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More "Ballast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tho!" cried Smallbones. "I'll not trust him— Jemm, my boy, get up a pig of ballast, I'll sink him fifty fathoms deep, and then if so be he cum up again, why, then I give it up for ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... taken on a political character. The Movement had in the meantime let the demand of the poorest of the people for bread drop, and thrown them over as one would throw over ballast in order to rise more quickly. The institutions themselves would be won, and then they would of course come back to the starting-point and begin again quite differently. It might be rather convenient to ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... their novel experience they were doubtless unaware of any alteration in their theories. But they were facing a new situation, and that new situation became an immense factor in their unconscious growth. Their intellectual and moral problems shifted, as a boat shifts her ballast when the wind blows from a new quarter. The John Cotton preaching in a shed in the new Boston had come to "suffer a sea-change" from the John Cotton who had been rector of St. Botolph's splendid church in Lincolnshire. The "church without a bishop" and the ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... even as hope told the flattering tale of her certain safety, there came racing up astern a sea, gigantic even in that giant sea, raced her, caught her, and, as it passed ahead, so tilted her bows that the ballast slid aft, and down she sank by the stern, so near to safety that betwixt ship and shore wife might ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... not," retorted the sheriff easily. "Del, you better relieve Mr. Hardman of his ballast. He ain't really fit to be trusted with a weapon, and him so excitable. That Winchester came awful near going off, friend. You don't want to be so careless when you're playing with firearms. It's a habit that's liable ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... led to one curious and not easily explained discovery. The Ella was in gravel ballast, and my search there was difficult and nerve-racking. The creaking of the girders and floor-plates, the groaning overhead of the trestle-trees, and once an unexpected list that sent me careening, head first, against a ballast-tank, ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Corson, "as a complexly organized, individualized, divine force, destined to gravitate toward the Infinite. How is this force with its numberless checks and counter-checks, its centripetal and centrifugal tendencies, best determined in its necessarily oblique way? How much earthly ballast must it carry to keep it sufficiently steady, and how little, that it may not be weighed down with materialistic heaviness?" Incredibly enough, in the revelations of the retrospective view, "Paracelsus" made little impression on the ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... matter through stomach and intestines by forcing these organs to take up the work of digestion and assimilation. diverts the vital forces from their combat against the disease conditions and draws upon them to remove the worse than useless food ballast ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... Clemmie. But we'll be fit as fiddles when we get some of them cakes stowed amidships, and ballast 'em down with a few swallers of that coffee. There ain't everybody that can ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... than he had thought possible, he was always glad to receive her letters, with their delicate aroma of the English country; and it pleased him to think that his future was comfortably settled. The engagement was a sort of ballast, and he felt that he could compass his journey without fear and without disturbance. James did not ask himself whether his passion was very ardent, for his whole education had led him to believe that passion was hardly ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... Helwyse commune with himself. He liked to follow the whim of the moment, whither it would lead him. He was romantic; it was one of his agreeablest traits, because spontaneous; and he indulged it the more, as being confident that he had too much solid ballast in the hold to be in danger of upsetting. To-night, at this point of his mental ramble, he found that his cigar had gone out. Had he been thinking aloud? He believed not, and yet there was no telling; he often did ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... from being carried to America, unless first landed in England: the consequence whereof is, that English ships, which (I shall suppose) are hired to sail from London to Lisbon with corn, and thence proceed to America, have not the liberty to carry salt in place of ballast, and therefore under a necessity to pay above L10 sterling at Lisbon for ballast (that is to say, for sand), which they carry to America, or else return to England in order to get a clearance for the salt, which would be more expense than ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... bullets, for the purposes of which we are speaking. Bows and arrows might render good service. The Chinese, in their junks, when they expect a piratical attack, bring up baskets filled with stones from the ballast of the ship, and put them on deck ready at hand. They throw them with great force and precision: the idea is not a bad one. Boiling water and hot sand, if circumstances happened to permit their use, are worth bearing in mind, as they tell well on the bodies of naked ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... briskly agitated. Hen- harriers fly low over heaths or fields of corn, and beat the ground regularly like a pointer or setting-dog. Owls move in a buoyant manner, as if lighter than the air; they seem to want ballast. There is a peculiarity belonging to ravens that must draw the attention even of the most incurious; they spend all their leisure time in striking and cuffing each other on the wing in a kind of playful skirmish, and, when ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... enable the carpenter to work with his auger; and this operation was necessarily renewed every tide, since the hole was always found filled up after the high water. An armourer's forge and tools were now much wanted but the deficiency of an anvil was supplied by the substitution of a pig of ballast; and some chain plates that we had fortunately taken from the Frederick's wreck, and some bar-iron which was brought out from England by the Dromedary, enabled us to place our vessel in a state of security which we were by ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... you are, lady,' the Guard was saying. 'You're good ballast. You can keep the train down. That's something. Steady ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... overwhelmed when her mother came home and upbraided her, in her despair, with being a burden. Was she not a burden? Must she not be one henceforth? No, she would take in needlework, labour in the fields, heave ballast among the coarse pauper-girls on the quay-pool, anything rather: but how ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... water with a headlong rush, curtseying as gracefully as though she had learned the trick from her namesake, ere she recovered herself and floated lightly as a soap-bubble on the water. (For although Dick had found an entire outfit of lead ballast for her, already cast to the shape of her hull, he had only put part of it aboard her, leaving out about six tons, in place of which he intended to stow the gold from the treasure-cave.) The little craft held her way for quite an extraordinary ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... way of pleasuring, and displeasuring, lieth by the favorite, it is impossible any other should be overgreat. Another means to curb them, is to balance them by others, as proud as they. But then there must be some middle counsellors, to keep things steady; for without that ballast, the ship will roll too much. At the least, a prince may animate and inure some meaner persons, to be as it were scourges, to ambitions men. As for the having of them obnoxious to ruin; if they be of fearful natures, it may do well; but if they be stout ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... morning of the 4th the Alliance appeared again, and (p. 102) had brought to two very small coasting sloops in ballast, but without having attended properly to my orders of yesterday. The Vengeance joined me soon after, and informed me that in consequence of Captain Landais' orders to the commanders of the two prize ships, they had refused to follow him to the rendezvous. I am to this moment ignorant of what ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... small boat that gets out of the rushing tide for a little into some quiet creek, he had time to overhaul himself and pull himself together, ready for another voyage. He was able, in the home harbour, to take some little fresh ballast on board and to rearrange what he at present had. He was able to stow away some of his useless tackle and bale out some of the water he had shipped in the last few rapids. Altogether, though Dick was not exactly a boy ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... the railways were concerned for their own new developments—double-trackings, loops, cutoffs, taps, and feeder lines, and great swoops out into untouched lands soon to be filled with men. So the construction, ballast, and material trains, the grading machines, the wrecking cars with their camel-like sneering cranes—the whole plant of a new civilisation—had to find room somewhere in the general rally before Nature cried, ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... who was carrying a flour-bag turned his head and then went on again until he hove his load into a two-horse wagon, while Miss Deringham noticed that although the bag was stamped 140 lbs. the man trotted lightly across the metals and ballast with it upon his shoulders. Then he came in their direction, and she glanced at him with some curiosity as he stood a trifle breathless before them. He wore a blue shirt burst open at the neck which showed his ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... commonest forms is the field horse-tail (Equisetum arvense), a very abundant and widely distributed species. It grows in low, moist ground, and is often found in great abundance growing in the sand or gravel used as "ballast" for railway tracks. ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... the woman's unerring instinct that sometimes seems akin to inspiration, divined. She too was something of a dreamer, with an ear for the voices of Nature and a mind open to the influences of its beauty, but with a goodly ballast of strong ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... the first is characteristic of the man. In his lexicon there was no such word as "fail." His balloon was small, holding only eight thousand cubic feet of gas. The gas was of poor quality, and when ready to rise he found it impossible even to make a start until all ballast had been thrown from the basket; and when at length the start was made, it was only to alight in a few minutes on the roof of a neighboring house. Bent upon winning and doing at all hazards what he had undertaken, Donaldson quickly cast overboard ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... Book, I find the Medium to be two hundred weight, so that I cannot discover that I am impaired one Ounce in my Health during a whole Twelvemonth. And yet, Sir, notwithstanding this my great care to ballast my self equally every Day, and to keep my Body in its proper Poise, so it is that I find my self in a sick and languishing Condition. My Complexion is grown very sallow, my Pulse low, and my Body Hydropical. Let me ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... leaving the port. The vessel, rather a large one for those days, seems but poorly manned, and rocks so greatly among the short white waves, that it is plainly to be seen that she is short of ballast and lading. She is a Venetian trading vessel, bound first to the Isle of Candia, where she will complete her cargo and add to the number of her crew. This Candia or Crete (the very Crete by which St. Paul passed ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... unswayed by their own bitter hatred of slavery, as well as unsoftened by their own feelings for a fellow man, in agonizing peril, upheld the law made to their hands and which they are sworn faithfully to administer. Fiat justitia. Give them their due. Such men are the ballast of nations."[6] ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... great love can never die from out the heart. It affords a ballast 'gainst all the storms that blow. And although it lends an unutterable sadness, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... applicable to three tunnels, it will be obvious that other modes of ventilation may be adopted. In order to reduce the number of men working in the tunnel it is proposed, if found practicable, not to adopt the ordinary ballast and cross sleepers, but to substitute the longitudinal timber system, the timbers to be secured to brickwork or concrete, forming a part of the tunnel lining, placing efficient elastic material between the foundation and longitudinals for their whole area, also between the rails and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... I can't make out," answered Kitchell. "A bark such as she ain't ought to roll thata way; her ballast'd steady her." ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... were done, he had devoted his spare time to work on his model, fixing the engines, soldering down the decks, and putting in ballast, so as to balance the boat and keep her on an even keel. At length the work was finished; the Fury, as she was called, was painted all over an orthodox black, and when given a trial trip in the bath, ran from end to end in a manner which was quite satisfactory. Brian's next ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... transferred to the hold of the schooner, a ground-tier of large casks having been left in her purposely to receive the oil, which was emptied into them by means of a hose. By the end of the third week, this ground-tier was filled, and the craft became stiff, and was in good ballast trim, although the spare water was now entirely pumped out ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... of his group who had a distinct literary style. As a speaker he was quiet, deliberate, decisive, sure; and he carried enough reserve caloric so that he made his presence felt in any assemblage before he said a word. In oratory it is personality that gives ballast. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... stability, a ballast, in Phillotson's pronouncement which restrained his friend's comment. "Shall I—leave you?" ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... ballast, banality, baneful, beatitude, bellicose, belligerent, benefaction, beneficent, benison, betide, bibulous, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... lively, Dan, and it would be just as well if we had some ballast on board; however, she has a good beam and walks along splendidly. If the wind keeps as it is, we shall be back at the mouth of the York in three or four hours. You may as well open that basket again and hand me that cold chicken and a piece of bread; cut ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... usually stood, without provisions and weighted down with heavy padded uniforms (which were designed for winter wear), carrying a heavy rifle and accoutrements, with forty rounds of ball cartridges in his pouch and twenty more in his pockets for ballast. Still he had a stout heart within his breast, and a resolute determination to do his duty in assisting to drive the invaders from the shores of his native land served to impel him onward as he marched through the choking dust of clay roads on a blazing hot June day, gaily joining in the refrain ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... combines a rationalistic ethics with his semi-sensational theory of knowledge; Newton is far from finding in his mechanical physics a danger for religious beliefs; the deists treat the additions of positive religion rather as superfluous ballast than as hateful unreason; Bolingbroke wishes at least to conceal from the people the illuminating principles which he offers to the higher classes. Such halting where farther progress threatens to become dangerous to ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... be subject to still worse hazards than those I have escaped; as would be the case, were conceitedness, vanity, and pride, to take hold of my frail heart; and if I was, for my sins, to be left to my own conduct, a frail bark in a tempestuous ocean, without ballast, or other pilot than my own inconsiderate will. But my master said, on another occasion, That those who doubted most, always erred least; and I hope I shall always doubt my own strength, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... were over. We had a dull, rainy night, a heavy, broadside swell, and as the steamer had not enough ballast, she rolled frightfully. In this nasty sea we were afraid she might turn turtle, as another steamer had done some months ago. The storm became such that we had to lie at anchor for five days, sheltered by the coast of Gaua. It was with ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... Patience is the ballast of the soul, that will keep it from rolling and tumbling in the greatest storms; and he that will venture out without this to make him sail even and steady will certainly make shipwreck and drown himself, ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... statesmanship. Poets and philosophers can afford to be thin—cannot, indeed, afford to be otherwise; inasmuch as poetry and philosophy thrive but in the clouds aloft, and a stomach ballasts you to earth. Such ballast the statesman must have. Thin statesmen may destroy, but construct they cannot; have achieved ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... the cable is secured to blocks (see ANCHOR) or mushroom anchors according to the nature of the ground. London Trinity House buoys are [v.04 p.0808] built of steel, with bulkheads to lessen the risk of their sinking by collision, and, with the exception of bell buoys, do not contain water ballast. In 1878 gas buoys, with fixed and occulting lights of 10-candle power, were introduced. In 1896 Mr T. Matthews, engineer-in-chief in the London Trinity Corporation, developed the present design (fig. 12). It is of steel, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... remaining for days at a time when a ship was in port. We had a fair number of them, off and on—the missionary bark, the Equator, Captain Reid; the Lorelei, Captain Saxe; the Ransom, Captain Mins; the Belle Brandon, Captain Cole; the brigantine Trenton, in ballast, calling in to set her rigging; the cutter Ulysses, with supplies for Washington Island, and the Seventh-Day Adventist schooner Pitcairn, with her mate dying of some kind of sickness. They buried him ashore, and then went out again, after giving us the precise date at which the world was ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... admitted Jim. "But the rice is the sluggish article, anyway; it's little more account than ballast; it's the tea and silks that I look to: all we have to find is the proportion, and one look at the manifest will settle that. I've rung up Lloyd's on purpose; the captain is to meet me there in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... individual. With a code of political ethics more perfect than any the world has yet seen, we find it still hesitating to put these principles to the test. As a consequence it struggles in the waves of political disorder like a ship without ballast. Recognizing as vital doctrines the equality of the race, and the value of the family as the political unit, we find the woman principle, the mother element, subdued, subjected, deprived of any fair expression ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... inspired; and being possessed of real powers as miraculous in her own eyes as those which were imputed to her were in theirs (for what are real spiritual experiences but daily miracles?) she was just in that temper of mind in which she required, as ballast, all her real goodness, lest the moral balance should topple headlong after the intellectual, and the downward course of vanity, excitement, deception, blasphemous assumptions be entered on. Happy for her that she was in Protestant ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... been delayed in discharging freight by a series of storms which prevailed at the bay, and was now down at Haparanda Fjord taking in ballast. The probability was that she would not leave for several days. Meantime I was extremely anxious to see a little more of domestic life in Iceland, and made several foot-expeditions to the farm-houses in ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... square-sterned sloops, open in the afterpart, but with a cuddy forward. They are all built with centerboards, and some are lapstreak while others are "set work." Around the afterpart of the standing room is a seat, the ballast is floored over, and two little bunks and a stove generally help to furnish the cuddy. They vary in length from 16 to 26 feet and in width from 6 to 9 feet; they average about 2 tons. They are especially adapted to the winter ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... Her failing senses could indulge a little impatience; but it was like throwing ballast out of a balloon. She meant to be all the ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... his craft would be top-heavy and over he would go, as the kayah has no keel and carries no ballast, and if we should try a kayah, it would certainly be on land. But those Greenlanders learn to handle themselves so well that their kayahs will go dancing over the big billows and then fly through a ragged, dangerous ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... it, Ford. You're blue because Mr. Colbrith has thrown Mr. North into your boat as ballast. I don't blame you: but you mustn't let it ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... get to Flanders.' Then the low-down slab-pilers got their mutinous heads together, and says, 'The J.P. and the bailiff's got to be roasted anyway, wisht we could heave Nash in atop.' I've left the cursing and swearin' out, because it's useless ballast, and don't count in the deal any more'n sawdust. Now, John, what do you think ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... change. In the settlement the necessaries of life were dear, but the luxuries were cheap. If a man could not afford to buy kangaroo beef and potatoes, he could live sumptuously on gin. Davy walked back to the port the same evening, and next day took in ballast, which was mud dug ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... actions of a little trivial soul like Hetty's, struggling amidst the serious sad destinies of a human being, are strange. So are the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy sea. How pretty it looked with its parti-coloured sail in the sunlight, moored in the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... mentally timed them down the river, allowing for the pause to take in ballast, and on the Wednesday pictured the sail down the open sea. That night he thought of the little craft under the bows of the huge steam-vessels, powerless to make itself seen or heard, and Avice, now growing inexpressibly ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... a copy of which is also enclosed, confirms everything, extolling the grandeur of the view of the port, the water, wood, and ballast with which it abounds, and although the climate is rather cold, it is healthy and free from ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera
