The Portuguese were the first to ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... Gerson, an ecclesiastic distinguished at the Council of Constance for his learning and eloquence, had written a poem of three thousand lines in praise of St. Joseph, setting him up as the Christian, example of every virtue; and this poem, after the invention of printing, was published and widely disseminated. Sixtus IV. instituted a festival in honour of the "Husband of the Virgin," which, as a novelty and harmonizing with the tone of popular feeling, was everywhere ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... "Memory is an invention of Old Nick," said Lady Castlemaine. "Who the deuce wants to remember anything, except what cards are out and what ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... returned from the continent. But, as compared with his later pieces, these are only what the painter's loose studies and sketches are to the landscapes which he afterwards constructs out of them. In his invention of incidents and characters, one thought after another is hastily used and hastily dismissed, as if he were putting his own powers to the test or trying the effect of various kinds of objects on his readers; his most ambitious flights, in the shape of allegories and the like, are stiff and inanimate; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a tact for invention are certainly features peculiar to the French character, but they are far behind the English in their methods of transacting business; this remark is applicable even to most of the public offices; that France is extremely flourishing, and ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... interview with his allies and asked their counsel. Most of the princes of the Low Countries remained faithful to him and the Count of Hainault seemed inclined to go back to him; but all hesitated as to what he was to do to recover from the check. Van Artevelde showed more invention and more boldness. The Flemish communes had concentrated their forces not far from the spot where the two kings had kept their armies looking at one another; but they had maintained a strict neutrality, and at the invitation of the Count of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... I have told you already why I consider this romance not only an absurdity, but the most improbable invention that could have been brought forward in the circumstances. If one tried for a bet to invent the most unlikely story, one could hardly find anything more incredible. The worst of such stories is ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... distant in effect. In those days, in order to reach Boston you were obliged to take a great yellow, clumsy stage-coach, resembling a three-story mud-turtle—if zoologist will, for the sake of the simile, tolerate so daring an invention; you were obliged to take it very early in the morning, you dined at noon at Ipswich, and clattered into the great city with the golden dome just as the twilight was falling, provided always the coach had not shed a wheel by the roadside or one of the leaders had not gone ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy." Thus wrote Shakespeare, and as the centuries roll by, and the marvels of invention and scientific research are unfolded, this truth of the immortal bard becomes the more and more evident to thinking ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... you mean it not! daughter and mother So strive upon your pulse. What! pale again? My fear hath catch'd your fondness: now I see The mystery of your loneliness, and find Your salt tears' head. Now to all sense 'tis gross You love my son; invention is asham'd, Against the proclamation of thy passion, To say thou dost not: therefore tell me true; But tell me then, 'tis so;—for, look, thy cheeks Confess it, one to the other; and thine eyes See it so grossly ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... to hear you speak so warmly of Tresham, Sir John, for I regard him as my special protege, and am pleased indeed to find that at this outset of his career he has proved himself not only a brave knight, but full of resource, and quick at invention. I think, Sir John, that these two young knights have shown themselves well worthy of receiving the honour of ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... and returned towards him. It is probable that the idea of the boomerang may have been taken from the motions of a falling leaf, and especially a leaf of the gum tree. As the weapon is known through all the tribes of Australian blacks, it is not likely to have been a recent invention. ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... port from which the ship sailed, or from some fixed place where the clock could be timed. The English government, seeing the importance of this, proposed the very large reward of L10,000 for the invention of a chronometer which would not lose more than a stated number of minutes during a year. This prize was won by John Harrison, and from this time onward a sea-captain with a minimum of astronomical knowledge was enabled to know his longitude ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... was first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry. The Heathens paid divine honours to their deceased kings, and the Christian world hath improved on the plan, by doing the same to their living ones. How impious is the title of sacred majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... 