... impermanence in building, this line is constructed regardless of expense as if to last for a thousand years. Tunnel after tunnel through solid rock, the most superb masonry and bridges wherever streams intervene, the best of ballast to make an enduring roadbed—all these indicate the style of the new, not "improved" but utterly reconstructed, line which is building for Japan's benefit at China's expense—at China's expense directly ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... carrying business between York and Knaresborough, and at once proceeded with his new undertaking. The materials for metaling the road were to be obtained from one gravel-pit for the whole length, and he made his arrangements on a large scale accordingly, hauling out the ballast with unusual expedition and economy, at the same time proceeding with the formation of the road at all points; by which means he was enabled the first to complete his contract, to the entire satisfaction of the surveyor ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... superhuman struggle to save the Jeanne D'Arc. Her crew, sufficient in ordinary weather, was too small to cope with the storm and the leaking ship. Ballast had to be shifted or flung overboard. Repairs had to be attempted in the hold; the pumps had to be worked incessantly, It transpired that the yacht had gone far out of her course during the fog the night before, and had tried to turn inshore, even before the leak ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... until lately, the cemetery of the city; the space enclosed within its marble galleries is filled to the depth of eight or ten feet, with earth from the Holy Land. The vessels which carried the knights of Tuscany to Palestine were filled at Joppa, on returning, with this earth as ballast, and on arriving at Pisa it was deposited in the Cemetery. It has the peculiar property of decomposing all human bodies, in the space of two days. A colonnade of marble encloses it, with windows of ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... plays, and forty tales of Kotzebue's; [8] One envoy's letters, six composer's airs, And loads from Frankfort and from Leipsic fairs: Meiners' four volumes upon Womankind, [9] Like Lapland witches to ensure a wind; Brunck's heaviest tome for ballast, [10] and, to back it, Of Heyne, [11] such as should not ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... lived in vain. There are no partisans now. The only songs of the sort that I ever saw with any verve in them were some seditious Irish ones: rather spirited—only they had not grammar enough to ballast them. The writer either was, or wanted to be, transported. We are all very fond of the Guelphs—at least every body in decent society is—and that is just the reason why we are not enthusiastic. We are all ready to 'die for the throne,' etc., but we don't ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... leaving the future to chance. Destitute of any canon of hereditary succession, of any settled rules concerning adoption, and of any law regulating election, Caesarism was like an enormous load on the deck of a vessel without ballast. The most terrible shocks were inevitable. Three times in a century, under Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, the greatest power that was ever united in one person fell into the hands of most extravagant and execrable men. Horrors were enacted which have ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... what's head gardener up at Claverings, 'e can't get sweet peas like that, try 'ow 'e will. Tried everything 'e 'as. Sand ballast, 'e's tried. Seeds same as me. 'E came along 'ere only the other day, 'e did, and 'e says to me, 'e says, 'darned 'f I can see why a station-master should beat a professional gardener at 'is own game,' 'e says, 'but you do. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Orleans and Conde, being united by interest, made a jest of that surly look from which Beaufort's cabal were termed "The Importants," and at the same time artfully made use of the grand appearance which Beaufort (like those who carry more sail than ballast) never failed to assume upon the most trifling occasions. His counsels were unseasonable, his meetings to no purpose, and even his hunting matches became mysterious. In short, Beaufort was arrested at the Louvre by a captain of ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... twofold. Experience lost the practical meaning which it had borne from the time of Plato. It ceased to mean ways of doing and being done to, and became a name for something intellectual and cognitive. It meant the apprehension of material which should ballast and check the exercise of reasoning. By the modern philosophic empiricist and by his opponent, experience has been looked upon just as a way of knowing. The only question was how good a way it is. The result was an even greater "intellectualism" ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... we not had enough To make Religion sad, and sour, and snubbish, But Saints Zoological must cant their stuff, As vessels cant their ballast-rattling rubbish! Once let the sect, triumphant to their text, Shut Nero up from Saturday till Monday, And sure as fate they will deny us next To see the Dandelions on a Sunday— But what ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... amount of material there for the sun to attract, and to lighten the pole approaching or turning towards the sun, by removing some heavy substance from it, and putting it preferably at the opposite pole. This shifting of ballast is most easily accomplished, as you will readily perceive, by confining and removing water, which is easily moved and has a considerable weight. How we purpose to apply these aqueous brakes to check the wabbling of the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... Indies? Dro. Oh sir, vpon her nose, all ore embellished with Rubies, Carbuncles, Saphires, declining their rich Aspect to the hot breath of Spaine, who sent whole Armadoes of Carrects to be ballast at her nose ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... all the world, or, which is much the same thing, with all the readers of Notes and Queries, we propose, on Saturday next, treating them to a Christmas Number, rich in articles on Folk Lore, Popular Literature, &c., and to use as ballast for our barque, which will at such occasion be of unwonted lightness, a number of Replies which we have by us imploring for ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... was signalized but by one little incident, and that occurred just as we were about to start. A very seedy looking vagabond passenger got out of the stage a moment to wait till the usual ballast of silver bricks was thrown in. He was standing on the pavement, when an awkward express employee, carrying a brick weighing a hundred pounds, stumbled and let it fall on the bummer's foot. He instantly dropped on the ground and began to howl in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... did not argue much for the peace of his household during that energetic lady's visits. Her indignation against him had quite swallowed up her old cherished resentment against myself. She soon went so far as to insinuate a regret that Susan had not married a man of solid sense and some mental ballast, (meaning me,) instead of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... during the past hundred years very vividly by the progress of aerial navigation. Balloons are objects too familiar even to our children to cause them any surprise, and every one knows how instantly a balloon, when in the air, rises up higher if a few pounds of ballast are thrown out, or sinks if a little of the gas is allowed to escape. We know of no balancing more delicate than this, of a ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... Counterparts to one another, that the Pains and Anxieties of the Husband might be relieved by the Sprightliness and good Humour of the Wife. When these are rightly tempered, Care and Chearfulness go Hand in Hand; and the Family, like a Ship that is duly trimmed, wants neither Sail nor Ballast. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Sound is its waters. That particular part of it which leads towards heaven is attended with great difficulties. Body is the boat by which one must cross that river. Forgiveness is the oar by which it is to be propelled. Truth is the ballast that is to steady that boat. The practice of righteousness is the string that is to be attached to the mast for dragging that boat along difficult waters. Charity of gift constitutes the wind that urges the sails of that boat. Endued with swift speed, it is with that boat that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... D'Wolf, from whom I bought the Juno, had a cargo I was forced to take over. I unloaded what was needed at Sitka, but as there was no boat going for some months to the other islands, I brought the rest with me, and you are welcome to it, if in exchange you will ballast the Juno with samples of your agricultural products; while the treaty is pending, I can experiment in our colonies and make sure which are the most ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... "Reminds me of a skipper I once sailed with, bound from Rotterdam to Hull in ballast. There was a Scotch mist best part of the trip, an' the old man loaded with schnapps to keep out the damp. First time he got a squint of the sun he went as yaller as a Swede turnip. 'It's all up with us, ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... people had no suspicion of our being an enemy, and held on their way till they saw the Mercury standing towards them, and then began to suspect us; on which, about noon, they clapt their helm hard a-weather, and crowded all sail before the wind; and, being in ballast, this was her best sailing, yet proved also the greatest advantage they could have given us; for, had she held her wind, our flat-bottomed vessel could never have got up with theirs. About ten o'clock at night, with the assistance of hard rowing, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... into it, which might have been very bad to him by breaking a leg or other hurt, but, thanks be to God, he only sprained his foot a little. So after his shifting his stockings at a strong water shop close by, we took barge again, and so to Woolwich, where our business was chiefly to look upon the ballast wharfe there, which is offered us for the King's use to hire, but we do not think it worth the laying out much money upon, unless we could buy the fee-simple of it, which cannot be sold us, so we wholly flung it off: So to the Dockyard, and there staid a while talking about business of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... times are uncommon dull over the bay; there's nothin' stirrin' there this year, and never will I'm thinkin'. No mortal soul CAN live in Nova Scotia. I do believe that our country was made of a Sunday night, arter all the rest of the univarse was finished. One half of it has got all the ballast of Noah's ark thrown out there; and the other half is eat up by bankers, lawyers, and other great folks. All our money goes to pay salaries, and a poor man has no chance at all.' 'Well,' says I, 'are you done up stock and fluke—a total wrack?' 'No,' says he, 'I ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... from his food, shouts an order and an electric alarm sounds inside the hull. The ship buzzes with activity. The guns on deck are hastily housed. Bridge appurtenances are housed also, and sailors dive down through the deck-holes. The commander follows. Water begins to gurgle into the ballast-tanks while the crew seal every opening. Down goes the U-47-1/2 until only her periscope shows, a periscope painted sea-green and white—camouflaged. The eyes of the watch-officer are glued ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... wit, on this easy chair, doing penance, as you perceive, in a pair of duck trousers. Last night I was half-seas over, and tolerably happy; this morning I am high and dry, and intolerably miserable. Carried more sail than ballast last night, and lost my head; this morning I've found it again, with a pig of ballast in it, I believe. All owing ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... were industrious and savin'—the little farm prospered, for Boston supplied a goodly market, and weekly trips were made there in a one-horse cart, often piloted by young John, with the minister's boy for ballast. The Adams family had ambitions for their son John—he was to go to Harvard and be educated, and be a minister and preach at Braintree, or Weymouth, or ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... remarkable that only one woman ever joined this community. Mrs. Lamb merely followed wheresoever her husband led,—"as ballast for his balloon," as she said, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... bold Knight, "you think I am afraid of the trepan? Why now, what if I should say that Dalgarno has more wit than honesty,—the duke more sail than ballast,—the Prince more pride than prudence,—and that the king—" The Lady Mansel held up her finger in a warning manner—"that the king is my very good master, who has given me, for forty years and more, dog's wages, videlicit, bones and beating.—Why now, all this ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... rose—shall I say like a balloon out of which a great weight of ballast has been thrown?—and so high did they go that failure seemed like a little feather swimming in the gulf below. "She deserved some happiness," and intends to make me her happiness. Her words could bear no other interpretation; she had spoken without ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... humiliation, and equal with the rest; to commence, or have the road clear'd to commence, the grand experiment of development, whose end, (perhaps requiring several generations,) may be the forming of a full-grown man or woman—that is something. To ballast the State is also secured, and in our times is to be secured, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... complained to the Protector that two ships of his—the Post, Tiddy Jacob master, and the Water-dog, Garbrand Peters master—are detained somewhere in the Baltic by his Majesty's forces. They had sailed from London to France; thence to Amsterdam, where one had taken in ballast only, but the other a cargo of herrings, belonging in part to one Peter Heinsberg, a Dutchman; and, so laden, they had been bound for his Majesty's port of Stettin. Probably the Dutch ownership of part of the herring cargo was the ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... moon in the sky, and the silvery light streamed down on towering hillside and battalions of flitting pines. The great train swept on, clattering and clanking, and dust and fragments of ballast whirled about the lonely man. Still, the rush of the cool night wind was exhilarating, and his mind was busy, though his thoughts were not altogether pleasant. The few weeks he had spent in Ida Stirling's company had reawakened ambition in him; and that was why he had set out with Grenfell in ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... store-room for extra supplies. It was reached by removing the cabin steps. The tempted man entered this contracted and low apartment with the lamp in his hand. He found a narrow aperture, which led to the space under the cabin floor, where the ballast was deposited, and over which a board had been nailed to prevent the odor of bilge water from penetrating the apartment of the passengers. He removed this board, and reaching down into the hold, placed the bags in ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... there is and has been for this long time a fleet of "heretic" lighters sailing out of Boston Bay, and they have been saying, and they say now, and they mean to keep saying, "Pump out your bilge-water, shovel over your loads of idle ballast, get out your old rotten cargo, and we will carry it out into deep waters and sink it where it will never be seen again; so shall the ark of the world's hope float on the ocean, instead of sticking in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... metaphysics; she had no clue by which she could guide her path—the imagination that led her into her difficulties, could not get her out of them; the want of a mathematical education, which might have served as a ballast to steady and help her into the port of reason, was always visible, and though she had great tact in concealing her defeat, and covering a retreat, a tolerable logician must have always discovered the scrapes she got into. Poor dear Madame ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... the police officers exchanged glances, the judge coughed, the crowd of loafers shifted ballast and rested on the other foot. Only the prisoner stood motionless ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... high banks of which I found my haven of rest. Against the sky I traced the outlines of my land-mark, three poplars, standing sentinel-like before the house of the gentleman who had so kindly offered me his hospitality. The canoe was emptied of its shifting liquid ballast and carefully sponged dry. My host and his son carried it into the main hall of the mansion and placed it upon the floor, where the entire household gathered, an admiring group. Proud, indeed, might my dainty craft have been of the appreciation of so lovely a company. her master fully appreciated ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... with orders to sound ahead, that he might know whether there was any possibility of attacking the enemy; but the want of a sufficient depth of water rendered the scheme impracticable. In the meantime, the French threw overboard their cannon, stores, and ballast; and boats and launches from Rochefort were employed in carrying out warps, to drag their ships through the soft mud, as soon as they should be water-borne by the flowing tide. By these means their large ships of war, and many of their transports, escaped ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the Gentile lies but little more than a cable's length from the shore, so that you can almost look down upon her decks. You perceive that she is a handsome craft of some six or seven hundred tons burthen, standing high out of water, in ballast trim, with a black hull, bright waist, and wales painted white. Her bows flare very much, and are sharp and symmetrical; the cut-water stretches, with a graceful curve, far out beyond them toward the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... I am a poor man. I have only my little craft and a handful of seamen picked up at odd prices. But there's gold and silver enough I know of, owned by no man, to make cargo and ballast for the Nell Gwynn, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a bag of ballast, and the balloon darted upward again into space. Where were they? Was it the Bay of Biscay, the North Sea, the English Channel, or ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... world to find constituencies. Mr Broune whispered confidentially to Lady Carbury that the man was a fool for his pains, and that he was carried away by pride. 'Very clever,—and dashing,' said Mr Broune, 'but he never had ballast.' Lady Carbury shook her head. She did not want to give up Mr Alf if she could help it. He had never said a civil word of her in his paper;—but still she had an idea that it was well to be on good terms with so great a power. She ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... great part of our standing rigging broken; and, about eight in the evening, a mountainous overgrown sea took us upon our starboard quarter, and gave us so prodigious a shock that several of our shrouds broke with the jerk, by which our masts were greatly endangered. Our ballast and stores, too, were so strangely shifted that the ship heeled afterwards two streaks to port. Indeed, it was a most tremendous blow, and we were thrown into the utmost consternation from the apprehension of instantly foundering. This was the last effort of that ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... they were at length gaining. "It seems to me, Mr Needham," observed Tom, who had been taking a long, steady look at the chase, "they're heaving something overboard; what it is I can't make out,—scarcely a cargo of ballast,— but we shall soon discover when we get up to her, as we shall, I ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... seafaring Elizabethan epoch. The ships were different, but the courage of the English seamen was the same. Nor must we forget that those rough, rude men who ran backwards and forwards across the English Channel in cutters, yawls, luggers, and sometimes open boats, stiffened with a rich ballast of tea, tobacco, and brandy, were some of the finest seamen in the world, and certainly the most skilful fore-and-aft sailors and efficient pilots to be found anywhere on the seas which wash the ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... career. Writing to his friend Moore (5th August) he says: "I hope your eldest son will do well in the distant land to which he has gone. My son is in the Federal army in America, and no comfort. The secret ballast is often applied by a kind hand above, when to outsiders we appear to be sailing gloriously ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... gnats they swarm, like flies they buzz and breed. Thought works in silence: Wisdom stops to think. No ass so obstinate as ignorance. Oft as they seize the ship of state, behold— Overboard goes all ballast and they crowd To blast or breeze or hurricane full sail, Each dunce a pilot and a captain too. How often cross-eyed Justice hits amiss! Doomed by Athenian mobs to banishment, See Aristides leave the land he saved: ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... there's nothing like plenty of work to help keep a person out of mischief; but, after all, he must have steadiness and good principles. They alone are to be depended on, and I hope your son has got those as ballast." ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... bullied you for having played skittles with my life, my career. So you have! Damn it, so you have! But you've done it out of blind thoughtlessness; and if I'd been a fairly strong man, with some ballast in me, you couldn't have landed me where I am— not you nor fifty Pandora girls! [Sitting erect.] And that— that's the moral of the tale; and— and— [abruptly, to FARNCOMBE] There's ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... to the movies free of hindering ballast and harmful influences, will have to return ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... of the world that she was unusually lively for an English girl; while her various accomplishments made her a most agreeable companion. Much good sense gave her ballast; and the late experiences of danger and happiness added a sweet gravity at times, which contrasted well with her natural gaiety. Mrs Jo was quite satisfied with Emil's choice, and felt sure this true and tender pilot ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... promises, demands no foolish vows, is strongest in absence, and most loyal when needed. It lends ballast to life, and gives steadily to every venture. Through our friends we are made brothers to all ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... past reading barometers or anything else. He could just assent to remarks made to him by the captain and that was all. Ellen was in no better plight and sat on a bench near me, and I cannot say I felt cheerful, for the schooner, which was empty and had not much ballast, was rolling considerably. I carried on various conversations and strained my eyes to see if Mr. Keytel's boat was coming. It was a long wait, and when at last he did get on board he had gifts to bestow upon the men before we could get ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... understand it,' answered Gladys. 'He said, "Don't let them take you for a walk on the Ballast Bank." What ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... question, made his humble entry into the village, unknown, and almost unseen. But when those of the inhabitants who styled themselves of his connection became acquainted with him, they were rather pleased with the substitute than otherwise, though he had scarcely as yet acquired ballast of character sufficient to steady the consciences of the hundred-and-forty Methodists of pure blood who, at this time, lived in Nether-Moynton, and to give in addition supplementary support to the mixed race which went to church in the morning and chapel in the evening, or when there ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... just that we were up in the mountains, and I was rowing myself, and the boat didn't go well, and Mr. Holloway came down off the hotel piazza and called to me that she needed ballast, and—and I said: 'Is that the trouble?' And he said: 'Yes, row ashore, and I'll ballast you.' And so, of course I rowed ashore to get him, and (of course, I supposed he meant himself), and when I was up by the dock he picked ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... the whole cargo aboard! This here craft needs ballast; hoist her over the side!" And he reached out his hand for the whole plug of tobacco and took it from Freddie, and gnawed off a ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... been settled that to-day should be devoted to an excursion to the forests which are now being opened up by the new line of railway in course of construction. The special train of ballast-trucks which had been provided for us was to have started at ten o'clock, soon after which hour we landed, some delay having been caused at the last moment by the receipt of a message requesting us to send ashore every rug we possessed, in order to make the truck in which we ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... valve is fitted to the top, and by means of it the aeronaut can descend to the earth at will, by allowing some quantity of the gas to escape. The car in which he sits is suspended to the balloon by a network, which covers the whole structure. Sacks of sand are carried in this car as ballast, so that, when descending, if the aeronaut sees that he is likely to be precipitated into the sea or into a lake, he throws over the sand, and his air-carriage, being thus lightened, mounts again and travels away ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... informed than myself, speedily changed their places to the opposite side of the boat, while I remained holding off fast by the gunwale, till the sea rushing over, what was now becoming the lee-side, carried me head over heels into the shingle ballast in the waist. Lord, how they did laugh! Agnes, too, who never before could get beyond a very faint smile, grew almost hysterical at my performance. As for me, I only wanted this to complete my ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... good-sized half-decked boat of some twenty-six feet long and eight feet beam. She was very deep, and carried three tons of stone ballast in her bottom. She drew about six feet of water. She had a lot of freeboard, and carried two lug-sails and ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... writings to make the fortune of a great poet, in spite of their ballast of mediocre and tiresome verses, which the reader should disregard as he goes along. Between him and his contemporary, the haughty recluse Alfred de Vigny, there is not a little resemblance. Needless to say that Lebensohn ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... my life, Roy Pell," said Mr. Tyler after the skurrying dust raised from the ballast had settled into place. "You are ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... in and asked yonder eloquent autocrat for a contract, but he didn't see it. Said, and he explained it wasn't flattery, I looked too much of a gentleman, and in consequence if I liked I could shovel ballast at one dollar seventy-five daily. Now shoveling ballast grows monotonous, and one gets a confounded back-ache over it, so if you're agreeable I'll fling in a small sum and my services as ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... menage in the world. She looks very graceful and elegant, and keeps him in great order, and is just the wife he wanted—a little sauciness and piquancy to spur him up at one time, and restrain him at another, with the real ballast that both have, makes such a perfect compound, that it is only too delightful to see anything so happy and so good in this world. They both seem to have such ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wall two hundred feet high. On the other, a sheer spur of Sleepy Cat Mountain is thrust out like a paw against the river. It was there that the wall of water out of Dry Dollar had struck the track and scoured it to the bedrock. Ties, steel, ballast, riprap, roadbed, were gone, and where the heavy construction had run below the paw of Sleepy Cat the river was churning in a channel ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... twenty-eight gun-ships, so called, because there is as much difference between them and a real frigate, like the one we are sailing in, as there is between a donkey and a racehorse. Well, the ship was no sooner brought down to the dock-yard to have her ballast taken in, than our captain came down to her—a little, thin, spare man, but a man of weight nevertheless, for he brought a great pair of scales with him, and weighed everything that was put on board. I forget his real name, but the sailors christened him Captain ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... been once used to carry anchors, chains, and stores about the harbor. A week or two more, and she was fitted with a single mast, stepped well in the bows, for a jib and one square lug-sail. Then ballast in bags of sand was laid along her keelson, and a couple of breakers of fresh water got on board, together with a quantity of cooked salt meat and hard biscuit stowed away under the half-deck forward—where, too, was a cozy little nest of spare canvas, with an oakum ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... the ballast overboard, And stow the eatables in the aft locker.' 'Would not this keg be best a little lowered?' 75 'No, now all's right.' 'Those bottles of warm tea— (Give me some straw)—must be stowed tenderly; Such as we used, in summer after ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... in this kingdom a great quantity of pepper, and ginger, and cinnamon, and turbit, and of nuts of India.[NOTE 4] They also manufacture very delicate and beautiful buckrams. The ships that come from the east bring copper in ballast. They also bring hither cloths of silk and gold, and sendels; also gold and silver, cloves and spikenard, and other fine spices for which there is a demand here, and exchange them for ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... though he would either smash our boat to pieces or upset it; but, finding his efforts unsuccessful, he gracefully accepted the situation, and behaved himself admirably. When storms arose he quietly lay down, and served as so much ballast to steady the boat. "Tom," the guide, kept him well supplied with food from the rich nutritious grasses which grew abundantly along the ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... more quick grew the pace of the white-maned steeds. Soon they left the morning breezes behind, and very soon they knew that these were not the hands of the god, their master, that held the golden reins. Like an air-ship without its accustomed ballast, the chariot rolled unsteadily, and not only the boy's light weight but his light hold on their bridles made them grow mad with a lust for speed. The white foam flew from their mouths like the spume from the giant waves of a furious sea, and their pace ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... one side, and carrying ballast on that side, would be like the moon in form, and when suspended in air, like the moon, too, in having its heaviest matter always toward the centre of the earth. Now let this balloon go entirely round the earth: it will, like the moon, continue to present the weightiest, elongated ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... We stepped into a clump of trees and "froze." The man at the station came rushing out and looked all around, but did not see us, and went back. We then made a wide detour and crawled cautiously over the road on our hands and knees, for this road had rock ballast which would have ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... he cried, "when I'm tired you'll have to take a turn; but don't she go along splendidly with all this water ballast in her?" ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... that zeal will be understood, and his works will be cherished with a melancholy gratitude when the pillars of Venice shall lie moldering in the salt shallows of her sea, and the stones of the goodly towers of Rouen have become ballast for the barges of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... and thistles; and many others with wings and darts are blown by the wind. Berries have their seeds dropped afar by birds. Aquatic plants and those that grow beside running water travel by river and flood. European species reach our shores among the ballast. Darwin raised over sixty wild plants from seed carried in a pellet of mud taken from the leg of a partridge. So on and so on. The imagination delights to picture these floral vagabonds, each with its own clever method of ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... figures—to be home, beside the hearth, keeping the fires burning, with woes and cares and monotonous incidents of such a narrowed horizon. It was for this we were created, Mary Faithful told herself—to be the dreamers and the ballast and the inspiration of the race. And if commercial nuns have managed to tell themselves otherwise—well, who shall be brutal enough to cry "I spy" on their little secret? She understood now the abnormal restlessness that she had seen in others of her friends—the ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... liquid, as if they grew rabid at the sight of it. There is nothing from which slaves in the mid-passage suffer so much as want of water. It is sometimes usual to take out casks filled with sea-water as ballast, and when the slaves are received on board, to start the casks, and re-fill them with fresh. On one occasion, a ship from Bahia neglected to change the contents of their casks, and on the mid-passage found to their horror, that they were filled with nothing but salt water. ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... in smooth water" is in a fair way to be conceded. The new rule severely restricts plane area and lift alike. The gas compartments are permitted both fore and aft, as in the old type, but the water-ballast central tank is rendered obligatory. These things work, if not for perfection, at least for the evolution of a sane and wholesome waterborne cruiser. The type of rudder is unaffected by the new rules, so we may expect to see the Long-Davidson make (the patent on ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... 1591, Lord Thomas Howard, with six English line-of-battle ships, six victuallers, and two or three pinnaces, were lying at anchor under the Island of Florez. Light in ballast and short of water, with half their men disabled by sickness, they were unable to pursue the aggressive purpose on which they had been sent out. Several of the ships' crews were on shore: the ships themselves "all pestered and rommaging," with everything out of order. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... wouldn't have acted so harshly if we others had been a little kinder to you. Don't you allow that? You're exactly like every one else: you want to have good food and nice clothes—be considered respectable people. So it was wise to cut off the lower end; you can't rise when you've too much lumber as ballast. Fellows who pull up paving- stones and knock you down are no company for me. You must have patience and wait until the turn comes to your party to come in for a share: those are my politics. Well, what do ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... oaken-panelled, and hung round with portraits of the men, in every age, whom the University has nurtured to be illustrious,—long vistas of alcoved libraries, where the wisdom and learned folly of all time is shelved,—kitchens, (we throw in this feature by way of ballast, and because it would not be English Oxford without its beef and beer,) with huge fireplaces, capable of roasting a hundred joints at once,—and cavernous cellars, where rows of piled-up hogsheads seethe and fume ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... exprest: "I have really never had any strong feeling of solidarity; in fact, I have only in a way accepted it as a traditional tenet of faith,—and if one had the courage to leave it out of consideration altogether, one would perhaps be rid of the worst ballast with which one's personality is burdened." In another letter he wrote: "I may as well say the one thing I love in freedom is the struggle for its attainment. Its possession does not greatly ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... very unbalanced young idiot," contradicted Falconer. "I rather like the chap, himself, you know; he has nerve to spare—but no ballast. He might have set all Cairo talking of you." His voice hardened; "I told him that. I told him you ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... to Texas in American vessels, that 1,000 had been sent within a few months, that the rate was increasing, and that many of these slaves "can scarcely fail to find their way into the United States." Moreover, the consul acknowledged that ships frequently cleared for the United States in ballast, taking on a cargo at some secret point.[61] When with these facts we consider the law facilitating "recovery" of slaves from Texas,[62] the repeated refusals to regulate the Texan trade, and the shelving of a proposed congressional investigation into these matters,[63] conjecture becomes a practical ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... with five ships of war that day, Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven; But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land Very carefully and slow, Men of Bideford in Devon, And we laid them on the ballast down below; For we brought them all aboard, And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain, To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... was the property of Mr. Bates. Standing near the side, he had observed Rex and Fair bring up a great pig of iron, erst used as part of the ballast of the brig, and poise it on the rail. Their intention was but too evident; and honest Bates, like a faithful watch-dog, barked to warn his master. Bloodthirsty Cheshire caught him by the throat, and Frere, unheeding, ran ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... the station of Malaunay. He was in love with Flore, who for a time seemed to encourage him. He was dismissed from his post on account of grave negligence caused by Flore, who distracted his attention in order that he might allow the Havre express to dash into a train loaded with ballast. The accident was only averted by a new automatic ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... title, wealth, pedigree, nor poetry avail to invest him with the power I describe. These are feather-weights; they want ballast. A measure of sound, solid, practical sense would have stood him in ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... all a matter o' feeling. 'Twere vain to tell thee all I feel, how much my heart would wish to say;' but of this I'm certain sure, that I'd never git along without my pipe. It's like compass, helm, and ballast all in one. ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... Jack, gravely, "that did not occur to me; no doubt you must go. Our boat does require a good deal of ballast; and all that you say, Peterkin, carries so much weight with it, that we won't need stones if ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... entitled to his own good opinion. He was every inch a man, strong, intelligent and brave to temerity, with a reckless disregard of consequences, which might have been dangerous had it not been tempered by a dash of prudence and caution that gave him ballast. ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... the fields and roadsides—to raise the bars of their prison, as it were, and let them free! Many have run away, to be sure. Once across the wide Atlantic, or wider Pacific, their passage paid (not sneaking in among the ballast like the more fortunate weeds), some are doomed to stay in prim, rigidly cultivated flower beds forever; others, only until a chance to bolt for freedom presents itself, and away they go. Lucky are they if every ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... July we took a schooner from Bilboa to Boston with cordage and canvas, and on the 22nd re-took a brig from Quebec to London in ballast; on which day the Amazon parted company and sailed with the prizes for ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... the contents is humorous, there are inserted many quotations of a serious nature which may serve as appropriate literary ballast. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... gone under the arch, and am clear of all obstructions, I lay the sculls aside, and reclining let the boat drift past a ballast punt moored over the shallowest place, and with a rising load of gravel. One man holds the pole steadying the scoop, while his mate turns a windlass the chain from which drags it along the bottom, filling the bag with pebbles, and finally ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... rather proud of my descent from families which, if not noble themselves, are allied to nobility,—and as to my "rise in the world"—if I had risen, it would have been rather for balloon-like qualities than for mother-wit, to being unencumbered with heavy ballast either in my head or my pockets. However, it was my cue to agree: ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... so very English that most people would have sworn falsely as to his native land. Lord Ralles was a little, well-built chap, not half so English as Albert Cullen, quick in manner and thought, being in this the opposite of his brother Captain Ackland, who was heavy enough to rock-ballast a road-bed. Both brothers gave me the impression of being gentlemen, ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... fine spectacle, and applaud the courage of the aerostats: the losing sight of this earth, and the being in or above the clouds, must also be delightful: but the moment will come when the travellers descend, and then begins the danger; then they differ about throwing out the ballast, the balloon is rent in the quarrel, it sinks with frightful rapidity, and they run the hazard, like the poor Marquis D'Arlande, of being spitted upon the spire of the Invalides, or of being entangled ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... obviously occurs to one in reference to this position is, that it should more properly belong to a man than a woman. Even in women of the strongest understanding and the deepest and widest culture, there is generally a want of ballast which unfits them for such a responsibility; and Lady Huntingdon was not a lady of a strong understanding, and still less of a deep and wide culture. But she possessed what was better still—a single eye to her Master's glory, a truly humble mind, and genuine piety. The possession ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... August. The 122 eggs in the possession of Hume were taken, 12 in March, 46 in April, 24 in May, 26 in June, 4 in July, and 8 in August. Generally in a slight depression on the ground, occasionally on the ballast of a rail-road, four pegtop-shaped eggs are laid; these are, invariably, placed in the form of a cross, so that they touch each other at their thin ends. They are coloured like those of the common plover. The yellow-wattled lapwing (Sarciophorus ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... wheel struck the heel of the newsboy's boot and he and Jimmy fell, face downward on the sharp, fresh-gravel ballast so hard that they were both bleeding and the baggage man thought sure the wheel had gone over them. To his surprise their injuries proved to be ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... dropped his papers and his glazed cap, and made a dash for the child, whom he picked up and lifted to safety without a second to spare, as the wheel of the car struck his heel; and both were cut about the face and hands by the gravel ballast on which they fell. The two boys were picked up by the train-hands and carried to the platform, and the grateful father at once offered to teach the rescuer, whom he knew and liked, the art of train telegraphy and to make an operator of him. It is needless ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the Congress of the United States approved the 3d day of March, 1845, entitled "An act regulating commercial intercourse within the islands of Miquelon and St. Pierre," it is provided that all French vessels coming directly from those islands, either in ballast or laden with articles the growth or manufacture of either of said islands, and which are permitted to be exported therefrom in American vessels, may be admitted into the ports of the United States on payment of no higher duties of tonnage or on their cargoes aforesaid ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... and at once proceeded with his new undertaking. The materials for metaling the road were to be obtained from one gravel-pit for the whole length, and he made his arrangements on a large scale accordingly, hauling out the ballast with unusual expedition and economy, at the same time proceeding with the formation of the road at all points; by which means he was enabled the first to complete his contract, to the entire satisfaction of the surveyor ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... four feet of a plank, in the third strake under the wale, so shaken, as to make it necessary to be replaced. This was accordingly done, and the sheathing repaired on the 3d. In the afternoon of the same day, we got on board some ballast, unhung the rudder, and sent it on shore, the lead of the pintles being found entirely worn away, and a great part of the sheathing rubbed off. As the carpenters of the Resolution were not yet wanted, we got this set to rights the next day, but finding the rudder ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... is very like the toys which folks buy for children, and which, tumble them about in any way the urchins will, are always brought to their feet again, by the lead deposited in their extremities. The mass of property has the same effect on our Constitution, and is a sort of ballast which will always right the vessel, to use a sailor's phrase, and bring ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... parlour, to bear a hand, ship his oars, mind his helm, and bring alongside a short allowance of brandy or grog, that he might cant a slug into his bread-room, for there was such a heaving and pitching, that he believed he should shift his ballast. The fellow understood no part of this address but the word brandy, at mention of which he disappeared. Then Crowe, throwing himself into an elbow chair, "Stop my hawse-holes," cried he, "I can't think what's the matter, brother; but, egad, my head sings and ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... are, lady,' the Guard was saying. 'You're good ballast. You can keep the train down. That's something. Steady thinking's ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... grows so light from scant feeding that he cannot fly against the wind. If he would go back to his starting point while the March winds are out, he must needs come down close to the ground and yewyaw towards his objective, making leeway like an old boat without ballast or centerboard. ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... writings of Channing,—he left it to others to say of Emerson,—all had their part in this intellectual, or if we may call it so, spiritual revival. He describes with that exquisite sense of the ridiculous which was a part of his mental ballast, the first attempt at organizing an association of cultivated, thoughtful people. They came together, the cultivated, thoughtful people, at Dr. John Collins Warren's,—Dr. Channing, the great Dr. Channing, among the rest, full of the great thoughts ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Next came our turn, and I led the way, with a thong fastened around my body below the armpits, and attached, in like manner, to our stalwart alcalde. Long before we reached the middle of the stream, notwithstanding I carried a large stone under each arm by way of ballast, I was swept from my feet out to the length of my tether, and thus towed over by our guide. When all were snugly across, the laughter was loud and long over the ridiculous figure which everybody had cut in everybody's eyes, except his own. H. immortalized the transit in what the French call ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... my might, and prepared to fling myself out when we came to the earth again, but my captor, seizing each article that lay on the floor of the car, hurled forth, with the frenzy of a madman, ballast, stores, water-keg, cooking apparatus, everything, indiscriminately. For a moment this unburdening of the balloon did not have the effect one would suppose—that of making us shoot swiftly up into the sky, and I trusted that Phillip and the men who had helped us at the gas-works had got hold of ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... said, 'came here with his son the other night. It would have delighted you to see the old man's pride in him. As he was going away, he patted him on the head, and said, "Take care of him, Lady Blessington, for my sake. He is a clever lad, but wants ballast. I am glad he has the honour to know you, for you will check him sometimes when I am away...." D'Israeli the younger is quite his own character of Vivian Grey, crowded with talent, but very soigne of his curls, and a bit of a coxcomb. There is ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... squarely on it. Turn three of the flaps of the carpet up and tack them securely to the sides of the box. Before tacking the fourth side, fold a couple of newspapers to the right size and shove them in between the carpet and the bottom of the box for a cushion. Fill the box with any handy ballast, making it heavy or light, according to who is going to use it, and securely nail on the top of the box. The handle can be made from an old broom handle the whole of which will be none too long. Drive ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... Gary's turn to smile now. "You men o' war's men often make mistakes as well as other people. This is the Curlew, four days out of Savannah, in ballast, ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... cases we have, with due rite and ceremonial, given a victim to an airship, without ballast or rudder, and abundantly provisioned. Then with solemn ritual we have set him adrift—an offering to the great spirits of space—so that he may come to know. This," the prince paused in emotion, "this is the worst that could befall ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... of ballast in bags; the car, quite round, four feet in diameter, was comfortably arranged; the hempen cords which supported it stretched symmetrically over the upper hemisphere of the balloon; the compass was in place, the barometer suspended in the circle which united the supporting cords, and the anchor ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... did as he bade her, and as she added slowly to the ballast in the bow she drew little by little nearer to Philip, Her hand touched an object in the bottom of the canoe as she came close to him. It was one of his moccasins. She saw now his naked throat and chest. He had stripped ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... done, and the darkness Falls from the wing of night As ballast is wafted downward From an air-ship ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... employed for managing the boat, and both of them when it is stormy. With the second they keep the boat from getting unsteady, which would follow from its lightness, that rudder giving the boat more stiffness and serving as ballast. That is a precaution rendered necessary by its very lightness, the vessels that are lightest being those that require most care by being unsteady. In the middle they have a scaffold, four or six brazas long, which they call burulan or baileo. This consists ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... bottoms. When the cargo was of Spanish production, the duty was three per cent. if carried in national vessels, eight per cent. if in foreign ships. The latter were only allowed, as a rule, to enter the port in ballast. [15] ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... Tyler establishes, by the company's charter, that the objective was to institute a New York-Savannah packet service, for which the Savannah was to be the first ship. He shows that, due to the economic depression of 1819, the Savannah sailed to Liverpool in ballast and without passengers. Her fuel capacity is given as 1,500 bushels (75 tons) of coal and 25 cords of wood. [It should be noted that 1,500 bushels of bituminous coal does not quite equal 75 tons.] Tyler quotes S. C. Gilfillan[13] as to criticisms of ...