2. "Invention" showing a more intellectual type of face, carrying the figure with wings spread, suggesting the flight of thought. This thought, as it were, is ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... her own likeness, taken at seventeen, a slender, charming girl whose expression gave one to understand that she could not be still much longer. She would have been a better subject for a motion-picture camera than the invention of Daguerre. Youth looked into the eyes of age and Miss Ann put her hands over her own poor face as though to hide from youth the ravages of time. It seemed to her that the young Ann looked out on the old Ann and said, "What have you done with me? Where ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... delineation of character, the richness of invention, the artistic arrangement, the lively descriptions of nature, will be ever more fully acknowledged by the sympathizing reader as he advances in the perusal ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... The spear of modern invention had not passed through it, and it lay there secret, primitive, savage as when the Saxons first came. And Egbert and she were caught there, caught ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... and posies, to do honour to the birthday of their "well-loved mistress," who is at the same time, "the acknowledged mistress of the choreographic art." In this story, the author is to be complimented on his invention of the name, "Lord Morgagemore" as an ancient looking ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... undergo in the embryonic stages, or are felt simply as vibrations. This would undoubtedly be the case but for the existence of a friction which interferes between theory and practice. This friction is caused partly by the disturbance of vested interests which every invention involves, and which will be found intolerable when men become millionaires and paupers alternately once a fortnight—living one week in a palace and the next in a workhouse, and having perpetually to be sold up, and then to buy a new house and refurnish, ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... therefore a term of contempt. They could give us very graphic pictures of the rude tribal war. They could show how the long-sighted people were always cut to pieces in hand-to-hand struggles with axe and knife; until, with the invention of bows and arrows, the advantage veered to the long-sighted, and their enemies were shot down in droves. I could easily write a ruthless romance about it, and still more easily a ruthless anthropological ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... as I suppose, are those in the chapter that followeth expounded: Where it says, "Let us build us a city, and a tower"; for this work was chiefly the invention of Nimrod, who, with his wicked council, contrived this work; and as one that had made himself head of the people, he enjoined them to set ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that there was no smoke without fire!" the playfulness of tone hardly concealed his irritation. "What power there must be in words, only imperfectly heard—for you did not listen with particular care, did you? What were they? What evil effort of invention drove them into that idiot's mouth out of his lying throat? If you were to try to remember, they ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... With the invention of the kerosene lamp came more efficient lighting of home and street, and with the advent of gas and electricity came a light so effective that the hours of business, manufacture, and pleasure could be extended far beyond ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... bodily eye, that which till then had neither local habitation nor name! Some such marvels I have to show—for marvels I must call them, although it is my voice they have obeyed to come; and I never lose sight of the marvel even while amusing myself with the merest toy of my own invention.' ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... banner is, invariably, Argent, a Cross, Or, in a Bordure Azure; and that this is repeated over and over again, as it is in the war against Conan, as well as at Pevensey and at Hastings; but there is neither hint nor trace of the later invention of the Norman leopards.—Mr. Gurney's arguments are ingenious, but they are not, I fear, likely to be considered conclusive: he however, has been particularly successful in another observation, that all writers, who had previously treated of the Bayeux tapestry, had called it a Monument of the ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... 1593 the title-page of Venus and Adonis shows that a great English earl and patron of the arts was willing to be godfather "to the first heyre" of Shakespeare's "invention," his first published poem. In 1594 Shakespeare also dedicated to Southampton his Lucrece, in terms of greater intimacy, though no less respect. On December 27, 1595, Edmund Spenser's Colin Clout's Come Home Againe ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... of the prisoners, with whom the jails and fortresses were crowded to suffocation, was scarcely to be envied. Though all were uncondemned, and most of them innocent, the whole were delivered over to the merciless authority of apostolic miscreants, who seemed to find no gratification but in the invention of new modes ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and diffusion of knowledge among mankind. Pity him if he has not considered; pity him the more if, having considered, he is small enough of soul to repudiate the debt he owes the race. But for what education has brought us from all its past, but for what it has wrought through the invention of better tools and the better management (through increased knowledge) of all the powers with which men labor, our close-fisted, short-sighted {185} taxpayer would himself be living in a shelter of brush, shooting game with a bow and arrow, cultivating corn with a crooked stick! Most ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... comes from unflagging interest and from perfection of style and construction. No translation can convey an adequate sense of this beauty of color and form; but the versions of William Stewart Rose, here cited, suggest the energy, invention, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... lengthy piece on a historical theme. Of the Miseries of Queene Margarite and of the Moone-Calfe we have already spoken. The most notable piece in the book is the Nimphidia. This poem of the Court of Fairy has 'invention, grace, and humour', as Canon Beeching has said. It would be interesting to know exactly when it was composed and committed to paper, for it is thought that the three fairy poems in Herrick's Hesperides were written about 1626. In any case, ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... own invention, Sergeant Fitzroy," said Ennis icily, "no one of which you'll ever prove. Have you any warrant for this man?"