— The Pioneer Steamship Savannah: A Study for a Scale Model - United States National Museum Bulletin 228, 1961, pages 61-80 • Howard I. Chapelle
... deal frightened; but she always came up again, all right, no matter how far over she dipped, and so in time they got used to it. I proved to Mrs. Chipperton that it would be impossible for the vessel to upset, as the great weight of ballast, freight, machinery, etc., in the lower part of her would always bring her deck up again, even if she rolled entirely over on her side, which, sometimes, she seemed as if she was going to do, but ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... English that most people would have sworn falsely as to his native land. Lord Ralles was a little, well-built chap, not half so English as Albert Cullen, quick in manner and thought, being in this the opposite of his brother Captain Ackland, who was heavy enough to rock-ballast a road-bed. Both brothers gave me the impression of being gentlemen, and both were ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... had captured the coasting trade of the northern coal ports, a brig which carried coal from the Tyne, Blyth, or Amble to Calais, was caught by a terrific gale from the east when returning north in ballast. She managed to scrape round all the points until Coquet Island was reached, when it became apparent from the shore that it would be a miracle if she weathered the rocks which surround that picturesque islet. Her movements had been watched from the time she passed Newbiggin Point, and grave fears ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... whole cargo aboard! This here craft needs ballast; hoist her over the side!" And he reached out his hand for the whole plug of tobacco and took it from Freddie, and gnawed off ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... of Liverpool Sam, I don't malign or inexculpate him to you any more than I would to his face. But in my opinion, when an Englishman gets as low as he can he's got to dodge so that the dregs of other nations don't drop ballast on him out of their balloons. And if he's a Liverpool Englishman, why, fire-damp is what he's got to look out for. Being a natural American, that's my personal view. But Liverpool and me had much in common. We were without decorous clothes or ways and means of existence; and, ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... which there is no closer parallel than in the maxims of La Rochefoucauld. The union of the philosopher, the enthusiast, and the man of the world is fairly unusual in literature, but in Hazlitt's case the union was not productive of any sharp contradictions. His common sense served as a ballast to his buoyant emotions; the natural strength of his feelings loosened the bonds which attached him to his favorite theories; his cynicism, by sharpening his perception of the frailty of human nature, prevented his philanthropic dreams from imposing ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... been often shipwrecked upon them, more than once your desires—those of a young marrying man—(where, alas, is that time!) have seen their richly laden gondolas go to pieces there: the flower of the cargo went to the bottom, the ballast of the marriage remained. In short, to make use of a colloquial expression, as you talk over your marriage with yourself you say, as you look at Caroline, "She is not what ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... quarantine To ask him awkward questions on the way, About the time and place where he had been: He left his ship to be hove down next day, With orders to the people to careen; So that all hands were busy beyond measure, In getting out goods, ballast, guns, and treasure. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... sharpened to the immediate demands of special groups, but with no genuine training of the imagination and no understanding of the longer problems of humanity, with no hold on the past, "amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concentre their thoughts, to ballast their conduct, to preserve them from being blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine." It will set itself against any regular subjection of the "fierce spirit of liberty," which is the breath of distinction and ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... not imagine, unless it was the dust. She laughed, and said that he had dust and ballast and railroads on the brain; and when the oldest little girl asked what that meant, Mrs. Margaret told her that the next time her father came home she would make him sit down on the floor and then she would draw on that ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... of her prettiness, as any woman is, only in her case there was no soul beneath it to give it ballast. Her beauty was pretty much surface comeliness, and it was all there was of her, like a great singer who sometimes is ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... has in his hand three darts— Such slings, clubs, ballast-stones, that yield you must: You know that giants have much stouter hearts Than us, with reason, in proportion just: If go you will, guard well against their arts, For these are very barbarous and robust." Orlando answered," This ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... boats for assistance. For some hours, says Vancouver, "immediate and inevitable destruction presented itself." She grounded at four in the p.m. Till two next morning all hands were working at throwing ballast overboard to lighten her, till, "to our inexpressible joy," the return of the tide floated her once more. Having now satisfied himself that this was an island lying close to the mainland, Vancouver made for Nootka Sound, where he arrived ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... was a light ship, as sailors term a vessel that stands high upon the water, having discharged her cargo at Callao, from which port we were proceeding in ballast to Cape Town, South Africa, there to call for orders. Our run to within a few parallels of the latitude of the Horn had been extremely pleasant; the proverbial mildness of the Pacific Ocean was in the mellow ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... swam to the shore, and when the dawn came we saw that the schooner stood high and dry on the reef and that Franka and his men were trying to float her by throwing overboard the iron ballast and putting a kedge anchor out upon the lee side of the reef. And at the same time we saw three boats put off from the mainland. These boats were all painted white, and when I saw them I said to Solepa, 'Be of good heart. Thy husband is not ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... A bucket, loaded with stones heavy enough to sink it, was lowered down the black-looking pit, and was drawn up again nearly full of water. This was given to the nearest grazing animals, and the bucket sent down again, to catch against some projecting block and tilt out the ballast, after which it refused to sink, but made a jerk or two to escape, and then had to ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... she rested would collapse and immediately the propeller would shove her a little further over. Our vacuum almost disappeared, for the injection pipe got blocked with mud. This meant more work for me in starting the ballast pump, and when that got choked too, I had to open it up and clean the valve-boxes. It didn't seem to matter what happened, there was a new job for me. I wondered with a sort of temporary bitterness whether ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... marched cheerfully onward in the shoes in which he usually stood, without provisions and weighted down with heavy padded uniforms (which were designed for winter wear), carrying a heavy rifle and accoutrements, with forty rounds of ball cartridges in his pouch and twenty more in his pockets for ballast. Still he had a stout heart within his breast, and a resolute determination to do his duty in assisting to drive the invaders from the shores of his native land served to impel him onward as he marched through the choking dust of clay ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... also the most courageous of men; there is a union of qualities in him such as I have never seen in any other, and should scarcely have thought possible; for those who, like him, have quick and ready and retentive wits, have generally also quick tempers; they are ships without ballast, and go darting about, and are mad rather than courageous; and the steadier sort, when they have to face study, prove stupid and cannot remember. Whereas he moves surely and smoothly and successfully in the path of knowledge and enquiry; and he is ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... Stephenson married Fanny Henderson, a respectable country girl living at Ballast Hill. He brought the bride home behind him on a pillion, a wedding journey of fifteen miles. Robert Stephenson, who became his father's partner, and one of the first of England's civil engineers, was born in 1803. In 1812, when Stephenson was thirty-one years ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... spring balance was screwed down, and a railway chair suspended from it by strong copper wire, and the steam allowed to rise until it reached ninety lb. on the inch, and the big iron skips were hoisted with their load of heavy ballast as easily as the wooden ones had been. The ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... not serve us, and we had to row again for hours, and when night came had not reached the village. We were so fortunate, however, as to find a deep sheltered cove where the water was quite smooth, and we constructed a temporary anchor by filling a sack with stones from our ballast, which being well secured by a network of rattans held us safely during the night. The next morning my men went on shore to cut wood suitable for making fresh anchors, and about noon, the current turning in our favour, we proceeded to the village, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... our belongings. The process was not a lengthy one; we had so few. When we had little more than half filled the bag with articles of attire and the toilette stuffed in pell-mell, we looked around for ballast. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... happens to be uppermost, his claim is usually allowed for a share of what is going. And the thing seems to me highly reasonable: For in all great changes, the prevailing side is usually so tempestuous, that it wants the ballast of those whom the world calls moderate men, and I call men of discretion; whom people in power may, with little ceremony, load as heavy as they please, drive them through the hardest and deepest roads without danger of foundering, or breaking ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... company three dayes before, of good purpose, both to discouer their forces the more, as also to giue aduise to my L. Thomas of their approch. Hee had no sooner deliuered the newes but the fleete was in sight: many of our shippes companies were on shore in the Ilande; some providing ballast for their ships; others filling of water and refreshing themselues from the land with such things as they could either for money, or by force recouer. By reason whereof our ships being all pestered and romaging euery thing out of order, very light ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... watch it, as, upon the least carelessness on the part of the helmsman, it would immediately have filled. As it was, we shipped some heavy seas, but the blankets at the bottom being saturated, gave us the extra ballast which we required. Before we were clear of the islands, we were joined by a whole fleet of Indian canoes, with their dirty blankets spread to the storm, running, as we were, for Mackinaw, being on their return from Maniton Islands, where they had congregated ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of air is generated in an aqueduct which bursts its way even through stones unless the water is let in slowly and sparingly from the source at first, and checked at the elbows or turns by bands, or by the weight of sand ballast. All the other arrangements should be made as in the case of lead pipes. And ashes are to be put in beforehand when the water is let in from the source for the first time, so that if any of the joints have not been sufficiently coated, they may ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... low land. Some of the largest grain ranches are along the tule lands around Stockton. These were marshes once, but have been drained, and now are choice grain fields. Wheat was first sent out of the state to England as ballast for returning ships, but the trade gradually increased until there are now over one hundred of the finest sailing vessels engaged in it. Unfortunately, few of these vessels are American, perhaps but one fourth. It is a pity that our countrymen should ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... about this time that William Fairbairn made the acquaintance of George Stephenson, while the latter was employed in working the ballast-engine at Willington Quay. He greatly admired George as a workman, and was accustomed in the summer evenings to go over to the Quay occasionally and take charge of George's engine, to enable him to earn a few shillings ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... several able-bodied seamen, and all the passengers; while the two lifeboats had 31 of the crew. The boats drifted about all day, there being no wind, and the burning ship was still in sight. On the third day the lifeboats were not to be seen; each had a box of gold on board, by way of ballast. ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... is the field horse-tail (Equisetum arvense), a very abundant and widely distributed species. It grows in low, moist ground, and is often found in great abundance growing in the sand or gravel used as "ballast" for railway tracks. ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... successful, they would be so swollen with arrogance that, though they might not burst, they would present the spectacle of unbridled folly—nay, they would go mad. And I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. A ship without ballast is unstable and will not ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... are his! This man knows coral islands in the sea, And dusky girls heartbroken for white men; This sailor knows of wondrous lands afar, More rich than Spain, when the Phoenicians shipped Silver for common ballast, and they saw Horses at silver mangers eating grain; This man has seen the wind blow up a mermaid's hair Which, like a golden serpent, reared and stretched To feel the air away beyond her head. He begged my pennies, which I gave with joy— He will most certainly return some time A self-made ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... be a boat, and the long-unheeded demand of the true sportsman for "no daylight under mid-keel in smooth water" is in a fair way to be conceded. The new rule severely restricts plane area and lift alike. The gas compartments are permitted both fore and aft, as in the old type, but the water-ballast central tank is rendered obligatory. These things work, if not for perfection, at least for the evolution of a sane and wholesome waterborne cruiser. The type of rudder is unaffected by the new rules, so we may expect to see the Long-Davidson ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... the antithesis of greatness. The British Empire, like the Roman, was built up by dull men. It may be we shall be ruined by clever ones. Imagine a regiment of lively and eccentric privates! There never was a statesman yet who had not some ballast of stupidity, and it seems to me that part at least of the essentials of a genius is a certain divine dulness. The people we used to call the masters—Shakespeare, Raphael, Milton, and so forth—had a certain simplicity Crichton lacks. They ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... will still not be at ease with them. We must look to our two countries to guarantee its strength and activity, and if we English-speaking races quarrel and become disunited, civilisation will split up again and go its way to ruin. We are the ballast of the ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... of gas in a balloon or airship is called the "gross lift." The term "disposable," or "nett" lift, is obtained by deducting the weight of the structure, cars, machinery and other fixed weights from the gross lift. The resultant weight obtained by this calculation determines the crew, ballast, fuel and other necessities which can be carried by the ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... short, an intelligent, well nigh a sympathising, question. "Gratitude to the Prince for not having put a spoke in her wheel—that, you mean, should, taking it in the right way, be precisely the ballast ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... he said, "for I've no notion that jolly-boat will do to go out as far as we shall find it necessary to sound. So I am about to ballast the launch, and get her sails ready; there's no use in mincing matters in such a berth ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... not laying down a large stock for private consumption before the Great Drought set in. The Delorme found that out, then that his ancestral acres bordered on Long Island Sound, and finally that the Sybarite was loafing its head off. What could be more simple, she suggested, than that monsieur should ballast his private yacht with champagne on the homeward voyage, make his landfall some night in the dark of the moon, and put the stuff ashore on his own property before morning. Did he fall for it? Well, I just ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... passion gets the reins of reason, The force of nature, like too strong a gale, For want of ballast oversets the vessel." HIGGONS. ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... in the sky, and the silvery light streamed down on towering hillside and battalions of flitting pines. The great train swept on, clattering and clanking, and dust and fragments of ballast whirled about the lonely man. Still, the rush of the cool night wind was exhilarating, and his mind was busy, though his thoughts were not altogether pleasant. The few weeks he had spent in Ida Stirling's company had reawakened ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... charged with clouds. As it was the purpose of this project to examine much higher regions of the atmosphere than those which it had been customary for aeronautic exhibitors to rise to, the arrangements of ballast and inflation which were adopted, were such as to cause the ascent to be infinitely more rapid than in the case of public exhibitions; in short, the balloon darted upward with the speed of an arrow, and in two ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... mushroom anchors according to the nature of the ground. London Trinity House buoys are [v.04 p.0808] built of steel, with bulkheads to lessen the risk of their sinking by collision, and, with the exception of bell buoys, do not contain water ballast. In 1878 gas buoys, with fixed and occulting lights of 10-candle power, were introduced. In 1896 Mr T. Matthews, engineer-in-chief in the London Trinity Corporation, developed the present design (fig. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... generous enough to lift a few plants, scatter a few seeds over our fences into the fields and roadsides—to raise the bars of their prison, as it were, and let them free! Many have run away, to be sure. Once across the wide Atlantic, or wider Pacific, their passage paid (not sneaking in among the ballast like the more fortunate weeds), some are doomed to stay in prim, rigidly cultivated flower beds forever; others, only until a chance to bolt for freedom presents itself, and away they go. Lucky are they if every flower they produce is not picked ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... but," says he, "seeing what sort of one hell of a time invariably trarnspires when we cruise together, Mr. Pyecroft, I do not feel myself justified towards my generous and long-suffering employer in takin' on that kind of ballast as well." I assure ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... Coromandel; but the winds and currents were so strong against us, that we were forced back into the straits of Sunda to refit our ship, which was much weather-beaten. The 11th December, we anchored again at Pulo Panian, and went to work to trim our ship and take in ballast. Being ballasted, watered, and refitted, we sailed again on the 10th January, 1613, for the straits of Malacca. But, being too late in the monsoon, and both wind and current against us, we got no farther than seventy leagues from Bantam by the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... doubtless suggested by the mistaken precedent of Chaucer's daily flagon of wine. Ben Jonson was certainly, of all men living in 1630, the right person to receive this honor, which then implied, what it afterward ceased to do, the primacy of the diocese of letters. His learning supplied ballast enough to keep the lighter bulk of the poet in good trim, while it won that measure of respect which mere poetical gifts and graces would not have secured. He was the dean of that group of "poets, poetaccios, poetasters, and poetillos," [11] ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... These tie rods have eyes at each end in which rods with wedge-shaped ends are inserted. The molds were erected on the trestle by a locomotive crane and were then lifted by the mold traveler, carried and lowered into place. The largest one of these molds with its iron ballast, weighed 40 tons. To remove a mold, after the block had hardened, the nuts on the wedge-ended rods were turned, thus pulling the wedge end from the eye of the tie rod and releasing the sides of the mold from the ends. The locomotive crane then raised the ends and ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... chances. No doubt they could get fish and some game in that land toward which their imaginings already had set full sail, but ham by the stack and bacon by the yard and countless tins of fruit and vegetables made a fair ballast. Kendric spent lavishly and at the end was highly satisfied with ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... thy note, Since cruel fate has sunk our Justice Boat; Why should he sink, where nothing seem'd to press His lading little, and his ballast less? Tost in the waves of this tempestuous world, At length, his anchor fix'd and canvass furl'd, To Lazy-hill[1] retiring from his court, At his Ring's end[2] he founders in the port. With water[3] fill'd, he could no longer float, The common death of many a stronger boat. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... the well. A car generally carries four passengers, two on each side. On such occasions, the driver sits on a little seat over the well, looking to the front, while the passengers' backs are turned toward each other. Having only one passenger, Andy decided to sit on the opposite side of the car to ballast her evenly. After Paul bid good-bye to the coast guard and thanked him for his hospitality, he placed his rubber suit on the forward part of the seat and sprung up behind. Andy seemed in no hurry to get under ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... of camp rations. Here was our chance to teach a Christian man in an agreeable way that he should not appropriate more than his share of the rations without the consent of the mess, so we set to and ate heartily of his good stores, and in their place put, for ballast, a river-jack that weighed about two pounds. He carried the stone for two days before he ate down to it, and, when he did, was mad enough to eat it. We then told him what we had done and why, but thought he had hidden enough under his blanket ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... guard against the fair weather of the French politesse, which was no more to be trusted than a whirlpool at sea. He observed that many young men had gone to Paris with good cargoes of sense, and returned with a great deal of canvas, and no ballast at all, whereby they became crank all the days of their lives, and sometimes carried their keels above water. He desired Mr. Jolter to keep his pupil out of the clutches of those sharking priests who lie in wait to make ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... way. She was steering the poor domestic ship of Manchester House, illuminating its dark rooms with her own sure, radiant presence: her silver-white hair, and her pale, heavy, reposeful face seemed to give off a certain radiance. She seemed to give weight, ballast, and repose to the staggering and bewildered home. She controlled the maid, and suggested the meals—meals which James ate without knowing what he ate. She brought in flowers and books, and, very rarely, a visitor. Visitors were out of place in the dark sombreness of Manchester House. Her flowers ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... to The Star from Liverpool says that the name and nationality of the Nebraskan were painted in large letters on her sides. She was in water ballast. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... suppose that, had any noticed that Grim was taking these sacred things with him, there would have been a talk; but as we sailed light, none thought them aught but needed ballast; and we brought other stones to the ship ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... boys set to work. Kits and cans, ballast and blocks, spare spars and tackle, higgledy-piggledy overboard they went, some on the shingle, some splashing into the tide, to be snatched and tumbled ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... back from his pilot-boat a short time after, he saw the vessel stop, drift into the trough of the sea, careen to port, both bulwarks going under water, then suddenly capsize and sink. What was the cause of this sad catastrophe?—A want of ballast. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... demands no foolish vows, is strongest in absence, and most loyal when needed. It lends ballast to life, and gives steadily to every venture. Through our friends we are made ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... complexly organized, individualized divine force, destined to gravitate towards the Infinite. How is this force, with its numberless checks and counter-checks, its centripetal and centrifugal tendencies, best determined in its necessarily oblique way? How much earthly ballast must it carry, to keep it sufficiently steady, and how little, that it may not be weighed down with materialistic heaviness? How much certainty must it have of its course, and how much uncertainty, that it may shun the "torpor of assurance", *1* and not lose the vigor which comes of a dubious and ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... to the mound," said he, speaking very rapidly, "and when we got to the top and lifted off that stone lid—upon my soul, ladies, I believe there is gold enough in that thing to ballast a ship. It isn't filled quite up to the top, and, of course, I could not find out how deep the gold goes down; but I worked a hole in it as far down as my arm would reach, and found nothing but gold bars like this." Then, glancing around to see that none of the Africans were returning, he took from ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... for going through with things; and these three qualities are essential to statesmanship. Poets and philosophers can afford to be thin—cannot, indeed, afford to be otherwise; inasmuch as poetry and philosophy thrive but in the clouds aloft, and a stomach ballasts you to earth. Such ballast the statesman must have. Thin statesmen may destroy, but construct they cannot; have ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... incandescent-lamp signals to be connected direct to lines without relays, but compensated against too great a current by causing the resistance in series with the lamp to be increased inversely as the resistance of the filament. Employment of a "ballast" resistance in this way is referred to in Chapter XI. In Fig. 27 is shown its relation to a signal lamp directly in the line. 1 is the carbon-filament lamp; 2 is the ballast. The latter's conductor is fine iron wire in a vacuum. ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... coffee. Also we had to devote ourselves to the miserable task of bailing, for in some incomprehensible way the Reindeer had sprung a generous leak. Half the night had been spent in overhauling the ballast and exploring the seams, but the labor had been without avail. The water still poured in, and perforce we doubled up in the cockpit and ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... Confiance, French ship privateer, pierced for 26 twelves and nines, none of which, however, were on board; the Belier, French privateer brig, pierced for 20 eighteen-pounder carronades; and a Spanish merchant brig in ballast. I then hoisted a flag of truce, and sent to inform the inhabitants of the town, that if they would deliver up such stores of the ship as were on shore, there would be no further molestation. The proposal was thankfully agreed ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... respectable and eminently dull. What such a hawk as Mrs. Vrain was doing in this Philistine dove-cote, Lucian could not conjecture; but he admired her tact in making friends with a family whose heavy gentility assisted to ballast her somewhat light reputation; while the three of their brains in unison could not comprehend her tricks, or the reasons for which they ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... lovers. And Peter is a fine, solid fellow, who is going to make his mark, and who may be a sort of ballast to ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... well-stowed cargo below deck the schooner sailed even better than she had in ballast. She slipped out of the cove through the rather tortuous channel like an eel through the meshes of a broken trap. In the dawn, and with a fresh outside breeze just ruffling the sea into whitecaps, they broke out her upper ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... crushed beneath the glorious news— Ten plays, and forty tales of Kotzebue's; [8] One envoy's letters, six composer's airs, And loads from Frankfort and from Leipsic fairs: Meiners' four volumes upon Womankind, [9] Like Lapland witches to ensure a wind; Brunck's heaviest tome for ballast, [10] and, to back it, Of Heyne, [11] such as should ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... immediately transferred to the hold of the schooner, a ground-tier of large casks having been left in her purposely to receive the oil, which was emptied into them by means of a hose. By the end of the third week, this ground-tier was filled, and the craft became stiff, and was in good ballast trim, although the spare water was now entirely pumped ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... sir, upon her nose, an o'er embellished with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich aspect to the hot breath of Spain; who sent whole armadoes of carracks to be ballast ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... side. On the north and east it terminated abruptly in artificial cliffs of a dizzy height. The rocks had been blasted from their bases to make room for a steadily increasing commerce, and the debris was shipped away as ballast in the vessels that were chartered to bring passengers and provision to the coast, and found nothing in the line of freight to carry ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... two hands, one belonging to Mr Rowe, known by a hurt he had received on it; the other to Thomas Hill, as before-mentioned; and the head of the captain's servant. These, with more of the remains, were tied in a hammock, and thrown over-board, with ballast and shot sufficient to sink it. None of their arms nor cloaths were found, except part of a pair of trowsers, a frock, and six shoes, no ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... particular part of it which leads towards heaven is attended with great difficulties. Body is the boat by which one must cross that river. Forgiveness is the oar by which it is to be propelled. Truth is the ballast that is to steady that boat. The practice of righteousness is the string that is to be attached to the mast for dragging that boat along difficult waters. Charity of gift constitutes the wind that urges the sails of that boat. Endued with swift ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... him the three remaining men, terror-struck at his sudden and inexplicable appearance, his superhuman size and strength. One by one he swept them overboard; then grasping a huge stone, which formed part of the ballast, he dashed it with the full force of his gigantic strength through the planks of the boat, which at once began to fill. All this was the work of a few moments. He then leaped into the skiff, which sank as he swiftly transferred to his ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... said George Washington, rising and standing in the attitude of Webster, "I rises to appoint to order. We took ballast in de prior cases, and why make flesh of one man an' ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... another at arm's length. All this, I fear, is uninteresting to you; but it means a good deal to me. The flighty Arthur does not appear to be much cast down by our troubles. I wish I could help him to a little of the ballast he so greatly needs. But, although I am the master of this house, I seem scarcely ever to see him. I hear him, though. I hear him this minute. He and his chum occupy the room over me, and when they execute a war dance—which occurs on an average ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... I began to think of food. I thought of it not from its gastronomic aspect, but rather in the capacity of ballast. I did not so much desire the taste of it as the feel of it. So I summoned Lubly—he, at least, did not smile at me in that patronizing, significant way—and ordered a dinner that included nearly everything on the ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... rosa! In those days the nigger-catching fleet from the Hawaiian Islands cruised right away south to palm-clad Arorai, in the Line Islands, and ran the Queensland ships close in the business. They came down from Honolulu in ballast-trim, save for the liquor and firearms, and went back full of a sweating mass of black-haired, copper-coloured Line Islanders, driven below at dark to take their chance of being smothered if it came on to blow. Better for them had it so happened, as befel ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day, Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven; But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land Very carefully and slow, Men of Bideford and Devon, And we laid them on the ballast down below; For we brought them all aboard, And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain, To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... more than half as long as they should, if once thoroughly constructed. Wooden bridges are allowed to rot down for want of protection. Rails are left to be battered to pieces for want of drainage and ballast. One road spends thirty-four thousand dollars a year for "watching cuts," and fifty-five thousand more for removing slides that should never have taken place. Everything is done for the moment, and nothing thoroughly. Who can wonder that this system ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... it all runs only a part of the time. Increasing the output is then a particularly cheap operation. When a carrier's facilities are partially unused—when a ship carries a cargo in one direction and returns in ballast, or when it sails on both trips with its hold only half full—it is ready to carry additional goods at a low rate provided that this policy will not demoralize its existing business. In our illustration ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... with long planks, upborne On massy beams; he made the mast, to which He added suitable the yard; he framed Rudder and helm to regulate her course; With wicker-work he bordered all her length For safety, and much ballast stowed within. Meantime Calypso brought him for a sail Fittest materials, which he also shaped, And to his sail due furniture annexed Of cordage strong, foot-ropes and ropes aloft, Then heaved her down with levers to the deep. —Odyssey, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... from the heart of Africa, emerges upon the sea, no less grand than her, no less terrible, even there they sighted the land quite close, almost in darkness. Shard ordered every man to the hinder part of the ship and all the ballast too; and soon the Desperate Lark, her prow a little high out of the water, doing her eighteen knots before the wind, struck a sandy beach and shuddered, she heeled over a little, then righted herself, and slowly headed into the ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... Meanwhile the weight o' water bu'st the mains'l, so that the vessel partly righted, an' let the hands come on deck agin. Then, after the gale had eased a bit, two or three o' their comrades bore down on 'em and towed 'em round, so as the wind got under 'er an' lifted 'er a bit, but the ballast had bin shot from the bilge into the side, so they couldn't right her altogether, but had to tow 'er into port that way— over two hundred miles—the snow an' hail blowin', ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... oars, mind his helm, and bring alongside a short allowance of brandy or grog, that he might cant a slug into his bread-room, for there was such a heaving and pitching, that he believed he should shift his ballast. The fellow understood no part of this address but the word brandy, at mention of which he disappeared. Then Crowe, throwing himself into an elbow chair, "Stop my hawse-holes," cried he, "I can't think what's the matter, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Blanche and Rivers standing in the centre of the room. Bailey came back once to say: "This beats anything I ever saw. There will be ruin to many a shanty out of this," he added, as the roar began to diminish. "Nothing saved us but our ballast of ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... know," admitted Jim. "But the rice is the sluggish article, anyway; it's little more account than ballast; it's the tea and silks that I look to: all we have to find is the proportion, and one look at the manifest will settle that. I've rung up Lloyd's on purpose; the captain is to meet me there in an hour, and then I'll be as posted on that brig as if I built her. Besides, you've no idea ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the old man, "put some lead on the bottom of that double-ender of yours. It'll stand up, if you ballast it well. That'll be two. When you make another, ...
— Harper's Young People, May 4, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... it—Jamie? No more trouble about that ship Maine Lady? D—n the British collier tramps! and she as fine a clipper as ever left Bath Bay. Well, send her back in ballast; chessmen and India shawls, ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... protector through life. Then came the devastating thought that Elfride's childlike, unreasoning, and indiscreet act in flying to him only proved that the proprieties must be a dead letter with her; that the unreserve, which was really artlessness without ballast, meant indifference to decorum; and what so likely as that such a woman had been deceived in the past? He said to himself, in a mood of the bitterest cynicism: 'The suspicious discreet woman who imagines dark and ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... an article of great scarcity in the South. Coming over from Liverpool in ante bellum times as ballast, made it so cheap that little attention was given to the salt industry, and most of our best salt mines were in the hands of the enemy. But the Southern people were equal to any emergency. Men were put along the sea coast and erected great vats into which ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... testimonies borne out by the evidence of his own writings. Impulse with him took the place of conscience. Moral law, accompanied by the sanction of power, and imposed by outside authority, he rejected as a form of tyranny. His nature lacked robustness and ballast. Byron, who was at bottom intensely practical, said that Shelley's philosophy was too spiritual and romantic. Hazlitt, himself a Radical, wrote of Shelley: "He has a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter in ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the forward ones, and astern is another compartment, in which all stores are kept. Coal bunkers form a protection for the engines and boilers. Fore and aft the ship, as low down as possible, are a number of ballast tanks, which can be filled with or emptied of water as occasion requires to alter the trim of the ship. Extending over all holds there is a strong iron lower deck, about 8 feet below the upper deck, which is pierced ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... consumer by her cheap water-transport. Connected with this enterprise will be the multiplication of her steam colliers, ultimately scattering the crop of breadstuffs to the South Atlantic and Gulf States (if not the Eastern), and coming home with ballast of the varied iron ores those States abound in. When Delaware Bay begins to be whitened with the sails of returning coal-vessels, or lashed with the wheels of steam carriers, bringing in the oxides and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... in their opinions. It struck him that they were the exact counterpart of the new clique of humanity which has sprung up recently on this side of the Irish Sea; advanced thinkers without thought—the products of a little education without the ballast of a brain. Wild, enthusiastic in their desire for change, they know not what they want as the result of the change. Destructive without being constructive, they bemuse themselves with long words, and scorn simplicity. No scheme is too wild or lunatic for them, provided they themselves ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... too lively. Wants some more cargo or ballast to give her steadiness; but she'll be all right." All the same this was an experience very different from anything that Rodd had had before, and it was not without a severe buffeting that in the early ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... commune with himself. He liked to follow the whim of the moment, whither it would lead him. He was romantic; it was one of his agreeablest traits, because spontaneous; and he indulged it the more, as being confident that he had too much solid ballast in the hold to be in danger of upsetting. To-night, at this point of his mental ramble, he found that his cigar had gone out. Had he been thinking aloud? He believed not, and yet there was no telling; he often did so, unconsciously. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... believe they do," he said. "Of course, it would have seemed strange to the mate and to Rogers if I hadn't given them some explanation, especially as we came out in ballast. So I dropped hints that we were out on a survey expedition that couldn't be talked of just now. They probably have the idea that we're looking up a suitable coaling station for the Government, or something of that kind. To carry that out, ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... with a careful wing, And fly to water at a neighbouring spring; And lest their airy bodies should be cast In restless whirls, the sport of every blast, 250 They carry stones to poise them in their flight, As ballast keeps the unsteady vessel right. But, of all customs that the bees can boast, 'Tis this may challenge admiration most; That none will Hymen's softer joys approve, Nor waste their spirits in luxurious ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... am now standing firm on my feet. I have at the present moment a hundred and fifty thousand francs a year in the Three per Cents, and a reserve of two hundred thousand francs to repair damages. Even this does not seem to me very much ballast in the pocket of a man starting left foot foremost to scale the heights ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... railway's unsightly indications strewn across the countryside—ballast heaps, excavations, noisy stationary engines, hand-propelled barrows bumping along toy lines, gangs of men at labour with pick and shovel—met Sabre's thoughts on this June morning because he was thinking of the Penny Green Garden Home and of Mabel, and of Mabel and ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... from any irrecoverable excesses. He is of the world, worldly. All his works, all his conduct, tend only to astonish mankind. He is not prompted by any visionary ideas of ameliorating his species. The instinct of self-preservation will serve him as ballast.' ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... other, and more important things to think about," Mr. Skinner retorted icily. As a business man he was opposed to levity in the office. "What are your plans with reference to the Retriever? Do you wish to bring her back from Antofagasta in ballast?" ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... exact Calculation of what I expended and received the last Year, which I always register in a Book, I find the Medium to be two hundred weight, so that I cannot discover that I am impaired one Ounce in my Health during a whole Twelvemonth. And yet, Sir, notwithstanding this my great care to ballast my self equally every Day, and to keep my Body in its proper Poise, so it is that I find my self in a sick and languishing Condition. My Complexion is grown very sallow, my Pulse low, and my Body Hydropical. Let me therefore beg you, Sir, to consider me ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... one side and with me on the other, and with his fancied devotion to Alice on top of it all, he must feel that the world is against him." Then Gorham's face became stern again. "But he must take on ballast," he said, firmly; "he must get over these snap-judgments and learn to recognize that he is playing with tools too heavy for him to handle. It will do him good—but I love the boy for his courage. It will land him somewhere ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... capacity for going through with things; and these three qualities are essential to statesmanship. Poets and philosophers can afford to be thin—cannot, indeed, afford to be otherwise; inasmuch as poetry and philosophy thrive but in the clouds aloft, and a stomach ballasts you to earth. Such ballast the statesman must have. Thin statesmen may destroy, but construct they cannot; have achieved chaos, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... owl, who hunts the sparrow o' nights, grows so light from scant feeding that he cannot fly against the wind. If he would go back to his starting point while the March winds are out, he must needs come down close to the ground and yewyaw towards his objective, making leeway like an old boat without ballast or centerboard. ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... clinging to my feet, sobbing out incoherent gratitude; a pair of arms were belabouring my shoulders; and a voice was saying with broken gurgles of joy: "Ship ahoy, there! Ease your helm! Don't heave all your ballast overboard!"—a clapping of hands on my back—"Port your helm! Ease her up! All sheets in the wind and the storms'l aflutter! Ha-ha!" with a wringing and a wringing like to wrench my hands off—"Anchor out! Haul away! Home with her . . ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... the glorious news, Ten plays, and forty tales of Kotzebue's; One envoy's letters, six composers' airs, And loads from Frankfort and from Leipsic fairs: Meiner's four volumes upon womankind, Like Lapland witches to ensure a wind; Brunck's heaviest tome for ballast, and, to back it, Of Heyne, such as ...
— English Satires • Various
... soldiers looked at me as one returned from the grave, and from what I could gather by the looks of the boys, I was something of a hero, even before I had told my story. The colonel asked me what had become of all the baggage I had on my saddle when I went away, and I told him that I had thrown ballast over-board all over the Southern Confederacy, when I was charging the enemy, because I found my horse drew too much water for a long run. He said something about my being a Horse-Marine, and sent me back to my company, telling me that when we got into camp ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... on New Year's Day in 1681 on the Most Holy Trinity, they clapped their captain in irons and put him down below on the ballast, and elected an old pirate and a "stout seaman," John Watling, in his place. One of the reasons for the revolt was said to be the ungodliness of ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... years of age Stephenson married Fanny Henderson, a respectable country girl living at Ballast Hill. He brought the bride home behind him on a pillion, a wedding journey of fifteen miles. Robert Stephenson, who became his father's partner, and one of the first of England's civil engineers, was born in 1803. In 1812, when ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... of a skipper I once sailed with, bound from Rotterdam to Hull in ballast. There was a Scotch mist best part of the trip, an' the old man loaded with schnapps to keep out the damp. First time he got a squint of the sun he went as yaller as a Swede turnip. 'It's all up with us, boys,' he said. 'My ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Protheroe in any serious sense. Nobody spoke or thought ill of him, or had ground for ill speaking or thinking. But it was generally conceded that he was a butterfly kind of young fellow, and there was a general opinion that he wanted ballast. Rural human nature is full of candour of a sort, and Lane was accustomed to criticism. He took it with a bright carelessness, and in respect to the charge of wanting ballast was apt to answer that ballast was a necessary thing for boats that carried no cargo. Thistlewood was generally admitted ...
— Bulldog And Butterfly - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... masters, and after having leased the whole boat to me were intending now to turn a dishonest penny by shipping somebody else's goods into the bargain. In company with the rest of my kind, I much dislike to be imposed upon; so I told them they might instantly take the so-called ballast out again. When I had seen the process of disembarkation fairly begun I relented, deciding, so long as the bales were already aboard, to take them on to the first stopping place, and there put them ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... frivolous-minded of Clayton were bent upon the festivities of fair week, it must not be imagined that the grave and thoughtful contingent, which acts as ballast in every community, ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... Abdullah's are the most amusing children I ever saw. They are nine and twelve years old, with monkey-like, irrepressible faces. They have no ballast. They talk ceaselessly, and are very playful and witty, but though a large sum is being paid for their education at Malacca, they speak atrocious "pidjun," and never use Malayan, in my hearing at least. They are never still for one ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... heart. It was strange, then, that more than one hoped that she had found favor in his eyes. Erle's sunshiny nature made him a universal favorite, but it may be doubted whether any of his friends really read him correctly. Now and then an older man told him he wanted ballast, and warned him not to carry that easy good nature too far or it might lead him into mischief; but the spoiled child of fortune only shook ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and exceedingly simple device bore witness to the ingenuity of the inventor. He had noticed in his days of free ballooning that to rise the aeronaut had to throw out sand-ballast; to descend he had to open the valves and let out gas. As his supply of both gas and sand was limited it was clear that the time of his flight was necessarily curtailed every time he ascended or descended. Santos-Dumont thought to husband his supplies of lifting force and of ballast, and ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... papers with a dozen caps in each. Buck-shot and slugs are better than bullets, for the purposes of which we are speaking. Bows and arrows might render good service. The Chinese, in their junks, when they expect a piratical attack, bring up baskets filled with stones from the ballast of the ship, and put them on deck ready at hand. They throw them with great force and precision: the idea is not a bad one. Boiling water and hot sand, if circumstances happened to permit their use, are worth bearing in mind, as they tell well on the bodies ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... As the rowers passed under his bows he looked critically at the streaming black bodies and spat meditatively into the water. His own father could have had them between decks as cargo. Now for the petroleum and lumber he brings from Massachusetts to Sierra Leone he returns in ballast. ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... been blowing twice a gale and nothing happened to either of us. Probably no stiffer class of vessels sails the seas than the big coasters of our side of the North Atlantic. Give them plenty of ballast and there is no capsizing them. We surely had plenty of ballast in us now, and took cheerfully all the hard westerly had to give us, and foamed along. Foamed? We wallowed—like a couple of sailing submarines almost. In that wind and sea, with all that loose water ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... balloon or airship is called the "gross lift." The term "disposable," or "nett" lift, is obtained by deducting the weight of the structure, cars, machinery and other fixed weights from the gross lift. The resultant weight obtained by this calculation determines the crew, ballast, fuel and other necessities which can be carried by the ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... about the same size as the little blue, but with an air of daintiness and lightness that is quite its own, and quite indescribable. When it rose upon the wing, indeed, it seemed almost too light, almost unsteady, as if it lacked ballast, like a butterfly. It was the most numerous bird of its tribe along the river, I think, and, with one exception, the most approachable. That exception was the green heron, which frequented the flats ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... pleased. 'I only wish you could make Lady Betty a useful member of society, Miss Garston,' he said, with one of the rare smiles that always lit up his dark face so pleasantly. 'She is a good little thing, but she wants ballast. As a rule, ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... they may draw to-day—thumping bonuses from the planters sub rosa! In those days the nigger-catching fleet from the Hawaiian Islands cruised right away south to palm-clad Arorai, in the Line Islands, and ran the Queensland ships close in the business. They came down from Honolulu in ballast-trim, save for the liquor and firearms, and went back full of a sweating mass of black-haired, copper-coloured Line Islanders, driven below at dark to take their chance of being smothered if it came on to blow. Better for them had ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... a little remarkable that only one woman ever joined this community. Mrs. Lamb merely followed wheresoever her husband led,—"as ballast for his balloon," as she ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... in the residence of the Jesuits (Relations, for 1657, p. 26); they stand north-east and south-west, and are at present flush with the greensward; a large portion of them were still visible about thirty-five years ago, as, attested by many living witnesses; they were converted into ballast for ships built at this spot, and into materials for repairing the main road by some Vandal who will remain nameless. From the Manor House you notice the little cape to the south-west mentioned in Abbe Ferland's Notes, though ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Tree come floating down the River, and sometimes lodge against our Bows, to the endangering the breaking our Cables, and either the driving us in, over the Banks, or carrying us out to Sea; both which would have been very dangerous to us, especially being without Ballast. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... suicides, and perhaps a well-shaped soul sits in each of these stones. But heaven protect me just the same from the inhabitants of these towns! Rolling stones cannot bark, neither do they attract thieves; they are mere ballast. Quiet behavior: that is what I hold against them, that they make no fiery gestures; it would become them to roll a little, but there they lie, with even their sex unknown. But you saw the ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... send her down her chosen path in a boat. Peters will load the dingey with ballast, while you and I will lay Dolores out as well as we may. Bring me that grating, Pearse. We will speed her in the dress she loved. Her soul would sicken at a suffocating winding sheet. Hurry, for ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... indeed, but she was not the shallow craft that she looked; there was more of her below than above the surface, and she drew a great deal of water for a vessel of her tonnage. This great draught of water enabled her to carry a heavy load of ballast, tall masts, and a correspondingly heavy press of sail; thus she was an enormously fast vessel, and had up till now easily eluded capture, being able to run away from and out-weather many vessels ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... impossible any other should be overgreat. Another means to curb them, is to balance them by others, as proud as they. But then there must be some middle counsellors, to keep things steady; for without that ballast, the ship will roll too much. At the least, a prince may animate and inure some meaner persons, to be as it were scourges, to ambitions men. As for the having of them obnoxious to ruin; if they be of fearful natures, it may do well; but if they be stout and daring, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... towards the harbour entrance, and, letting the tiller swing about, squatted down and busied himself in loosening the plug. With that out she would fill very quickly, and every lighter carried a little iron ballast—enough to make her go down when full of water. When he stood up again the noisy wash about the Hermosa sounded far away, almost inaudible; and already he could make out the shape of land about the harbour ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... plague to the camps. Therefore our city, like a great merchantman full of a crowd of every race borne without a pilot these many years through rough water, rolls and shoots hither and thither because it is without ballast. Do not, then, allow her to be longer exposed to the tempest; for you see that she is waterlogged. And do not let her split upon a reef[5]; for her timbers are rotten and will not be able to hold out ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... if the Wabash could get enough of it to ballast that track that washes out every spring, I ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... nearly swallowed up the debt. Poor Grace was overwhelmed when her mother came home and upbraided her, in her despair, with being a burden. Was she not a burden? Must she not be one henceforth? No, she would take in needlework, labour in the fields, heave ballast among the coarse pauper-girls on the quay-pool, anything rather: but how ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... already, and with steady eyes that look through the blast, you see him understanding commandments from the jerk of his father’s white eyebrow, now belaying and now letting go, now scrunching himself down into mere ballast, or baling out death with a pipkin. Stale enough is the sight, and yet when I see it I always stare anew, and with a kind of Titanic exultation, because that a poor boat with the brain of a man and the hands of a boy on board can match herself ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... Dunbar. She was now a total wreck—the bottom had separated to some extent amidships from her upper works; a considerable portion of her floor timber was lying about ten yards to windward of the rest of the hull, and the iron ballast within this frame of timber was thus open to view. It was now time for every man to provide as far as possible for his own safety. A Portuguese sailor, an excellent swimmer, was the first to quit the wreck and swim on shore; several men attempted to follow his example, but five of them perished. ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... friend, after having seated himself, and trimmed[187] the boat with his coachman, who, being a very sober man, always serves for ballast on these occasions, we made the best of our way for Fox-Hall. Sir Roger obliged the waterman to give us the history of his right leg, and hearing that he had left it at La Hogue, with many particulars which passed in that glorious ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... fair weather of the French politesse, which was no more to be trusted than a whirlpool at sea. He observed that many young men had gone to Paris with good cargoes of sense, and returned with a great deal of canvas, and no ballast at all, whereby they became crank all the days of their lives, and sometimes carried their keels above water. He desired Mr. Jolter to keep his pupil out of the clutches of those sharking priests who lie in wait to make converts ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... t' trade un all. 'Twill be a v'y'ge by that time. Then I'm goin' t' run the Sink or Swim back o' the islands in Seal Run. Which done, I'll wait for Tommy Mib t' make up his mind, one way or t' other. If he casts loose, I'll wait, decent as you like, 'til he's well under weigh, when I'll ballast un well an' heave un over. If he's goin' t' bide a spell longer in this world, I'll wait 'til he's steady on his pins. But, whatever, go or stay, I'll fit the schooner with a foretopmast, bark her canvas, paint her black, call her ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... crew, having little wages due to them, had deserted soon after our arrival. Only we apprentices and the sail-maker remained, and we had work enough to set our muscles up in the heavy harbour jobs. Trimming coal and shovelling ballast may not be scientific training, but it is grand work for the back ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... are Australian coal, and general merchandise from Europe, but most sailing ships arrive in ballast. ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... learned, was one of the largest freighters afloat. It carried a crew of more than 200 men. It was loaded in ballast for the trip across, but, returning, it would carry a valuable cargo of ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... start a tracer from the other end after those car numbers," Farwell was commanding; "and you start one from here. I've got to have them right away; work's at a standstill. Those cursed fatheads in the freight department don't know enough to shovel ballast. Get after ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... lessons were done, he had devoted his spare time to work on his model, fixing the engines, soldering down the decks, and putting in ballast, so as to balance the boat and keep her on an even keel. At length the work was finished; the Fury, as she was called, was painted all over an orthodox black, and when given a trial trip in the bath, ran from ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... to let gas escape for a descent. He is able to cause a very rapid escape by pulling another cord depending from a "ripping piece" near the top of the bag. In case of emergency this is torn away bodily, leaving a large hole. The ballast (usually sand) carried enables him to maintain a state of equilibrium between the upward pull of the gas and the downward pull of gravity. To sink he lets out gas, to rise he throws out ballast; and this process can be repeated until the ballast is exhausted. The ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... right, my friend; there's nothing like plenty of work to help keep a person out of mischief; but, after all, he must have steadiness and good principles. They alone are to be depended on, and I hope your son has got those as ballast." ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... Norfolk was in Federal hands, and Huger had disappeared without signaling us, when our pilots informed us that Harrison's Bar, which we must cross, drew only eighteen feet of water. Under their advice, on the night of May 11th we lightened ship by throwing overboard all our coal and ballast, thus raising our unprotected decks above water. At last all was ready—and then we found that the wind which had been blowing down-stream all day had swept the water off the bar. When morning dawned ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... shifting ballast, Master Roderigo; first on one side of the cabin, and then on the other; but you see ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... so far, that whatever faction happens to be uppermost, his claim is usually allowed for a share of what is going. And the thing seems to me highly reasonable: For in all great changes, the prevailing side is usually so tempestuous, that it wants the ballast of those whom the world calls moderate men, and I call men of discretion; whom people in power may, with little ceremony, load as heavy as they please, drive them through the hardest and deepest roads without danger of foundering, or breaking their backs, and will be sure to find ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... of life were dear, but the luxuries were cheap. If a man could not afford to buy kangaroo beef and potatoes, he could live sumptuously on gin. Davy walked back to the port the same evening, and next day took in ballast, which was mud ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... of superhuman struggle to save the Jeanne D'Arc. Her crew, sufficient in ordinary weather, was too small to cope with the storm and the leaking ship. Ballast had to be shifted or flung overboard. Repairs had to be attempted in the hold; the pumps had to be worked incessantly, It transpired that the yacht had gone far out of her course during the fog the night before, and had tried to turn inshore, even before ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... men—vikings, Swedes, and Danes — lost their lives on this bridge. So when Erik saw that King Olaf was gaining the upper hand of him he got his berserks to take down the oars and to fling them over the Serpent's nearer gunwale, together with all logs of wood, spars, ballast stones, and other weighty things that could be found. And as the weight increased so did the Serpent lean over, until at last her bulwarks were almost on a level with those ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... trains, carrying merchandise to and fro between Sofia and Nisch. Most of these animals are too heavily laden to think of objecting to the appearance of anything on the road, but some of the outfits are returning from Sofia in "ballast" only; and one of these, doubtless overjoyed beyond measure at their unaccustomed lissomeness, breaks through all restraint at my approach, and goes stampeding over the rolling hills, the wild-looking teamsters in full tear ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... carrying passengers or cargo, $1.20 per net vessel ton-each 100 cubic feet-of actual earning capacity. 