—this ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... sort of stupor, so overlaid you would hardly guess it was there. But, too, as we all know, it often shines out with a startling brilliance. It is less in degree than with God, but it is the same thing, a bit of God in man. This explains man's marvellous achievements in literature, in invention, ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... raconteur; so are all such vagabonds. I possess a collection of these tales by Renucci, published at Bastia[10], and proposed to interweave some of them into my narrative. They may be worked up, with invention and embellishment, into pretty romances; but that is not our business. In Renucci, we have stories of Ospitalit , Magnanimit , Fedelt , Probit , Generosit , Incorruttibilit , all the virtues under the ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... the Strawns to accompany him to Newport News to witness the launching of a new type of battleship. It was said to be, and probably was, impenetrable. Experts who had tested a model built on a large scale had declared that this invention would render obsolete every battleship in existence. The principle was this: Running back from the bow for a distance of 60 feet only about 4 feet of the hull showed above the water line, and this part of the deck was concaved and of ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... her children to bed, only to find that her fertility of imagination in the afternoon was to prove her undoing in the evening; for her memory was by no means as reliable as her powers of invention. ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... work, and in a short time had a machine which, with some improvements, now does the work of a thousand negroes. He built it in secret, but the planters, getting wind of it, broke open his room, stole his invention, built machines of their own, and cheated ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... inquires into 'the various powers, conditions, and aims of mind involved in the conception or creation of pictures, in the choice of subject, and the mode and order of its history; the choice of forms, and the modes of their arrangement.' Very forcible and significant are the reflections upon invention, the 'greatest and rarest of all the qualities of art;' and on 'Composition.' If one part be taken away, all the rest are helpless and valueless; yet true composition is inexplicable—to be felt, not reasoned upon. 'A poet or creator is, therefore, a person who puts things ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... to imply," broke in the colonel, "that the news of this catastrophe is a pure invention—an invention of the English ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... or General who knows exactly how to organise his War according to his object and means, who does neither too little nor too much, gives by that the greatest proof of his genius. But the effects of this talent are exhibited not so much by the invention of new modes of action, which might strike the eye immediately, as in the successful final result of the whole. It is the exact fulfilment of silent suppositions, it is the noiseless harmony of the whole action which we should admire, and which only makes itself known in the ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... and enlarged proscaenium the regular drama were going on behind the siparium. Pliny (xxxv. 199) calls Syrus mimicae scaenae conditorem; and as he certainly did not build a theatre, it is most probable that Pliny refers to his invention of the siparium. He evidently had a natural genius for this kind of representation, in which Macrobius (ii. 7. 6) and Quintilian allow him the highest place. Laberius appears to have been a more careful writer. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Mrs. Thropp dared to exclaim at the wonders of modern invention. Kedzie was enfranchised and began to jump and squeal at the almost suffocating majesty. Adna took to himself the credit ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... a good old fellow to make the best of a thing, and find out the enjoyment of it, as Mr. Omer. He was as radiant, as if his chair, his asthma, and the failure of his limbs, were the various branches of a great invention for enhancing the luxury of ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... that as much of this section as relates to the mongoose is an interpolation. The Brahmanas could not bear the idea of a sacrifice with such profusion of gifts, as that of Yudhishthira, being censurable. Hence the invention about the transformation of the mongoose. Truly speaking, the doctrine is noble of the gift of a small quantity of barley made under the circumstances being superior in point of merit to even a Horse-sacrifice performed by a king with gifts ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... strident voice—"we now have upon the screen here a minute moving picture. This little device, which is not protected in any way, is of my own invention, and proved extremely useful in the Arkwright jewel case, which startled Chicago. It has proved useful now. I know almost as much concerning the arrangements below as the manager himself. In confidence, Inspector, this is my last bid for the slipper! ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... remarkable instance of this truth. Incapable, ignorant, and dissipated as he seemed to be, he understood, or rather felt, with whom it was necessary to be reserved, and with whom he might safely venture to be communicative. The consequence was that he did what Mordaunt, with all his vivacity and invention, or Burnet, with all his multifarious knowledge and fluent elocution ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... painting writhed as if they had received a slap in the face, before those sketches that seemed to flame among the other dead, leaden pictures. They admitted that Renovales was a painter, but he lacked imagination, invention, his only merit was his ability to transfer to the canvas what his eyes saw. The younger men flocked to the standard of the new master; there were endless disputes, impassioned arguments, deadly hatred, and over this battle Renovales', name flitted, appearing ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... them with the lavish dignity that might be the due of princes. The simple nomads felt the charm and the surprise of this first glimpse of the public manners of Rome. Was it possible that these kindly and courteous men were the spoilers of the world? The rumour must be the false invention of the enemies of the bounteous Republic. The untrained mind rapidly argues from the part to the whole, and Sulla's tact had done a great service to his country. He had also established a claim on the Mauretanian king,[1172] and this personal tie was not to be without ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... two vessels was still too great for anything but a few signals, to which Captain Kemp responded with others which may have been of his own invention, for the signal officer on board the Yankee cruiser could make nothing of them. The Goshhawk, moreover, did not shorten sail, and her steersman kept her away several points more southerly, instead of bringing her course nearer to that of ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... the ink-distributing roller were not as yet in general use in small provincial printing establishments. Even at Angouleme, so closely connected through its paper-mills with the art of typography in Paris, the only machinery in use was the primitive wooden invention to which the language owes a figure of speech—"the press groans" was no mere rhetorical expression in those days. Leather ink-balls were still used in old-fashioned printing houses; the pressman dabbed the ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... invisible pipes, from which, as the day advanced, cooling and fragrant showers were to be sprinkled over the spectators. The officers of the amphitheatre were still employed in the task of fixing the vast awning (or velaria) which covered the whole, and which luxurious invention the Campanians arrogated to themselves: it was woven of the whitest Apulian wool, and variegated with broad stripes of crimson. Owing either to some inexperience on the part of the workmen, or to some defect in the machinery, the awning, however, was not arranged that day so happily ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... I believe you. If you had invented all that you would be clever enough to know what your invention is worth and not hand it out to a stranger. But I doubt whether anyone else will believe you—however, that is your affair—you have given me five reels of the finest stuff, or at least the material for it, and if I ever care to use it I will fix you up a contract giving you twenty-five ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... traveller creeps into it, and a kind neighbour having shut him up close by fastening the strap, he leaves him to sleep on till morning, when he helps him out again. In summer the flap is dispensed with. The invention, however, is of European origin, and a luxury introduced by the Missionaries; for an Esquimaux lies down in his clothes, without ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... we are all prepared to acquit you of any responsibility for the advanced condition of wickedness to-day. Man has progressed since your time, my dear grandma, and the modern improvements in the science of crime are no more attributable to you than the invention of the telephone or the oyster cocktail is attributable to ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... so," cried Johnson, rubbing his hands; "with Dr. Clawbonny, we need not despair; he always has some invention handy." ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... regretted that Morse did not, on this voyage as on previous ones, keep a careful diary. Had he done so, many points relating to the first conception of his invention would, from the beginning, have been made much clearer. As it is, however, from his own accounts at a later date, and from the depositions of the captain of the ship and some of the passengers, the story ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... enthusiasts in the advocacy of the new mode of travelling. The Duke of Portland has been such a devotee to the horse, as were his ancestors centuries before him, that it was not to be expected all at once, that he would, give his countenance to any new invention likely to supplant the noble animal in its position as the servant and friend of man. Having been a cyclist, when that hobby seized the fancy of the fashionable world, it was not a long step to automobilism, and having proved the superiority of the motor vehicle, ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... it is not the individual that is drawn, but the type. Where the individual alone is real, the type is a myth of the imagination—a pure invention. And invention is the mainspring of the theatre, which rests purely upon illusion, and does not please us unless ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... the mules turned, sliding swivels on the hollow steel frames regulated the hammock slung between them. It was an infernal invention. ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... kind of game or diversion, has ever given me such enjoyment as lecturing. Only at lectures have I been able to abandon myself entirely to passion, and have understood that inspiration is not an invention of the poets, but exists in real life, and I imagine Hercules after the most piquant of his exploits felt just such voluptuous exhaustion as I ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... several times and trusting to the variety of human character to turn it into several different and equally interesting stories. Pippa Passes, to take another example, is a new and most fruitful form, a series of detached dramas connected only by the presence of one fugitive and isolated figure. The invention of these things is not merely like the writing of a good poem—it is something like the invention of the sonnet or the Gothic arch. The poet who makes them does not merely create himself—he creates other poets. It is so in a degree long past enumeration with regard to Browning's ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... from the innumerable Greek colonies. But to record geographical knowledge, the first thing that is necessary is a map, and accordingly it is a Greek philosopher named ANAXIMANDER of Miletus, of the sixth century B.C., to whom we owe the invention of map-drawing. Now, in order to make a map of one's own country, little astronomical knowledge is required. As we have seen, savages are able to draw such maps; but when it comes to describing the relative ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... regiments, classified into brigades and demi-brigades, the former commanded by Brigadier-General G. D. Wagner, Colonel C. G. Harker, and Colonel F. T. Sherman; the latter, by Colonels Laiboldt, Miller, Wood, Walworth, and Opdyke. The demi-brigade was an awkward invention of Granger's; but at this time it was necessitated—perhaps by the depleted condition of our regiments, which compelled the massing of a great number of regimental organizations into a division to ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... pure invention and as fittingly might have been staged in any other of the nine provinces. The author humbly craves indulgence if he has in any way exceeded the license allowed him in spinning the incidents necessary for a novel of this type while seeking ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... the law of nature. It is a designed piece of wickedness, and therefore a double sin. A man cannot do this great wickedness on a sudden, and through a violent assault of Satan. He that will commit this sin, must have time to deliberate, that by invention he may make it formidable, and that with lies and high dissimulations. He that commits this wickedness, must first hatch it upon his bed, beat his head about it, and lay his plot strong. So that to the completing ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Mr. Howe was engaged in perfecting his invention of what is known as the Howe truss bridge. After securing his patent Mr. Howe contracted to build the superstructure of the bridge across the Connecticut river, at Springfield, for the Western Railroad Company. Mr. Stone ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... invention, citizen," rejoined Chauvelin with slow emphasis. "The papers do exist. They are actually in the possession of the Montorgueils, father and son. To capture the two aristos would be not only a blunder, ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... vases, and pictures, by the most celebrated masters; and here, surrounded by works of art, he carried, (says his biographer,) into execution those numberless productions of his prolific and rich invention, which once adorned his native country, but now are become the spoil of war, and the tokens of conquest and ambition, shining with equal lustre among super-eminent productions of painting in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... Partially performed, the misdeed is not altogether to be regretted; for as one stands in the court of the castle and lets one's eye wander from the splendid wing of Francis I.—which is the last word of free and joyous invention—to the ruled lines and blank spaces of the ponderous pavilion of Mansard, one makes one's reflections upon the advantage, in even the least personal of the arts, of having something to say, and upon the stupidity of a taste which had ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... that a period of monopoly and oppression should subsist, before a period of cultivated equality could subsist. Savages perhaps would never have been excited to the discovery of truth and the invention of art but by the narrow motives which such a period affords. But surely, after the savage state has ceased, and men have set out in the glorious career of discovery and invention, monopoly and oppression cannot be necessary to prevent them from returning to a state of barbarism.'—Godwin's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... were intermixed and heightened with dances peculiarly composed in honor of their deities. From before their altars, and from their places of worship, they were soon introduced upon their theatres, to which they were undoubtedly a prior invention. The strophe, antistrophe, and epode, were nothing but certain measures performed by a chorus of dancers, in harmony with the voice; certain movements in dancing correspondent to the subject, which were all along considered as a ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... I hope it's going to be the hit of the day. Here's a dummy copy.' Mr. Winter picked up an orange-tinted object from a side-table. 