2. On vessels in ballast without passengers or cargo, 40 per cent less than the rate of tolls for vessels with passengers or cargo. 3. Upon naval vessels, other than transports, colliers, hospital ships, and supply ships, 50 cents per displacement ton. 4. Upon Army and Navy transports, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... concentration necessary to follow the badly blazed trees, and a biting hunger that gnawed, helped to keep his mind steady. Otherwise, he admits, the temporary aberration he had suffered might have been prolonged to the point of positive disaster. Gradually the ballast shifted back again, and he regained something that approached his ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... under the arch, and am clear of all obstructions, I lay the sculls aside, and reclining let the boat drift past a ballast punt moored over the shallowest place, and with a rising load of gravel. One man holds the pole steadying the scoop, while his mate turns a windlass the chain from which drags it along the bottom, filling the bag with pebbles, and finally hauls it to the surface, when the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... 'twon't take long to tell. The old man had her fitted up in good shape by the time the ice was out of the river, and run her up to Bangor in ballast, and loaded her there for New York. He had an ugly trip down the coast: lost his deck load and three men overboard in a southeaster off Nantucket Shoals. It made the whole ship's company feel pretty solemn, but the old man took ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... done, he carried the boat compass and all the rifles and ammunition down to the cutter, which he proceeded to ballast with cases of tobacco. It was while engaged in this that a hideous, skinless thing came out of the house and ran screaming down the beach till it fell in the sand and mowed and gibbered under the scorching sun. Mauki looked toward it and ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... the state of a ship with regard to ballast; position of a vessel in the water with respect ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... however, that our attention is drawn to this material side of the body; that, so far from sharing in the lightness and subtlety of the principle with which it is animated, the body is no more in our eyes than a heavy and cumbersome vesture, a kind of irksome ballast which holds down to earth a soul eager to rise aloft. Then the body will become to the soul what, as we have just seen, the garment was to the body itself—inert matter dumped down upon living energy. The impression of the comic will be produced as soon as we have ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... few plants, scatter a few seeds over our fences into the fields and roadsides—to raise the bars of their prison, as it were, and let them free! Many have run away, to be sure. Once across the wide Atlantic, or wider Pacific, their passage paid (not sneaking in among the ballast like the more fortunate weeds), some are doomed to stay in prim, rigidly cultivated flower beds forever; others, only until a chance to bolt for freedom presents itself, and away they go. Lucky are they if every flower they produce is not picked before a single seed ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... 'Ay, heave the ballast overboard, And stow the eatables in the aft locker.' 'Would not this keg be best a little lowered?' 75 'No, now all's right.' 'Those bottles of warm tea— (Give me some straw)—must be stowed tenderly; Such as we used, in summer after six, To cram in greatcoat pockets, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the First Church, Niece Louise," he said firmly. "Abe always did. These small-fry craft, like the Mariner's Chapel, are all right, I don't dispute; but they are lacking in ballast. It's in my mind to attend the church that's the most like a well-founded, ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... Derek! Before you've any right to Nedda you've got to find ballast. That's a matter of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... as all but inspired; and being possessed of real powers as miraculous in her own eyes as those which were imputed to her were in theirs (for what are real spiritual experiences but daily miracles?) she was just in that temper of mind in which she required, as ballast, all her real goodness, lest the moral balance should topple headlong after the intellectual, and the downward course of vanity, excitement, deception, blasphemous assumptions be entered on. Happy for her that she was in Protestant ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... additional labour at the pump, nothing was thought of it. At eight, the leak did not seem to increase. At twelve it began to blow very hard in squalls, which caused the vessel to lie down very much, whereby it was apprehended she wanted more ballast. Thereupon the captain came on deck, being the starboard watch, and close ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... any further art or labour, for it is only done by the great heate of the sunne. This the Venetians haue, and doe maintaine to the vse of S. Marke, and the Venetian ships that come to this Island are bound to cast out their ballast, and to lade with salt for Venice. Also there may none in all the Iland buy salt but of these men, who maintaine these pits for S. Marke. This place is watched by night with 6. horsemen to the end it be not stolne by night. Also vnder ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... intellectual man. Chiefly, the church, through its spiritual ministries, is to inspire its members and others to good works of love in their daily walk and conversation. As the anchor of the buoy or the ballast of the ship holds it upright, so the good works of Christians hold the spiritual salvation aloft to be seen of men, and commend it ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... necessarily, yet in fact, is always so composed, in the far greater part. Let those large proprietors be what they will, and they have their chance of being among the best, they are, at the very worst, the ballast in the vessel of the commonwealth. For though hereditary wealth, and the rank which goes with it, are too much idolized by creeping sycophants, and the blind, abject admirers of power, they are too rashly slighted in shallow ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... miles, and, at great personal risk, accomplished their purpose in two hours and a half. The balloon at first rose slowly and majestically in the air, but it soon began to descend, and, before they had crossed the Channel, they were obliged to reduce the weight, by throwing out all their ballast, several books, their apparatus, cords, grapples, bottles, and were even proceeding to cast their clothes into the sea, when the balloon, which had then nearly reached the French coast, began to ascend, and rose to a considerable height, relieving ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Robert's last letters, he felt saddened by his unsatisfactory career. Writing to his friend Moore (5th August) he says: "I hope your eldest son will do well in the distant land to which he has gone. My son is in the Federal army in America, and no comfort. The secret ballast is often applied by a kind hand above, when to outsiders we appear to be sailing ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... currents, being decomposed by the resistance of the wings, is thus changed into a perpendicular pressure, acting upwards or downwards according to the position of the wings; by means of which the aeronaut hopes to be enabled to ascend or descend without losing either gas or ballast. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... character? Because that's what it 'ud amount to. I've bullied you for having played skittles with my life, my career. So you have! Damn it, so you have! But you've done it out of blind thoughtlessness; and if I'd been a fairly strong man, with some ballast in me, you couldn't have landed me where I am— not you nor fifty Pandora girls! [Sitting erect.] And that— that's the moral of the tale; and— and— [abruptly, to FARNCOMBE] There's ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... whether there was any possibility of attacking the enemy; but the want of a sufficient depth of water rendered the scheme impracticable. In the meantime, the French threw overboard their cannon, stores, and ballast; and boats and launches from Rochefort were employed in carrying out warps, to drag their ships through the soft mud, as soon as they should be water-borne by the flowing tide. By these means their large ships of war, and many of their transports, escaped into the river Charente; but ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... life, Roy Pell," said Mr. Tyler after the skurrying dust raised from the ballast had settled into place. ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... occurrence to put up a “whisp” of them, whereas now one seldom sees more than three or four in a whole season. A delicate little bird, very palatable on the table, was the waterrail, now almost extinct. The writer used to have permission to shoot along the “ballast ponds” beside the railway, and he has frequently shot them there. The woodcock is still with us. The poet painter, Dante Rosetti, kept one as a favourite pet; we of Woodhall are more prosaic, and like to see the bird rise out of the bracken before us, and fall to our ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... foul stuff. Some are carried from farm to farm by wagons, sleighs, or threshing machines; or they are spread by plows, cultivators, and harrows. A few are introduced to grow for ornament or food, and afterwards spread as weeds. A number have been shipped to distant lands in the earth of ballast, which is often unloaded and reloaded at wharves where freight is changed. They are carried along the highway, strung along the towpath of canals, or are carried in the trucks or in the cars of railroads. ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... Juno, had a cargo I was forced to take over. I unloaded what was needed at Sitka, but as there was no boat going for some months to the other islands, I brought the rest with me, and you are welcome to it, if in exchange you will ballast the Juno with samples of your agricultural products; while the treaty is pending, I can experiment in our colonies and make sure which are the ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... of both rivers are sweet, pleasant, and fresh. The one is distant from the other a league and a half, consisting of a beach of black gravel, with small heavy stones, excellent for ballast for a ship. ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... that the attempt had failed, but the three men in the car set to work vigorously throwing out some of the sand-bags that had been put in the car for ballast, to steady it, and the balloon soon rose again ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 40, August 12, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Young,[1220] "have been all this day in the Palais-Royal;" the press is so great that an apple thrown from a balcony on the moving floor of heads would not reach the ground. The condition of these heads may be imagined; they are emptier of ballast than any in France, the most inflated with speculative ideas, the most excitable and the most excited. In this pell-mell of improvised politicians no one knows who is speaking; nobody is responsible for what he says. Each is there as in the theater, unknown among the unknown, requiring ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... preserving the level of the turntable, whether unloaded, partially loaded, or loaded, is happily met by an arrangement of water ballast and pumping. I cannot pass away from the mention of Mr. Eads' work without just reminding you of the successful manner in which he has dealt with the mouth of the Mississippi, by which he has caused ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... him, and anxious to deliver up the vessel to the owner, who resided at Overton, he returned in ballast, and communicated the intelligence of Thompson's death; which, in so small a town, was long the theme of conversation, and the food ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... those faculties, need I be a prophet to tell you that you must learn to concentre upon great objects all your desires? The heart must rest, that the mind may be active. At present you wander from aim to aim. As the ballast to the ship, so to the spirit are faith and love. With your whole heart, affections, humanity, centred in one object, your mind and aspirations will become equally steadfast and in earnest. Viola is a child as yet; you do not perceive the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... through me, an awful premonitory chill. I knew what to do, but there was little I could do. We carried no ballast, for this was a captive balloon. What could I throw out? The extra rifle! Out it went, and fell not far from the tiger; but he did not move; with his green eyes fixed upon the car, he watched it slowly descend. The ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... safety consists in a due proportion of hope and fear. When devoid of hope, we resemble a ship without an anchor; when unrestrained by fear, we are like the same vessel under full sail without ballast. True comfort is the effect of watchfulness, diligence, and circumspection. What lessons could possibly have been selected of greater importance or more suited to establish the new convert, than these are which our author has most ingeniously and agreeably inculcated, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... on the whole, for Dick. Like some small boat that gets out of the rushing tide for a little into some quiet creek, he had time to overhaul himself and pull himself together, ready for another voyage. He was able, in the home harbour, to take some little fresh ballast on board and to rearrange what he at present had. He was able to stow away some of his useless tackle and bale out some of the water he had shipped in the last few rapids. Altogether, though Dick was not exactly a boy given to self-examination, or self- ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... pier - a queer old wooden pier, fortunately without the slightest pretensions to architecture, and very picturesque in consequence. Boats are hauled up upon it, ropes are coiled all over it; lobster-pots, nets, masts, oars, spars, sails, ballast, and rickety capstans, make a perfect labyrinth of it. For ever hovering about this pier, with their hands in their pockets, or leaning over the rough bulwark it opposes to the sea, gazing through telescopes ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... accurately, when her sails of brightly dyed wool were spread. She was given high bulwarks, and must have had more than the usual four-foot draught of water, for she carried plenty of heavy stone ballast to stiffen her under sail. With the "Crane" as his flagship, Olaf sailed northward to attack the Viking Raud, pirate and magician, who held out for the old gods and the old wild ways. Raud had another exceptionally large ship, the longest in Norway, and till the "Crane" was built ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... times, too, were over. We had a dull, rainy night, a heavy, broadside swell, and as the steamer had not enough ballast, she rolled frightfully. In this nasty sea we were afraid she might turn turtle, as another steamer had done some months ago. The storm became such that we had to lie at anchor for five days, sheltered by the coast of Gaua. It was with ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... Ulietea, and to windward of some harbours that lay on the west side of this island. Into one of these harbours, though we had before been ashore on the other side of the island, I intended to put, in order to stop a leak which we had sprung in the powder-room, and to take in more ballast, as I found the ship too light to carry sail upon a wind. As the wind was right against us, we plied off one of the harbours, and about three o'clock in the afternoon on the 1st of August, we came to an anchor in the entrance of the channel leading into it in fourteen ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... timed them down the river, allowing for the pause to take in ballast, and on the Wednesday pictured the sail down the open sea. That night he thought of the little craft under the bows of the huge steam-vessels, powerless to make itself seen or heard, and Avice, now growing inexpressibly dear, sleeping in her little berth at the ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... families which, if not noble themselves, are allied to nobility,—and as to my "rise in the world"—if I had risen, it would have been rather for balloon-like qualities than for mother-wit, to being unencumbered with heavy ballast either in my head or my pockets. However, it was my cue to agree: ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... Malaunay. He was in love with Flore, who for a time seemed to encourage him. He was dismissed from his post on account of grave negligence caused by Flore, who distracted his attention in order that he might allow the Havre express to dash into a train loaded with ballast. The accident was only averted by a new automatic signalling apparatus. La ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... board; he is always to be found off any part of the coast where he may be ordered; holding his position in defiance of gales, and tides, and fogs: as for the revenue vessels, they all know him well enough, but they cannot touch a vessel in ballast, if she has no more men on board than allowed by her tonnage. He knows every creek, and hole, and corner of the coast; how the tide runs in—tide, half-tide, eddy, or current. That is his ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... ship saileth," remarked the man, indicating a large vessel moored in the Great Port, "some Christians go as ballast!" ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... "An' she's fightin' for her honor an' her future peace an' happiness, an' she's doin' it all alone. She's pretty as a picture, an' nothin' but a child when he married her four months ago, an' we've took away her natural pervider an' entertainer, an' left her nothin' but her freedom for a ballast wheel. An' I say I wish some of the patriotic people who are jest showerin' every Charlie Turner with attentions would please sprinkle jest a few on Charlie's wife, to help keep her straight an' sweet an' honest for Charlie when ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... crop was a very short one, not only in France, but in all the vine countries, including the Canaries. This, of course, greatly lessened the demand for staves, and there were consequently very few taken from England to France, although French vessels are in the habit of taking them for ballast at a merely nominal rate, owing to the difficulty they experience in procuring return freights from England. The short crops in Canada and the great scarcity of money, forced an unusual number of laborers in that country into the stave and lumber ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... of applause; he caught the facile atheistic flippancy of that poor creature, the 'modern young man,' all-knowing and all-foolish, and he came very near losing his soul in the nightmare. But he had too much ballast in him to go quite under, and at last strength came, and he shook the weakness from him. Yet the fall had been too far and too cruel for him to be happy again soon. He had gone forth so confident in his new strength of manly love; and ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... common rocks is used commercially in crushed or comminuted forms for road material, for railroad ballast, and for cement, brick, concrete, and flux. In blocks and structural shapes, of less aggregate tonnage, they are used as building stone, monumental stone, paving blocks, curbing, flagging, roofing, refractory stone, and for many ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... fashion, perhaps, did Helwyse commune with himself. He liked to follow the whim of the moment, whither it would lead him. He was romantic; it was one of his agreeablest traits, because spontaneous; and he indulged it the more, as being confident that he had too much solid ballast in the hold to be in danger of upsetting. To-night, at this point of his mental ramble, he found that his cigar had gone out. Had he been thinking aloud? He believed not, and yet there was no telling; he often did so, unconsciously. Were it so, and were any one listening, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... to move her, had built a short deck forward to prevent the seas from breaking aboard her, as well as to give him a place in which he might stow away various articles, under cover from the rain. Her ballast was breakers, filled with fresh water, of which there still remained several in the ship. All these, as well as her masts, sails, oars, &c., were in her when she was launched; and that important event having taken place early in the morning, Mark could not restrain his impatience ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... crew mutinied on New Year's Day in 1681 on the Most Holy Trinity, they clapped their captain in irons and put him down below on the ballast, and elected an old pirate and a "stout seaman," John Watling, in his place. One of the reasons for the revolt was said to be ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... durability, is made by using foundry sand or smith's ashes instead of ordinary sand. There are many other substitutes for the ordinary sand. As an example, fine stone grit may be used with advantage. Thoroughly burnt clay or ballast, old bricks, clinkers and cinders, ground to a uniform size and screened from ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... large boat propelled by mechanical power, or sail, sufficiently near the float to assist the observers, prevents its use, and the best result will be obtained by employing a substantial, seaworthy rowing boat with a broad beam. The boatmen appreciate the inclusion of a mast, sails, and plenty of ballast in the equipment to facilitate their return home when the day's work is done, which may happen eight or nine miles away, with twilight fast passing into darkness. There should be two boatmen, or a man and ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... is right when he observes that we must not part company. As my mother says, we are a giddy crew, and will be the better of a little scientific ballast to keep us from capsizing into a crevasse. Do come, my dear sir, if it were only out of charity, to keep ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... embargo so as to prevent the loss of our ships and seamen. The Senate hurried a bill through all its stages in a single day; and the House, by nearly two to one, accepted it. No foreign merchant vessel could leave an American port, except in ballast, or with a cargo then on board; no American merchantman could leave for a ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... I'm holding down the wheel—perhaps. The screw is always edging a ship off, and the lighter the ballast the wider the yaw. So you have to keep hitching her over a point to starboard. You trust to me to keep that point, and I trust to God that the north ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... to be used for determining the specific gravities of such waters as contain only neutral salts or alkaline substances; and they may be constructed with different degrees of ballast for alkohol and other spiritous liquors. When the specific gravities of acid liquors are to be ascertained, we must use a glass hydrometer, as represented Pl. vii. fig. 14[57]. This consists of a hollow ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... burden were lifted from most of us we would go to wreck. Necessity is the ballast in ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... colonies the English Government further allows and encourages the communities to provide for themselves railways, canals, pawnbroking, theatres, forestry, cinchona farms, irrigation, leper villages, casinos, bathing establishments, and immigration, and to deal in ballast, guano, quinine, opium, salt, and what not. Every one of these functions, with those of the army, navy, police, and courts of justice, were at one time left to private enterprise, and were a source of legitimate ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... him, and that something was ballast. No one, perhaps, ever had a greater theoretical desire to be all that was right and good, but that was not in ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... think that you would have to look out for him, yourself," put in the engineer; "he's just as likely as not to drop in on you sometime, and take your two boats and such ballast as you have stowed away in your cabin, that he might take a ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... corvette of ten guns, four swivels, and eighty-seven men; a French gun-boat of one brass gun, four swivels, and forty-nine men; a French galley of one brass gun, four swivels, and thirty men; a like galley, with twenty-nine men; a French brig, in ballast, burden a hundred tons; a French bark, burden seventy tons, laden with powder and shells; a French brig, burden a hundred tons, laden with wine; a galley, burden fifty tons, in ballast; and a tartane, burden thirty-five tons, laden with wine: those destroyed—a bark, laden with powder, drove on shore; ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... china was very beautiful and costly. An old tradition is mentioned in the "Life of Nollekens" that the clay was at first brought as ballast in ships from China, and when the Orientals discovered what use was being made of it, they forbade its exportation, and the Englishmen had to be content with their own native clay. Nollekens says that his ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... on him, that the crowd burst the doors, and he was quickly seized by them, and tugged at and hauled at and pummelled, and torn and vituperated, and as a wrecked vessel on stormy waters, plunging up and down with tattered sails, when the crew fling overboard freight and ballast and provision. Surely his time would have been short with that mob, but Noorna made Kadza see the use of examining him before the King, and there were in that mob sheikhs and fakirs, holy men who listened to the words of Kadza, and exerted themselves to rescue Baba Mustapha, and quieted ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and his companions glided from different directions into the square, which the gas-lamps, extinguished by the wind, had left in total obscurity. Even the enormous balloon, almost beaten to the ground, could not be seen. Independently of the sacks of ballast, to which the cords of the net were fastened, the car was held by a strong cable passed through a ring in the pavement. The five prisoners met by the car. They had not been perceived, and such was the darkness that they could not even ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... First Church, Niece Louise," he said firmly. "Abe always did. These small-fry craft, like the Mariner's Chapel, are all right, I don't dispute; but they are lacking in ballast. It's in my mind to attend the church that's the most ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... intellects, it is always from defect of culture, or something wrong in the circumstances by which the being has originally or successively been surrounded. Undoubtedly strong feelings require a strong intellect to carry them, as more sail requires more ballast: and when, from neglect, or bad education, that strength is wanting, no wonder if the grandest and swiftest vessels make ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... was Gary's turn to smile now. "You men o' war's men often make mistakes as well as other people. This is the Curlew, four days out of Savannah, in ballast, and bound for Bermuda." ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... the four things needed to enable her to go forward to larger trade with the world. The third requisite, cheap and abundant raw material, she also secured. Material, not furnished from her own mines and soils, was brought in plentiful supply at nominal freights, or as ballast, by her vessels, whose sails ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... particle by catching hold of anything with his hands; indeed, as token of his entire, buoyant self-command, he generally carries his hands in his trowsers' pockets; but perhaps being generally very large, heavy hands, he carries them there for ballast. Nevertheless there have occurred instances, well authenticated ones too, where the captain has been known for an uncommonly critical moment or two, in a sudden squall say—to seize hold of the nearest oarsman's hair, and hold ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... navigators the difference is an important one. With a full cargo, a stiff head- wind is a great hindrance, but fresh and empty-handed, they can face it with more ease. Virgil says bees bear gravel-stones as ballast, but their only ballast is their honey-bag. Hence, when I go bee-hunting, I prefer to get to windward of the woods in which the swarm is supposed ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the after part of the vessel, giving the planters and their families places on the hurricane-deck. I desired to trim her aft, as we had hardly coal enough in the bunkers to keep the screw entirely under water. I regarded it as an excellent thing to have so much "live ballast" on board. I gave Buck and Hop strict orders not to let a single ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... of the dead after a battle where you've not had the best of it—each name 's a startling new blow. I'd offer to run to Earlsfont, but here's my company you would have me join for the directoring of it, you know, my dear, to ballast me, as you pretty clearly hinted; and all 's in the city to-day like a loaf with bad yeast, thick as lead, and sour to boot. And a howl and growl coming off the wilds of Old Ireland! We're smitten to-day in our hearts and our pockets, and it 's a question where we ought to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... electric light, the Prince struck a match to one of the candles newly placed on the washstand. He pushed the electric button summoning the steward, and, giving him some money, asked if there was such a thing as a piece of stone on board, carried as ballast, or for any other reason. The steward said he would inquire, and finally returned with a sharpening stone used for the knives in the galley. Bolting his door, Lermontoff began an experiment, and at once forgot ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... in every joint almost having spewed out her Okam, before we were aware (a casualty more desperate than any other that a Voyage by Sea draweth with it) was grown five feet suddenly deep with water above her ballast, and we almost drowned within, whilest we sat looking when to perish from above. This, imparting no less terror than danger, ran through the whole Ship with much fright and amazement, startled and turned the blood, and took down the braves of the most hardy Mariner of them ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... bituminous, in 1812, 43,529 chalders, and in 1819, 46,457 chalders were shipped coastwise, besides a foreign trade of about 5,000 chalders every year. Most of this goes to France, the French vessels coming here in ballast for this purpose; but all coal shipped for abroad must be riddled through a screen composed of iron bars, placed three-eighths of an inch apart, as it is literally almost dust. Great hopes are now entertained here that government will abolish the oppressive duty on sea-borne coal. In ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... the course of the present year in the New York market for bonded grain, and grain for the home consumption. I fully expect, however, to see the price of Canadian grain, bonded at New York, rise, now that it can be exported to Liverpool in the New York liners, which will carry it for ballast. Nevertheless, I think that Sir Robert Peel's dictum with respect to the Repeal of the Corn Laws, on the day on which he retired last from office, when he observed that thenceforward, even when the poor suffered from the high price of bread, they ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... of a little trivial soul like Hetty's, struggling amidst the serious sad destinies of a human being, are strange. So are the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy sea. How pretty it looked with its parti-coloured sail in the sunlight, moored in ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... pilots, crew chiefs, and power-deck officers at a special meeting in my office here in the Tower building tomorrow. You will receive all information and regulations governing the minimum and maximum size of the ships entered, types of reactor units, and amount of ballast to be carried." ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... seen each other) she, with the woman's unerring instinct that sometimes seems akin to inspiration, divined. She too was something of a dreamer, with an ear for the voices of Nature and a mind open to the influences of its beauty, but with a goodly ballast of strong common sense. ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... the foot of the cliff, near a group of huge fragments of rock fallen from the overhanging cliffs, a prisoner was sitting close to the sea preparing food for his companions, who had gone off to the brig the previous evening with ballast, and who were expected to return at daylight with a load of stores. The surface of the sea was smooth, and the brig slowly moved on upon its soft blue waters. Everything was calm and still, when suddenly a sharp but distant sound as of a gun was ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... to the anchoring place destined for men of war; and the same night, we were taken out, and put on board the Malabar store ship, where we found one hundred and fifty of our countrymen in her hold, with no other bed to sleep on but the stone ballast. Here were two hundred and fifty men, emaciated by a system of starvation cooped up in a small space, with only an aperture of about two feet square to admit the air, and with ballast stones for our beds! Although in harbor, we were not supplied with sufficient water to quench our thirst, nor ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... the only available means of propelling vessels by electrical power, and considering that these batteries might be made to serve the purpose of keel ballast, their weight, which was still considerable, would not be objectionable. The secondary battery was not an entirely new conception. The hydrogen gas battery suggested by Sir Wm. Grove in 1841, and which was shown in operation, realized in the most perfect manner ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... have gone under the arch, and am clear of all obstructions, I lay the sculls aside, and reclining let the boat drift past a ballast punt moored over the shallowest place, and with a rising load of gravel. One man holds the pole steadying the scoop, while his mate turns a windlass the chain from which drags it along the bottom, filling the bag with pebbles, and finally hauls it to the surface, when ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... fare you well, for we've got to take her out again— Take her out in ballast, riding light and cargo-free. And it's time to clear and quit When the hawser grips the bitt, So we'll pay you with the foresheet and a ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... imagine, unless it was the dust. She laughed, and said that he had dust and ballast and railroads on the brain; and when the oldest little girl asked what that meant, Mrs. Margaret told her that the next time her father came home she would make him sit down on the floor and then she would draw on that great bald spot of his head, which ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... to talking over Posh, etc., with me, there is plenty of time for that; indeed, as yet we cannot come to a final estimate of the Property, since all is not yet bought: sails, cables, warps, Ballast, &c. As to his services hitherto, I yesterday gave him 20 pounds, telling him that I couldn't compute how much he had done for me: nor could he, he said, and would be contented ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... neglected every suggestion of true policy by leaving the future to chance. Destitute of any canon of hereditary succession, of any settled rules concerning adoption, and of any law regulating election, Caesarism was like an enormous load on the deck of a vessel without ballast. The most terrible shocks were inevitable. Three times in a century, under Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, the greatest power that was ever united in one person fell into the hands of most extravagant and execrable men. Horrors were ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... on which it was evident they were at length gaining. "It seems to me, Mr Needham," observed Tom, who had been taking a long, steady look at the chase, "they're heaving something overboard; what it is I can't make out,—scarcely a cargo of ballast,— but we shall soon discover when we get up to her, as we shall, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... a good-sized half-decked boat of some twenty-six feet long and eight feet beam. She was very deep, and carried three tons of stone ballast in her bottom. She drew about six feet of water. She had a lot of freeboard, and carried two lug-sails and ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... filled too full of coal are dangerous and a great waste of coal, as the jar when running will cause a part of it to fall off; water overflowing from tanks results in washing away the ballast and in cold ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... waters. The sloop of war appeared to be among the rear ships, while the nearest vessel to the Ranger was a large schooner, whose superior sailing qualities had permitted her to reach several miles to windward of the square-rigged ships; she appeared to be light in ballast also. All of the convoy showed lights. The Ranger, on the contrary, was as dark as the night, not even the battle lanterns being lighted. She rapidly overhauled the schooner, and almost before her careless people were aware of it, she ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the blimp's water ballast streaming earthward in the sun, and it was put into a long, steady spiral in pursuit of the parachute, whose speed—or so it seemed to my agonized gaze—was now noticeably on the increase. The altitude seemed appallingly great; the blimp's ceiling, I knew, was only about twenty thousand; and ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... there is ground under her feet," she observed. "A light heart makes easy ballast, so my ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... place, his wings all the while being briskly agitated. Hen-harriers fly low over heaths or fields of corn, and beat the ground regularly like a pointer or setting-dog. Owls move in a buoyant manner, as if lighter than the air; they seem to want ballast. There is a peculiarity belonging to ravens that must draw the attention even of the most incurious—they spend all their leisure time in striking and cuffing each other on the wing in a kind of playful skirmish; and when they move from one place to another, frequently ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... about winded when it occurred to her to try working the dugout into the stream by loading the stern with ballast and then rocking the bow back and forth along the bank until the craft eventually ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of July we took a schooner from Bilboa to Boston with cordage and canvas, and on the 22nd re-took a brig from Quebec to London in ballast; on which day the Amazon parted company and sailed with the prizes ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... without humiliation, and equal with the rest; to commence, or have the road clear'd to commence, the grand experiment of development, whose end, (perhaps requiring several generations,) may be the forming of a full-grown man or woman—that is something. To ballast the State is also secured, and in our times is to be secured, in no ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Wolfe Tone, however, all these were mere amateurs in insurrection, and pale and shadowy dabblers in rebellion. Lord Edward was an amiable warm-hearted visionary, high-minded and gallant, but without much ballast, and to a great degree under the guidance of others. The mainspring of the whole movement, as has been seen, was Protestant and Northern, and now that all hope of constitutional reform was gone, it was resolved to appeal openly to force and to call in the aid of the enemies of England ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... under the old regime were released from the burden of taxation and at the same time excluded from the benefits of education. Among these people the illusions of the higher classes were reflected without the ballast of mentality. Ready to fight on any provocation, yet circumscribed by their own natures, not understanding life, unable to picture to themselves different types and conditions, these people were as prone as children to confuse the world ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... Clayton were bent upon the festivities of fair week, it must not be imagined that the grave and thoughtful contingent, which acts as ballast in every community, ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... abuses Antony, whom he was wont to say he loved, and cooeperates with Caesar, whose father he killed? And if chance so favor, he will ere long attack Caesar also. For the fellow is naturally distrustful and turbulent and has no ballast in his soul, and he is always stirring things up and twisting about, turning more ways than the sea-passage to which he fled and got the title of deserter for it, asking all of you to take that man for friend or foe whom ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... its island. Taste constitutes its current. Scent is its mire. Sound is its waters. That particular part of it which leads towards heaven is attended with great difficulties. Body is the boat by which one must cross that river. Forgiveness is the oar by which it is to be propelled. Truth is the ballast that is to steady that boat. The practice of righteousness is the string that is to be attached to the mast for dragging that boat along difficult waters. Charity of gift constitutes the wind that urges ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... day he mentally timed them down the river, allowing for the pause to take in ballast, and on the Wednesday pictured the sail down the open sea. That night he thought of the little craft under the bows of the huge steam-vessels, powerless to make itself seen or heard, and Avice, now growing inexpressibly dear, sleeping in her little berth at the mercy ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... his guard against the fair weather of the French politesse, which was no more to be trusted than a whirlpool at sea. He observed that many young men had gone to Paris with good cargoes of sense, and returned with a great deal of canvas, and no ballast at all, whereby they became crank all the days of their lives, and sometimes carried their keels above water. He desired Mr. Jolter to keep his pupil out of the clutches of those sharking priests who lie in wait to make converts of all young strangers, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... characterises the miserable father of English commentators; she wrote in youth and spirits, with no knowledge of books, and before even the unlucky commentator had published his work, but wit is the bolder by anticipation. She observes that "his dulness may be a proper ballast for doggrel; and it is better that his stupidity should make jest dull than serious and sacred things ridiculous;" alluding to his numerous ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... according to the scale which has already been given on an earlier page in this volume. At the end of the year 1813 it was further decided that when vessels and boats of above four tons measurement were seized in ballast and afterwards broken up, not owing to their build, their construction, or their denomination, but simply because they had been engaged in smuggling, the seizing officers should become entitled to 30s. ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... up for some distance, the white one going higher than the yellow one, then they began to descend. Ballast was thrown out, but they continued their downward flight. They disappeared behind Montmartre hill. They must have landed on the Saint Denis plain. They were too heavily weighted, or else the wind ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... not argue much for the peace of his household during that energetic lady's visits. Her indignation against him had quite swallowed up her old cherished resentment against myself. She soon went so far as to insinuate a regret that Susan had not married a man of solid sense and some mental ballast, (meaning me,) instead of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... longboat alone, for presently we heard Bainbridge shout an order to lower away the captain's gig, which, next to the dinghy and jollyboat, was the smallest boat belonging to the ship. But she was roomy enough to accommodate ten people comfortably, without ballast, or seven with provisions and water enough to last her crew for three weeks; and I considered that if Bainbridge was indeed going to give us the gig as well as the longboat, with, of course, an adequate supply of provisions ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... get on your feet and be spry about it: we have a literary party here, and wish you to write it up. I'll let one bag of ballast go, as we touch the grass, and you must leap ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... though not so profitable a business, as he who employs twenty or thirty—in the same way as a small vessel may navigate the ocean as safely as a large one, and may be even less likely to overset in a storm, if it carry less sail in proportion to its ballast. ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Mr. Speaker Doby—a most convenient and congenial arrangement; farther down the board were State Senator Nat Billings, Mr. Ridout (when he did not sup at home), the Honourables Brush Bascom and Elisha Jane, and the Honourable Jacob Botcher made a proper ballast for the foot. This table was known as the Railroad Table, and it was very difficult, at any distance away from it, to hear what was said, except when the Honourable Jacob Botcher made a joke. Next in importance and situation was the Governor's Table—now occupied ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the rowers passed under his bows he looked critically at the streaming black bodies and spat meditatively into the water. His own father could have had them between decks as cargo. Now for the petroleum and lumber he brings from Massachusetts to Sierra Leone he returns in ballast. ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... guarantee for democracy and friendship will come into its own again, and shape our destinies in common towards freedom and humanity. The English-speaking democracies, in firm union, can and ought to be the unshifting ballast of ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... then go up the Baltic in ballast to some small port—just a sawmill, at the head of a fjord—where I shall have a cargo of timber waiting for you to bring back to London. When ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... that still quaint town the screw tender, now disguised, with the man John and eight of the most turbulent among the crew of the nameless ship aboard her. We had come without hindrance through the crowded waters of the Channel; and, styling ourselves a Norwegian whaler in ballast, had gained the difficult harbour without arousing suspicion. At the first, Black had thought to leave me on the steamer; but I, who had an insatiable longing to set foot ashore again, gave him solemn word that I would not seek to quit him, that I would not in any way betray him ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... angrily. "Strip your old tub down to a flying balloon-jib and a marline-spike, and ballast the Ark with elephants until every inch of her reeked with ivory and peanuts, and she'd outfoot you on every leg, in a cyclone or a zephyr. Give me the Ark and a breeze, and your House-boat wouldn't be within hailing distance of her ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... in the fitting out was lessening the quantity of iron and other ballast. I gave directions that only nineteen tons of iron should be taken on board instead of the customary proportion which was forty-five tons. The stores and provisions I judged would be fully sufficient to answer the purpose of the remainder; for I am of opinion that many of the misfortunes which ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... capsizing, the young skipper at the helm let the sheet well out. Then, when Dan hurriedly rejoined him, Darrin passed the sheet over to his comrade as to one who would know exactly what to do with it. Dan perched himself on the weather gunwale, his weight there serving as ballast to keep the craft from capsizing. Yet, even so, everything had to be done with the utmost skill, for, with the mainsail up, the least fluke in handling the boat would ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... a poet, musician and teacher. The mother was a housekeeper, adviser and critic, and supplied the necessary ballast of commonsense, without which the domestic dory would ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... Caligula, brought the obelisk from Egypt, which stands in the Vatican Circus, and four blocks of the same sort of stone to support it. Nothing certainly ever appeared on the sea more astonishing than this vessel; 120,000 bushels of lentiles served for its ballast; the length of it nearly equalled all the left side of the port of Ostia; for it was sent there by the emperor Claudius. The thickness of the tree was as much as four men could embrace with ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... have brought nothing but ballast back—made a delicious voyage, Setter; and might have rode at anchor in the port till this time, but the enemy surprised ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... navigator might undertake to go beneath the hull of a man-of-war, and affix the torpedoes, so that failure should be impossible. This boat in shape was not unlike a turtle. A system of valves, air-pumps, and ballast enabled the operator to ascend or descend in the water at will. A screw-propeller afforded means of propulsion, and phosphorescent gauges and compasses enabled him to steer ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... consisting of six line of battle ships, six victuallers, and two or three pinnaces, under the command of Lord Thomas Howard. In the month of August in that year, they lay at anchor off the island of Flores, where they had put in for a fresh supply of water, and to take in ballast, as well as to refresh the crew, for many ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... stones heavy enough to sink it, was lowered down the black-looking pit, and was drawn up again nearly full of water. This was given to the nearest grazing animals, and the bucket sent down again, to catch against some projecting block and tilt out the ballast, after which it refused to sink, but made a jerk or two to escape, and then had ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... noiselessly as possible. The four small cannon that the Good Venture carried had been loaded to the muzzle with bullets and pieces of iron. A search had been made below and several heavy lumps of stone, a part of the ballast carried on some former occasion, brought up and placed at intervals along the bulwarks. The pikes had been fastened by a loose lashing to the mast, and the axes leaned in readiness against ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... at home neither in heaven nor on earth, neither presuming to be spirit nor condescending to be body, but hovering intermediate. But the more strongly the antithesis is felt, the nearer the thought to end this remaining tenderness for the gross and unspiritual,—to drop this ballast of earth, and rise into the region of heavenly realities. Upon a window of Canterbury Cathedral, beneath a representation of the miracle of Cana, is the legend,—"Lympha dat historiam, vinum notat allegoriam." But if the earthly is there only for the sake of this heavenly transmutation,—if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... public, it had only been as the author of shorter or longer contributions to the philosophical discussion of the relations between Science and Faith; when these had been accepted by a daily paper it had been as its heaviest ballast. I had never yet written anything that the ordinary reader could follow with pleasure, and I had likewise been obliged to make use of a large ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... with childish simplicity. "Gold enough to make us all rich. Gold enough to ballast a ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... uppermost, his claim is usually allowed for a share of what is going. And the thing seems to me highly reasonable: For in all great changes, the prevailing side is usually so tempestuous, that it wants the ballast of those whom the world calls moderate men, and I call men of discretion; whom people in power may, with little ceremony, load as heavy as they please, drive them through the hardest and deepest roads without danger of foundering, or breaking their backs, and will be sure to find them ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... and ready cash. Our ship carried twenty-four guns and two hundred Sclavonian soldiers. We sailed from Malamacca to the shores of Istria during the night, and we came to anchor in the harbour of Orsera to take ballast. I landed with several others to take a stroll through the wretched place where I had spent three days nine months before, a recollection which caused me a pleasant sensation when I compared my present position to what it was at that time. What a difference in everything—health, social condition, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... on the wharf of Mr. Waters; and seeing two Irishmen unloading a large scow of stone, or ballast I went on board, unasked, and helped them. When we had finished the work, one of the men came to me, aside, and asked me a number of questions, and among them, if I were a slave. I told him "I was a slave, and a slave for life." The good Irishman gave his shoulders ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... fascination of it. They explored almost every known type of ship—freighters, liners, cold-storage boats, and grain-boats. Once Kent's hopes ran high at sight of a fuel-ship, but it proved to be in ballast, its cargo-tanks empty and its own tanks ...
— The Sargasso of Space • Edmond Hamilton
... returned home heavily laden, and with these little navigators the difference is an important one. With a full cargo, a stiff head-wind is a great hindrance, but fresh and empty-handed they can face it with more ease. Virgil says bees bear gravel stones as ballast, but their only ballast is their honey bag. Hence, when I go bee-hunting, I prefer to get to windward of the woods in which the swarm is supposed ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... that they might bring from that country to this cork or salt, or both; and from the French ports in the Bay of Biscay cargoes of sugar were frequently obtained as return cargo; but the coal freights were generally so good at that time that vessels could be brought back in ballast and then leave a ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... retorted. "We're the ones that was obligin' when we agreed to pay her seventy-five cents for settin' astern of the counter and readin' the Advocate. I told you when you hired her that she wasn't good for nothin' but ballast." ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... answered, rising. "A craft should never go astern, and I am quite willing to ballast the boat. We have seen such terrible accidents to-day, that all should lend their aid in endeavoring to get under way, and in averting all possible hamper. Only take me to my poor, dear Rosy, Capt. Spike, and every thing shall be forgotten that has passed between ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... the aerostats: the losing sight of this earth, and the being in or above the clouds, must also be delightful: but the moment will come when the travellers descend, and then begins the danger; then they differ about throwing out the ballast, the balloon is rent in the quarrel, it sinks with frightful rapidity, and they run the hazard, like the poor Marquis D'Arlande, of being spitted upon the spire of the Invalides, or of being entangled among woods and briers—at last, alighting upon the earth, our ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... York City. The superstructure consisted principally of half-through girders, floor of I-beams, filled solid with concrete, on top of which were placed five layers of Hydrex felt, and water-proofing compound, protected by a layer of sand and grouted brick from the stone ballast. ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • E. B. Temple
... we were up in the mountains, and I was rowing myself, and the boat didn't go well, and Mr. Holloway came down off the hotel piazza and called to me that she needed ballast, and—and I said: 'Is that the trouble?' And he said: 'Yes, row ashore, and I'll ballast you.' And so, of course I rowed ashore to get him, and (of course, I supposed he meant himself), and when I was up by the dock he picked up a great stone and dropped it in, ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... considered a good excuse for his arriving second; but few persons ever knew how Puss and his helper Sandy had tried to injure Frank's airship when it was directly beneath them, by deliberately dropping a sand bag, taken along, singularly enough, as "ballast," but with ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... sometimes able to buy from a section-man's wife; the bear tracks and the bodies of wild animals lured to death by the glare of the powerful headlights on the fast trains at night; the excitement at the great ballast pit where the gangs at work were running an unpopular cook out of camp; the very old Indian who had stared at the dragging chain and muttered "Heap big snake," and the very young Englishman who had gone crazy from fly-bites ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... with sufficient absinthe in ballast to last me to Tahiti, where I outfitted with Scotch and American whisky, and thereafter there were no dry stretches between ports. But please do not misunderstand. There was no drunkenness, as drunkenness is ordinarily understood—no staggering ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... simple folk around her as all but inspired; and being possessed of real powers as miraculous in her own eyes as those which were imputed to her were in theirs (for what are real spiritual experiences but daily miracles?) she was just in that temper of mind in which she required, as ballast, all her real goodness, lest the moral balance should topple headlong after the intellectual, and the downward course of vanity, excitement, deception, blasphemous assumptions be entered on. Happy for her that she was in Protestant and common-sense England, and in a ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... the debt. Poor Grace was overwhelmed when her mother came home and upbraided her, in her despair, with being a burden. Was she not a burden? Must she not be one henceforth? No, she would take in needlework, labour in the fields, heave ballast among the coarse pauper-girls on the quay-pool, anything rather: but how to meet the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... was glad he made the resolve, and stood by it manfully. It gave ballast to his character, shaped him to a definite purpose. A narrow life, to be sure; nay, more, a distasteful one: but he did his best, and waited, and that was all that could be ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... “whisp” of them, whereas now one seldom sees more than three or four in a whole season. A delicate little bird, very palatable on the table, was the waterrail, now almost extinct. The writer used to have permission to shoot along the “ballast ponds” beside the railway, and he has frequently shot them there. The woodcock is still with us. The poet painter, Dante Rosetti, kept one as a favourite pet; we of Woodhall are more prosaic, and like to see the bird rise out of the bracken before us, and fall to our shot, eventually ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... alone as having above us neither the objectivity of politics nor that of the church. The light of the past we have, without its darkness. We carry little weight from the exacting past. Hence, our unexampled freedom and ease of movement which, wanting the old conventional ballast, to Europeans seems lawless and reckless. Even among ourselves, many tremble for our future, because they have little faith in humanity, and because they cannot grasp the new, grand historic phenomenon of a people possessing all the principles, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... all was made ready to discharge. It was now, "Come on, McCarthy, or McCarthy, come on!" I didn't care which, I had one right on my side, and I kept that always in view; namely, the right to discharge the cargo where I had first received it; but where the money to buy ballast and pay other charges was to come ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... Kotzebue's; One envoy's letters, six composers' airs, And loads from Frankfort and from Leipsic fairs: Meiner's four volumes upon womankind, Like Lapland witches to ensure a wind; Brunck's heaviest tome for ballast, and, to back it, Of Heyne, such as should not ...
— English Satires • Various
... elder,' she said, 'came here with his son the other night. It would have delighted you to see the old man's pride in him. As he was going away, he patted him on the head, and said, "Take care of him, Lady Blessington, for my sake. He is a clever lad, but wants ballast. I am glad he has the honour to know you, for you will check him sometimes when I am away...." D'Israeli the younger is quite his own character of Vivian Grey, crowded with talent, but very soigne of his curls, and a bit of a coxcomb. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... for those old-time brigs, when bound to the North in ballast, to be blown off the land by strong westerly gales, and these occasions were dreaded by the coasting commander whose geographical knowledge was so limited that when he found himself drifting into the German ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... Scandinavian cattleship ballast, catch that ball in your arms when I throw it to you, and don't let go of it!" shrieked Bost, shooting ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... Ben Jonson was certainly, of all men living in 1630, the right person to receive this honor, which then implied, what it afterward ceased to do, the primacy of the diocese of letters. His learning supplied ballast enough to keep the lighter bulk of the poet in good trim, while it won that measure of respect which mere poetical gifts and graces would not have secured. He was the dean of that group of "poets, poetaccios, poetasters, and poetillos," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... under canvas, or to speak more accurately, when her sails of brightly dyed wool were spread. She was given high bulwarks, and must have had more than the usual four-foot draught of water, for she carried plenty of heavy stone ballast to stiffen her under sail. With the "Crane" as his flagship, Olaf sailed northward to attack the Viking Raud, pirate and magician, who held out for the old gods and the old wild ways. Raud had another exceptionally large ship, the longest in Norway, and till the "Crane" was built ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... her day. Not above ten thousand, which would be robbery. Every time she's in a rough sea I'm afraid she'll jump her ballast through ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... said, 'it is evident that so grave an office must have a grave fulfiller. And, to ballast thee the better, the Queen of her graciousness hath found thee a weighty helpmeet. So that, before you shall touch the duties and emoluments of this charge you shall, and that even to-night, wed this Madam Margot ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... scant feeding that he cannot fly against the wind. If he would go back to his starting point while the March winds are out, he must needs come down close to the ground and yewyaw towards his objective, making leeway like an old boat without ballast or centerboard. ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... parents; for, perhaps, this new condition may be subject to still worse hazards than those I have escaped; as would be the case, were conceitedness, vanity, and pride, to take hold of my frail heart; and if I was, for my sins, to be left to my own conduct, a frail bark in a tempestuous ocean, without ballast, or other pilot than my own inconsiderate will. But my master said, on another occasion, That those who doubted most, always erred least; and I hope I shall always doubt my own strength, my ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... room are two more holds, divided in the same manner as the forward ones, and astern is another compartment, in which all stores are kept. Coal bunkers form a protection for the engines and boilers. Fore and aft the ship, as low down as possible, are a number of ballast tanks, which can be filled with or emptied of water as occasion requires to alter the trim of the ship. Extending over all holds there is a strong iron lower deck, about 8 feet below the upper deck, which is pierced with a hatch over each hold immediately under a corresponding ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... exciting as a regatta, and you pulled well, Evan; but you had too much ballast aboard, and Miss Wilder ran up false colors just in time to save her ship. What was the wager?" asked the lively Joseph, complacently surveying his marine millinery, which would have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... was just leaving the port. The vessel, rather a large one for those days, seems but poorly manned, and rocks so greatly among the short white waves, that it is plainly to be seen that she is short of ballast and lading. She is a Venetian trading vessel, bound first to the Isle of Candia, where she will complete her cargo and add to the number of her crew. This Candia or Crete (the very Crete by which St. Paul passed on his ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... her way without convoy, capturing any of the enemy's vessels she may happen to fall in with, who are not strong enough to resist her. We had cleared out for Genoa with a cargo of lead, which lay at the bottom of the hold, and which merely served for ballast. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... careful wing, And fly to water at a neighbouring spring; And lest their airy bodies should be cast In restless whirls, the sport of every blast, 250 They carry stones to poise them in their flight, As ballast keeps the unsteady vessel right. But, of all customs that the bees can boast, 'Tis this may challenge admiration most; That none will Hymen's softer joys approve, Nor waste their spirits in luxurious love, But all a long virginity maintain, And bring forth ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... broken, my shoulder severely injured by my fall; and as I had received three severe cutlass-wounds during the action, I had lost so much blood that I had not strength to rise or do any thing for myself. There I lay, groaning and naked, upon the ballast of the vessel, at times ruminating upon the events of the action, upon the death of our gallant commander, upon the loss of our vessel, of so many of our comrades, and of our liberty. After some time the surgeon, by the order ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... denounce the owner's judgment on oils and take his machine violently away from him in order to prove that it will pull better uphill with the spark retarded. At night, during the summer, we hurry through supper and then go out on the front porch to wait for a chance to act as ballast. ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... to work. Kits and cans, ballast and blocks, spare spars and tackle, higgledy-piggledy overboard they went, some on the shingle, some splashing into the tide, to be snatched and ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... a curious story to read to you that concerns us all. I am glad to have you here, Kate, as a sort of ballast. It was what excited me so this morning and I was very unreasonable. The doctor threatened to put me in a ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... maxims of La Rochefoucauld. The union of the philosopher, the enthusiast, and the man of the world is fairly unusual in literature, but in Hazlitt's case the union was not productive of any sharp contradictions. His common sense served as a ballast to his buoyant emotions; the natural strength of his feelings loosened the bonds which attached him to his favorite theories; his cynicism, by sharpening his perception of the frailty of human nature, prevented his philanthropic dreams ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... pack therein our belongings. The process was not a lengthy one; we had so few. When we had little more than half filled the bag with articles of attire and the toilette stuffed in pell-mell, we looked around for ballast. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... certain sense, be proud of being immortal; we may be proud of being God's children; we may be proud of loving, thinking, seeing, and of all that we are by no human teaching: but not of what we have been taught by rote; not of the ballast and freight of the ship of the spirit, but only of its pilotage, without which all the freight will only sink it faster, and strew the sea more richly with its ruin. There is not at this moment a youth of twenty, having received what ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... George Washington, rising and standing in the attitude of Webster, "I rises to appoint to order. We took ballast in de prior cases, and why make flesh of one man an' a ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... later the gale struck them. The yacht shook as if in a collision, and heeled over till the water was half up her deck. Then the weight of her lead ballast told, and as the pressure on the mizzen did its work, she gradually came up to the wind, getting on to an almost even keel as she ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... and loaded only with ballast, the Nettie was a better sailor in a beating game, for she was older and heavier than the Charming Lass. But now she had but a thousand quintal of fish compared to the sixteen hundred of her rival. This difference gave the Lass much needed stability without which she could never have ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... it, and continued: 'Property is ballast as well as treasure. I call property funded good sense. I would give it every privilege. If we are to speak of patriotism, I say the possession of property guarantees it. I maintain that the lead of men of property is in most cases sure to be the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of 1 in 30, and the bogies enable it to take the incline better; they also distribute the weight more evenly on the wheels. The gauge of the rails is 15 ft, the wheels are 2 ft. 6 in. in diameter, and have heavy steel tires. The weight on each of the front wheels when running with the ballast, but no load, is about 16 tons. A powerful brake is applied to the wheels when ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... this happened the Woodwards had not been long at Torquay. Mr. Peppermint was made a happy man before Christmas; and therefore Charley was left to drift before the wind without the ballast of any lady's love to keep him in sailing trim. Poor fellow! he had had wealth on one side, beauty and love on another, and on the third all those useful qualities which Miss Geraghty has been described as ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... morning we was feeling a little cheerfuller, and had had a most powerful good sleep, because sand is the comfortablest bed there is, and I don't see why people that can afford it don't have it more. And it's terrible good ballast, too; I never see the balloon so ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... allowing him to drop through the hatches into the lower hold. Then they belayed the rope, and went down below. Parratt had already lighted a slush-lamp, by the glimmer of which they could see the mandarin swinging to and fro like a pendulum within a few feet of the ballast, and still quivering and twitching in his death-throes. They were now joined by Wo-li, who had watched the proceedings from the quay, and the four villains proceeded, without loss of time, to rifle the body as it hung. To their surprise and disgust, ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... means of specially constructed windlasses. In the case of petroleum vessels the "folding up" operation is facilitated by the circumstance that the petroleum may be made to serve the purposes of water ballast. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... labored in some other business two years, with the intelligence and ballast you have shown around here, you would now have had a desk somewhere and a phone at ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... (auto-laryngoscopy) as well as others (laryngoscopy); possess an acute ear for the pitch and quality of tones; be himself able to use his voice at least fairly well in singing and speaking; be provided with the all-important ballast of common sense, and an impartial mind longing above all things to ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... hand. Weeds are again discouraging because they have such facilities for travel. Talk about flying machines—weeds are centuries ahead of men along these lines. Look at a milkweed seed; it is a complete flying apparatus. With its perfect ballast it flies beautifully along over field and river ready to alight in proper seed ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... with elegance and art, when it addressed ambition, when it exalted the loftier virtues. But advice, practical and prosy, went in at one ear and out at the other. In fact, with many talents, he had yet no adequate ballast of common-sense; and if ever he get enough to steady his bark through life's trying voyage, the necessity of so much dull weight must be forcibly stricken home less to his reason than his imagination or his heart. But if, somehow or ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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