'Feel that cover! Look at it! Doesn't it feel like satin? Doesn't it look like satin? But it isn't satin. It's paper—a new invention, the latest thing. You notice the book-marker is of satin—real satin. Now observe the shape—isn't that original? And yet quite simple—it's exactly square! And that faint design of sunflowers! These ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... a few words in justification of the Historical Romance, in its relation to history. Any one, with no preceding profound study of history, who takes a few well-known historical facts as a foundation for an airy castle of romantic invention and fantastic adventure, may easily write an Historical Romance; for him history is only the nude manikin which he clothes and adorns according to his own taste, and to which he gives the place and position most agreeable to himself. But only the writer who is in ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... a German invention, so named because its calibre corresponded with the diameter of the old coin, “pistole.” They were first used by German cavalry at the battle of Renty (1554), and contributed greatly to the defeat of the French. After that they ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... did British commerce sail unmolested. A new and terrible menace was to appear. This was the submarine boat, the invention of Mr. John Holland, an American, but improved and enlarged by the Germans. In one of the early months of the war three British warships, the Hogue, the Cressy, and the Aboukir, were cruising about, guarding the waters of the North ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... progress towards general adoption even when their advantages were apparent. It was more than a century after muskets were first used in war before they were introduced in the English army to the exclusion of bows and arrows; more than fifty years passed after the invention of flint-locks before they were substituted for match-locks; and many years elapsed after the invention of the percussion-lock before it came ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... butter stirred in, or curry, not enough to yellow the sauce, but enough to give a dash of piquancy. A pickled walnut chopped, or a gherkin or two, go admirably with mutton or pork chops. In short, this is just where imagination and brains will tell in cooking, and little essays of invention may be tried with profit. But beware of trying too much; make yourself perfect in one ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... his life contained in this letter,"—the detective held up the slatey-blue paper,—"Mr. Parrish had either in his pocket or, as I am more inclined to think, lying on the desk in front of him, his Browning automatic pistol. This pistol was fitted with a Maxim silencer, an invention for suppressing the report of a firearm, which was sent to Mr. Parrish by a friend in America some years ago and which he kept ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... showed a mind that was superior to petty distinctions. Having run over all the oaths that he could think of, he dived below and helped himself from the rum bottle, a process which appeared to aid his memory or his invention, for he reappeared upon deck and evolved a new many-jointed expletive at the man at the wheel. He then strode in gloomy majesty up and down the quarter-deck, casting his eyes at the sails and at the clouds in a critical way calculated to impress the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... known to all who are acquainted with the present condition of the fine arts in England that landscape-painters rely less on memory and invention than formerly, and that their work from nature is much more laborious than ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... the Paris papers, a new invention, called papier linge, has lately attracted much attention. It consists of a paper made closely to resemble damask and other linen, not only to the eye, but even to the touch. The articles are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... closely at such an invention as the steam engine in its latest and most complicated developments, about which there can be no dispute but that they are achievements of reason, purpose, and design, we shall find them present us with examples of all those features the presence of which in the handiwork ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... message to deliver. The making of a writer is a matter of centuries. England was a long time producing a Shakespeare or a Milton, Italy a Dante, Russia a Tolstoi, France a Hugo or a Dumas, Germany a Goethe and a Schiller. America, active in invention and commerce, has not yet produced a name worthy to stand by the side of those just mentioned. All really great writers have not only a national or racial, but also a universal quality in their productions. So far the greater part of our literary ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... mistake the gospel message as to think differently, and to act as if all should be thrust out who do not conform to certain rules and regulations of man's invention, although they with deep repentance trust in the blood of Christ alone for salvation. Many a once heathen savage will rise up in the day of judgment to condemn those men. Would that, for their own ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... their books. When Sam had hold of a fresh Latin book he could not keep away from it. Jonas's mind was busy with a new invention. The boys thought he would make his fortune by it. He was determined to invent some use for coal ashes. They were the only things that were not put to some use by his mother in their establishment. He thought he should render a service to mankind if he could do something ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... recovered from that concussion of the brain, and I have all his work to do. This may account for my not being able to devise a Christmas number, but I seem to have left my invention in America. In case you should find it, please send it over. I am going up to town to-day to dine with Longfellow. And now, my dear Fields, you know all about ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... doing so. On reflection, we shall see that it is not so much persons as events that Mr. Trollope aims at depicting, not so much characters as scenes. His pictures are real, on the whole. Their reality, we take it, is owing to the happy balance of the writer's judgment and his invention. Had his invention been a little more tinged with fancy, it is probable that he would have known certain temptations of which he appears to be ignorant. Even should he have successfully resisted them, the struggle, the contest, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... inauspicious moment forward to the present, no mask has hid from the scorn of the Christian world treason's hideous visage, but that blear-eyed monster, armed with every weapon of iniquity which devilish invention could devise, has alternately, with rage and despair, rushed to and fro across the continent, spilling the ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... habit of making volumes of selections and finding in them much pleasure, as well as improvement in taste and knowledge. With the spread of education and with the great increase of literature among all civilized nations, more especially since the invention of printing and its vast multiplication of books, the making of volumes of selections comprizing what is best in one's own or in many literatures is no longer a mere matter of taste or convenience as with the Greeks, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... suitable clothes and been held a prisoner in cold cells. But another motive soon asserted itself. Being deprived of all the luxuries of life and most of the necessities, my mother wit, always conspiring with a wild imagination for something to occupy my tune, led me at last to invade the field of invention. With appropriate contrariety, an unfamiliar and hitherto almost detested line of investigation now attracted me. Abstruse mathematical problems which had defied solution for centuries began to appear easy. To defy the State and its puny representatives had become mere ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... accomplished once for all. We have only to consider the monotony, the poverty of invention, and imagination, of those who have tried to portray the joy of the Redeemed in heaven, in order to realize what a bore it would soon become, ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... world needs and then supply that want. An invention to make smoke go the wrong way in a chimney might be a very ingenious thing, but it would be of no use to humanity. The patent office at Washington is full of wonderful devices of ingenious mechanism, but not one in hundreds is of use to the inventor or to the world. And yet how many ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... and she rather wondered at the omission. But it did not occur to her to suppose that this portion of the entertainment had been entirely imaginary—a lurid figment of Harry's vivid fancy and fertile invention. ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... consecration, but perhaps not the same for obedience. She sharply criticised all the regulations of the Sisterhoods with which she was acquainted, wore a dress of her own device, and with Sister Mena, a young cousin of her own, meant to make St. Kenelm's a nucleus for a Sisterhood of her own invention. ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal. Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... hand, striking upon it in the measure he thought best suited to his song. Doubtless the poems of Anacreon were delivered in this way. His themes were simple,—wine, love, and the glorification of youth and poetry; but his imagination and poetic invention so animated every theme that it is the perfect rendering which we see, not the simplicity of the commonplace idea. His delicacy preserves him from grossness, and his grace from wantonness. In this respect his poems are a fair illustration of the Greek sense of self-limitation, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to the serious "servant-girl problem" for people of limited means, are being mitigated by the new devices of this modern wizard of electricity. It seems to many of us that had this magician been discovered before the invention of steam-power-driven machinery the whole tendency of modern industry would have been turned not so absolutely, if at all, toward the factory. Such modifications of domestic manufacture and handicraft as right use of electricity could have initiated, might have ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... at the seaside, Dr. Derwent, glancing over the newspapers, came upon a letter signed "Lee Hannaford." It had reference to some current dispute about the merits of a new bullet. Hannaford, writing with authority, criticised the invention; he gave particulars (the result of an experiment on an old horse) as to its mode of penetrating flesh and shattering bone; there was a gusto in his style, that of the true artist in bloodshed. Pointing out the signature to Arnold Jacks, Dr. Derwent ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... woman named Ta-Ke, became a frightful example of sensuality and cruelty. Among the inventions of Ta-Ke was a cylinder of polished brass, along which her victims were forced to walk over a bed of fire below, she laughing in great glee if they slipped and fell into the flames. In fact, Chinese invention exhausts itself in describing the crimes and immoral doings of this abominable pair, which, fortunately, we are not obliged ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... world—the great, wonderful world, where men live, and love work, and do strong things!"—he paused, and turned with a trouble in his face. "My wife," he said, "you have lived with a dead man twelve years, and I have lost twelve years in the world. I had a great thought once— an invention—but now—" he hung his head bitterly. She came to him, and her hands slid up along his breast to his shoulders, and rested there; and she said, with a glad smile: "Francis, you have lost nothing. The thing—the invention—was all but finished when you fell ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... middle like an old-fashioned purse, had carried the luncheon at one end and the ropes at the other; and when the luncheon was finished, the bag had been stowed away under safe trees till our return. This was of course immensely annoying, and I rang the changes on the few words of abuse which invention or knowledge supplied, as we sat damp and shivering on the verge of the slope, idly sending down pieces of broken columns which brought forth tantalising sounds from the subterranean regions. At length Renaud was moved to shame, ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... perhaps, it will be well to pause till the results of Professor George Forbes', F.R.S., experiments with a new stereoscopic instrument in South Africa are to hand; he is there at present by request of Lord Kitchener with his new invention. For full report of this instrument I would refer to Professor Forbes' paper read at the Society of Arts, December 18th, 1901. It is sufficient now to say that the instrument folds up to 3 foot 6 inches in length, can be used by one observer only standing, kneeling, ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... study. His companions, however, soon discovered his antiquarian tastes, and his passionate love for old tales of chivalry and old chronicles scarcely less romantic; he became noted, too, for reciting stories of his own invention, in which he introduced a superabundance of the marvels of ancient superstition, with a plentiful seasoning of knight-errantry. He even pursued his favorite subject into the continental languages, and by his own exertions enabled himself to peruse the works of Ariosto and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... colours. Nothing, for instance, could have been nearer to the heart of Dickens than his great Gargantuan conception of Gog and Magog telling London legends to each other all through the night. Those two giants might have stood on either side of some new great city of his invention, swarming with fanciful figures and noisy with new events. But as it is, the two giants stand alone in a wilderness, guarding either side of ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... revealed the fact that there really was gold in Ripple Creek, and with that resource which, more than necessity, is the mother of invention, communications were opened up with Walker, and the plan laid for the relieving of the successful miners of their stores of gold during the season of holiday and festivity. Learning the way Peters and his companions had gone, Barber had tracked them over the creek to ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... as my invention, and desire to secure by letters patent, is the combination of expansible buoyant chambers placed at the sides of a vessel with the main shaft or shafts by means of the sliding spars, which pass down through the buoyant chambers and are made fast to their bottoms and the series of ropes ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... direct roads and bridges, levy county and poor rates, and administer all the matters of common interest to the whole county. These wards, called townships in New England, are the vital principle of their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its preservation. We should thus marshal our government into, 1. The general federal republic, for all concerns foreign and federal; 2. That of the State, for what relates to our own citizens ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... of the men of the Neolithic Age doubtless consisted largely of the prepared skins of the animals, and some fragments of leather have been found in the lake settlements. But a very important step in advance was the invention of spinning and weaving, both of which processes were known at this time. The cloth which is here represented is formed of twists of interwoven flax, of rough workmanship, it is true, but none the less remarkable, ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... it remembered, were much wider in the seventeenth century than they have been since the invention of grates. There was room in every chimney-corner, not only for the fire, but for one or two chairs and settles, where people could sit when they wished to warm themselves; and as there was no ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... was the new King of France, the young and adventurous Charles VIII. His army was a model to all Europe in the art of war. It possessed weapons of the latest invention and its main strength lay in its splendid infantry. Florence was entered without a blow, and King Charles demanded as a ransom a far larger sum than the Republic could pay. He remained day after day in the city, showing no inclination to depart. Then was manifested a proof of the wonderful influence ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... invention. Certainly wearisome noises, and an aroma of Havannahs would now and then proceed therefrom, but he was employed there the chief part of the day, and fortunately his pictures were of small size, and took an ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge |
