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verb
Contract  v. i.  
1.
To be drawn together so as to be diminished in size or extent; to shrink; to be reduced in compass or in duration; as, iron contracts in cooling; a rope contracts when wet. "Years contracting to a moment."
2.
To make an agreement; to covenant; to agree; to bargain; as, to contract for carrying the mail.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Contract" Quotes from Famous Books



... All economic activity is concentrated on the largest island of Diego Garcia, where joint UK-US defense facilities are located. Construction projects and various services needed to support the military installations are done by military and contract employees from the UK, Mauritius, the Philippines, and the US. There are no industrial or agricultural activities on the islands. When the Ilois return, they plan to reestablish sugarcane production and fishing. The country ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... COMPLEMENT, completion, completement; anything required for the perfecting or carrying out of a person or affair; accomplishment COMPLEXION, natural disposition, constitution COMPLIMENT, See Complement COMPLIMENTARIES, masters of accomplishments COMPOSITION, constitution; agreement, contract COMPOSURE, composition COMPTER, COUNTER, debtors' prison CONCEALMENT, a certain amount of church property had been retained at the dissolution of the monasteries; Elizabeth sent commissioners to search it out, and the courtiers begged for it CONCEIT, idea, fancy, witty invention, conception, opinion ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... rode out in state together, and if he kept cap in hand as a subject she would snatch it from him and clap it on his head again; while in graver things she took all due or possible care to gratify his ambition by the insertion of a clause in their contract of marriage which made their joint signature necessary to all documents of state issued under the sign manual. She despatched to France a special envoy, the Bishop of Dunblane, with instructions setting forth at length the unparalleled and hitherto ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... continued, "I talked yesterday with Gasparo Carnesecchi—you know, he is the lawyer I always consult. He is a clever fellow and understands these matters. We talked of the contract; I thought it better to consult him, you see, and he thinks the affair can be arranged in a couple of weeks. He is so intelligent. A marvel of astuteness; we discussed the whole matter, I say, and it is to be concluded as soon as ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... start to-morrow—after then I have no price—after that I go away." Another hour however sees the jam made, and to my surprise I find the three richest men in this town of M'fetta have personally taken up the contract—Kiva my host, Fika a fine young fellow, and Wiki, another noted elephant hunter. These three Fans, the four Ajumba and the Igalwa, Ngouta, I think will be enough. Moreover I fancy it safer not to have an overpowering percentage of Fans in the party, as I know we shall have considerable ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... Visitor. We find Johnson giving the following account of this matter in Boswell's Life:—'Old Gardner, the bookseller, employed Rolt and Smart to write a monthly miscellany called The Universal Visitor.' There was a formal written contract. They were bound to write nothing else,—they were to have, I think, a third of the profits of the sixpenny pamphlet, and the contract was for ninety-nine years. I wrote for some months in The Universal Visitor for ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... priest to the old woman, "to secure the design before he signs the contract. As soon as he gets the plan into his hand let him present to the old man, who is a demon, the relics of the martyrs and the sign of ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... through the Panama Canal to our vessels engaged in the coastwise trade. And as a consequence Great Britain has entered a protest and given notice that she will request that the Hay-Pauncefote International contract shall be submitted for interpretation to a judicial decision by The Hague Tribunal. Though so short a time has elapsed since the Panama Canal Bill became a law, mutterings have been heard of the possibility that the United States would refuse this request of Great Britain ...
— The Panama Canal Conflict between Great Britain and the United States of America - A Study • Lassa Oppenheim

... effected by flood-gates thrown across at certain distances to elevate or depress the height of the water a few inches, as might appear to be necessary; and these stoppages are simply planks sliding in grooves, that are cut into the sides of two stone abutments, which in these places contract the canal to the width of about thirty feet. There is not a lock nor, except these, a single interruption to a continued navigation ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... on Earth profanely agreed. Cochrane signed the contract before him. The other man signed. Not only the documents but all conversation was recorded. There were plugged-in witnesses. The ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... relax his body completely so that it shall lie still and limp and soft as cotton. He should be able to tense and contract his muscles so that they will become hard as iron. In all the physical exercises you will find two special actions (1) Muscle contraction (2) Stretching. When you contract muscle and harden it, you have sent currents of nerve-force and ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji

... from the Bowery and join the other house at a much larger salary. He scornfully refused to break his word, although his own interests he knew must suffer. His popularity at this time was so great that, when his contract for the season had expired, he was instantly engaged for eight nights, at a salary of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... especially observable as Mr. Bucket proceeds to a conclusion. First, that he seems imperceptibly to establish a dreadful right of property in mademoiselle. Secondly, that the very atmosphere she breathes seems to narrow and contract about her as if a close net or a pall were being drawn nearer and yet nearer around her ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... proclamations of the Executive, to decide for herself her proper policy in periods of war and insurrection, and levy armed forces to prevent the occupation of her territory by the forces of the United States, then she can quit the Union when she pleases, and is competent to contract any alliance which accords, with her wishes. If, however, it be a revolutionary right which she may justly exercise in a certain condition of affairs, then the same condition of affairs will justify any other phase ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... of view which they indicate remained the common one even far into the Middle Ages, and shewed simple familiar intercourse with Nature. Even legal formulae were full of pictures from Nature. In the customary oath to render a contract binding, the promise is to hold, so it runs, 'so long as the sun shines and rivers flow, so long as the wind blows and birds sing, so far off as earth is green and fir trees grow, so far as the vault of heaven reaches.' As Schnaase says,[6] ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... at the Record Office I came across incontrovertible evidence that we are in some way related through a Petherton in the early part of the eighteenth century (tempus GEORGE II.) being sufficiently far-seeing to contract a marriage with a Fordyce. This Petherton, by name Edward, lived at Kirkby Lonsdale, and his wife, Emily Jane Fordyce, at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various

... examination of the accused) which served the double purpose of checking haemorrhage, as would a thermo-cautery, and avoiding infection. Another method consisted in searing the orifice of the vagina so that the scar tissue would contract it in such a manner as to effectually prevent ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... appreciate them. I had learned of certain traits in his character which will serve to paint the man: he had fallen in love with a beautiful girl in the neighborhood, and, after a year of devotion to her, secured her parents' consent to their union. She was as poor as he. The contract was ready to be signed, the preparations for the wedding ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... Fergusano, often urged him to shew her that piece of his art, to make a philtre to retain fleeting love; and not only keep a passion alive, but even revive it from the dead. She tells him of her contract with him; she urges his forced marriage, as she was pleased to call it, in his youth; and that he being so young, she believed he might find it lawful to marry himself a second time; that possibly his Princess was for the interest ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... lump sum up to a given number, with about 2s. per head above that number, or a price per head all round, he taking their labour. The lowest figure I have found was that paid at Royston, Herts., in 1781, and at Barkway in 1792, when in each case the contract was for only 1s. 4d. per head! There was not much to be made out of that, and in bad times there was sure to be an application to be released from the contract or for compensation. In fact the parish had ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... clergymen who feel that these unbecoming and useless exhibitions, called religious discussions, instead of promoting a liberal or enlarged view of religion, are only calculated to envenom the feelings, to extinguish charity, and to contract the heart. Nay, more, there never was a discussion, they said—and we join them—since the days of Ussher and the Jesuit, that did not terminate in a tumult of angry and unchristian recrimination, in which all the ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... kings and their ministers to make the Crown independent of parliamentary supplies; but to dispense with these supplies as much as possible, and to make as much as possible of the revenue permanent, was the continued and fatal policy of the Court. The "Great Contract"—a scheme by which, in return for the surrender by the Crown of certain burdensome and dangerous claims of the Prerogative, the Commons were to assure a large compensating yearly income to the Crown—was Salisbury's ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... a lot. Some way, she isn't my kind; she just doesn't awaken affection on my part, and I spend most of my time calling myself a cad over it. But she stood by me—and—I guess that's all that's necessary, after all. When I've fulfilled my contract with myself—if I ever do—I'll do the square thing and ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... Faculty Tenure Act of 1963, or such things as tenure-contracts. Well, for your information, I have one; you signed it yourself, in case you've forgotten. If you want my resignation, you'll have to show cause, in a court of law, why my contract should be voided, and I don't think a slip of the tongue is a reason for voiding a contract that any court ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper

... replied with a tentative advance of his hand toward his moustache, checked in time by a remembrance of the circumstances, "confer obligations often, but can contract none." ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope

... undesigning, the stranger is nevertheless thrown off his guard by it, and tempted to place confidence, or expect services, which a less conciliating deportment would not have been suggested. A Frenchman may be an unkind husband, a severe parent, or an arrogant master, yet never contract his features, or asperate his voice, and for this reason is, in the national sense, "un homme bien doux." His heart may become corrupt, his principles immoral, and his disposition ferocious—yet he shall still retain his equability of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... prudent provision which our ancestors made in the indenture of tradesmen's apprentices, that they should not contract matrimony during their apprenticeship; and they bound it with a penalty that was then thought sufficient. However, custom has taken off the edge of it since; namely, that they who did thus contract matrimony should forfeit their indentures, that is to say, should lose the benefit of their whole ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... aristocracy, so the interest of the commonwealth is in the whole body of the people. And whereas this, in case the commonwealth consist of a whole nation, is too unwieldy a body to be assembled, this council is to consist of such a representative as may be equal, and so constituted, as can never contract any other interest than that of the whole people; the manner whereof, being such as is best shown by exemplification, I remit to the model. But in the present case, the six dividing, and the fourteen choosing, must of necessity take in the ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... able lawyers, who however did not meet the objection that this clause was an element in the value of the currency, only less important than that of positive redemption. Nor did they seem to perceive that the abrogation of this feature in the contract between the Government and the note-holders would lead to confusion and distress in commercial circles, and would violate the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... met next on Monday the 27th. Would you believe it? The Bishop ignored the contract limiting the examination to matters set down in the proces verbal and again commanded Joan to take the oath ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain

... marry. Love works mysteriously, and if it will bear careful and cool investigation, it will no doubt thrive under adversity. When people marry they unite their destinies for the better or the worse. Marriage is a contract for life and will never bear a hasty conclusion. Never ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... dead as the Pharaohs hidden for centuries under the pyramids. We two, who had sworn to love, honor, and cherish one another, now hated and despised each other beyond all possibility of expression; and I considered it a heinous sin to perpetuate the awful mockery, to cling to the letter of a contract that bade defiance to every impulse of heart and soul,—to every dictate of reason and decree of conscience. Wedded lives and divided hearts I believed a crime, and while I admitted that man could not put asunder those whom God's statutes joined ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... went well. Torella never alluded to my extravagance; he treated me as a favorite son. But the time came, as we discussed the preliminaries to my union with his daughter, when this fair face of things should be overcast. A contract had been drawn up in my father's lifetime. I had rendered this, in fact, void, by having squandered the whole of the wealth which was to have been shared by Juliet and myself. Torella, in consequence, chose to consider ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... of existence is not even a mystery; they are shut below the firmament of wonder. When the vulgar come with their definite gain and good, their circle of immediate ends, we feel the house contract, the sky descend,—we shrivel, our pores close, the skull hardens on the brain. The positive, who exactly knows, is a skeleton at the feast; that exactness is numbness, and chills every expansive guest. Dogma is a stoppage quite short of the nearest beginning; the liberal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... clever people. One picks their brains unconsciously. There is another advantage, and not a small one, in this early entrance into good society. A youth learns manners, self-possession, readiness of resource; and he is much less likely to get into scrapes and contract tastes for low vices and mean dissipation, when he comes into life wholly his own master, after having acquired a predilection for refined companionship under the guidance of those competent to select it. There, I have talked myself out of breath. And you had better decide at once in ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... heard the warning, this particular Comanche was liable, after all, to find that, in undertaking his contract, he would be unable to deliver the goods. But, if the warning reached the ears of the women, would they comprehend its significance? That was the question which ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis

... pointed out as the fittest person, from his courage, quality, and conduct, to become the ruler of these realms. It is remarked that he who has the worst title will make the best King. There is a story current of the existence of a black box in which is deposited the marriage-contract between the King and the Duke's mother, but some doubt, not without reason, whether such a black box exists, much more the contents spoken of. Be that as it may, many persons speak boldly of the Duke of Monmouth some ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... know, Mr. - having a contract to lay down a submarine telegraph from Sardinia to Africa failed three times in the attempt. The distance from land to land is about 140 miles. On the first occasion, after proceeding some 70 miles, ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... pleasure, but happiness, could be bought with money, and in no other way. And the few who were stung by the prevailing suffering and wretchedness into recognition of our parlous state, we, for the most part, cherished my wild delusion, and insisted that the trouble could be remedied if the State would contract and discharge new obligations. We clamoured for more rights, more help, more liberty, more freedom from this and that; never seeing that our trouble was our incomplete comprehension of the rights and privileges we had, with their ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... in Kansas; of "The Socialist Woman's Movement in Russia;" of "The White Slave Traffic"—quoting from Elizabeth Goodnow's impressive book of stories, "The Soul Market;" of "The Work of Madam Curie;" of "The Marriage Contract;" of "The Woman's Suffrage Movement and Political Parties;" with much other ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... fire than the ordinary brick-clays in order to bring about the reaction between the lime and the other ingredients. Magnesia may replace lime to some extent in such marls, but the firing temperature must be higher when magnesia is present. Marls usually contract very little, if at all, in the burning, and generally produce a strong, square brick of fine texture and good colour. When under-fired, marl bricks are very liable to disintegrate under the action of the weather, and great ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... well as had Judge Bradley in the hog-stealing epoch of the local history. Yet it was necessary for him to take up something by way of occupation, and it resolved itself somewhat into a matter of cancellation. For the profession of medicine he had a horror, grounded upon scenes of contract surgery upon the fields of battle. The ministry he set aside. From commerce, as he had always seen it in his native town, twelve hours a day of haggling and smirking, he shrank with all the impulses of his soul. The abject country newspaper gave him no inkling of that ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... this marvellous mechanism but carelessly, and the widespread poverty, the worry and discord in the lives of the happiest, our ignorance, the evil habits we contract, and the vice, miseries, diseases and labours to which most expectant mothers are too often exposed, explain why one baby in every eight never walks; why but four of them live to manhood; why less than 40 years is now man's average span; and why this brief space is filled ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... I resolved to remain in it only a couple of days. But here occurred the first of a series of contretemps which dogged my footsteps throughout the coast journey, for the drivers now refused to carry out their contract, urging that even if a Tchuktchi settlement were safely reached the natives there would certainly murder us.[49] Here was an apparently insurmountable difficulty, for Mikouline, who acted as spokesman, simply snapped his fingers at Yartsegg's ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... to contract the habit of swearing. Many men—and, because of their pernicious example, many boys too—habitually garnish their conversation with oaths, profanity, and obscenity of the vilest description. It may be—though I earnestly hope and pray it will ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... but, in estimating their force, it must be considered that every part of the conduct of the ministers showed that their motive was not the gratification of the King's private feelings, whether directed to the object of indulging his enmity against his wife or to that of obtaining freedom to contract a second marriage; on the contrary, so long as the Queen remained abroad, no language could be more distinct, consistently with the respect due to his royal dignity, than that in which they expressed to him their insurmountable objection to every mode of proceeding against her which ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... "don't all speak at once! . . . I'll not ask you to bid for my little contract just now when I see you are all so busy. But seriously, I invite tenders, and will ask any one of you who cares for my custom to send me (say by to-morrow evening) a list of her prices in a sealed ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... foremost, then, please understand that the couple about to be married have nothing whatever to do with the affair. The match has been made by the parents, and as a rule neither has seen the other until after the contract has been closed; and in many cases it is thought advisable that they should meet for the first time when the ceremony begins. It is considered one of the most important duties of a mother to select a wife for each of her sons as ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... matter of personal inclination and convenience. It never has been anything else, and it never will be anything else. How could it be otherwise? If a man goes against inclination and convenience in a matter where inclination is "of the essence of the contract," he merely presents the state with a discontented citizen (if not two) in exchange for a contented one! The happiness of the state is the sum of the happiness of all its citizens; to decrease one's own happiness, ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett

... day of signing my contract (which has been constantly renewed) to the time I write, some sixteen years, I never have had cause to regret the step ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... that would be quite too big a contract for even your generosity, Miss Neilson—to mend all the broken hopes in the world," ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter

... known ocean sunrise and sunset, had gone to sleep with his bunk swaying and the water lapping. So when again Barlow said, "You'll come?" Kendric's hand shot out to be gripped by way of signing a contract, and his voice rang out joyously, "Put her there, old mate! I'm with you, blow high, ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory

... employed at home in works of industry, for the support of their natural dependents; the militia becomes no other than an addition to, or augmentation of, a standing army, enlisted for the term of three years; the labour of the men is lost to the community; they contract the idle habits and dissolute manner of the other troops; their families are left as incumbrances on the community; and the charge of their subsistence is, at least, as heavy as that of maintaining an equal number ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... the Jacobins; their false and gross interpretation of it could not bring it into discredit; athwart the hideous grotesque caricature, all minds and sentiments ever recur to the ideal form of the cite to the veritable social contract, to the impartial, active, and permanent reign of distributive justice. Their entire education, all the literature, philosophy and culture of the eighteenth century, leads them onward to this conception of society and of rights; more profoundly still, they are predisposed ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... was employed by a gentleman to attend his son, who had been, for several years previous to that time, subject to epileptic attacks. The fee, per visit, was stipulated at the outset, and I was paid for each visit before leaving the house, according to contract. I attended the young gentleman near two years, and during the time was pressed for money and borrowed one hundred dollars of the old gentleman, and executed my note for that amount. Some years after I had dismissed my patient, I called ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward

... of certain classes of gross defectives, and criminals, by the method of segregation. The ground for this is sometimes biological, perhaps more often legal, as in the case of the insane and criminal, where it is held that the individual is legally incapacitated from entering into a contract, such as that of marriage. It would be better to have the biological basis of restriction on marriage and reproduction recognized in every case; but even with the present point of view the desired end may ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... laws affect the daily doings of every member of the Jewish population, and they extend to such spheres of life and activity in which State control is almost impossible. They touch the domain of private contract law (the prohibition of land leases), the domain of physical liberty and the need of human locomotion (the prohibition to transgress the Pale of Settlement, or to live in villages within fifty versts of the border), the domain of daily pursuits and earnings (the prohibition ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... plantation of this isle, my lord, I' the commonwealth I would by contraries Execute all things; for no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate; Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, And use of service none; contract, succession, Bourne, bound of land, tilth, title, vineyard none; No use of metal coin, or wine, or oil; No occupation—all men idle—all! And women too, but innocent and pure; No sovereignty; All things in common nature ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... for this purpose that hardly a competent workman can be found in a large establishment, whether he works by the day or on piece work, contract work, or under any of the ordinary systems, who does not devote a considerable part of his time to studying just how slow he can work and still convince his employer that he is going at ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor

... "I understand that you are a man who will make a contract and conduct his marriage properly; while these Welsh and English, they lean over a gallery rail and whisper, and I am told they even come fiddling under the windows after ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... savage islands and desolate moors. The Parliamentary committee of 1834, profoundly ignorant of this distinction, insisted with my grandfather that the work at the various stations should be let out on contract 'in the neighbourhood,' where sheep and deer, and gulls and cormorants, and a few ragged gillies, perhaps crouching in a bee-hive house, made up the only neighbours. In such situations repairs and improvements could only be overtaken by collecting (as my grandfather ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... invoke us: "You whom reverend love Made one another's hermitage; You to whom love was peace, that now is rage; Who did the whole world's soul contract and drove Into the glasses of your eyes (So made such mirrors, and such spies, That they did all to you epitomize), Countries, towns, courts. Beg from above A ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... effervescence. "I've gambled ever since I was a kid. I bet I could cross Death Valley and get out alive. That time I won. I bet it would rain once down in Arizona before my cattle died. I lost. Another time I took a contract to run a tunnel. In my bid I bet I wouldn't run into rock. My bank went broke that trip. When I joined the Klondike rush I was backing my luck to stand up. Same thing when I located the Kamatlah field. The coal ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... could not bring himself to regard marriage merely as a social contract, but looked upon it as somehow made sacred by a church in which he did not believe,—as a physician he knew that a young man whose marriage is merely nominal must yet go on living his life. When he went to Denver or to Chicago, he drifted ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... fables of the less than human gods of the ancients. And, as the excellent author of 'The Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion' observes, 'Nothing has so much contributed to corrupt the true spirit of the Christian institution, as that partiality which we contract, in our earliest education, for the manners of ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... the appointment and the marriage. [Then he sent for the young man] and he went not forth of the palace of the Khalif till he wrote him the patent [of investiture with the government] of Egypt; and he let bring the Cadis and the witnesses and drew up the contract ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... the catheter sometimes part of the urine will come away and not the whole, which is difficult to explain; but may arise from the weakness of the muscular fibres of the bladder; which are not liable suddenly to contract themselves so far as to exclude the whole of the urine. In some old people, who have experienced a long retention of urine, the bladder never regains the power of completely emptying itself; and many who ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... Church," but because both Jesus and Paul and the Churches express a truth of nature itself, that the union of man and woman is not, and cannot be, the herding of animals; that the bestowal of the body cannot but be the outward symbol of an invisible bond which is the very soul and life of the contract. We thus go behind all Churches and apostles and ascend to the very roots of Nature herself, and discern in the golden glory wherewith she surrounds the ideal marriage the significance of her intentions in its regard—that it is her true and real Sacrament, that her ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... moaned, and his accompanying gesture was misleading, seeming to indicate that he alluded to his hair. "It's all ruined if he sticks to these horrible lines he's put in—people told me I ought to have it in my contract that nothing could be changed. I was trying to make the audience see the tragedy of egoism in my play—and how people get to hating an egoist. I made 'Roderick Hanscom' a disagreeable character on purpose, and—oh, ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington

... and intelligent at the bottom. During the late war we suddenly saw men hurled up into the highest social positions. Had they suddenly reformed from evil habits? or graduated in a science? or achieved some good work for society? No! They simply had obtained a government contract! ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... do very well? Why were my fascinations not to be exercised, as per contract? I began to suspect the worst, and I was thinking of nothing else while we drove to the premises of the Bulcester Literary Society. Could Jane have drowned herself out of the way, or taken smallpox, which might ruin her charms? Well, I had not ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... thy smile, my daughter. I can say to thee, that when we were children almost, I knew thy good uncle. My poor father took the pride of his family into exile with him. Our poverty only made his pride the greater. Even before the emigration a contract had been passed between our family and the Count de Florac. I could not be wanting to the word given by my father. For how many long years have I kept it? But when I see a young girl who may be made the victim—the subject of a marriage of convenience, as I was—my heart pities her. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Leominster, to Groton is only twenty miles farther than by the direct route, and the delay of half a day, which is occasioned thereby, is not of much consequence to the inhabitants of Groton. If it should prove that Groton produces as much postage as Lancaster and Leominster, the new contract for carrying the mail, which is to be in operation on the first of October next, will be made by Concord and Groton to Walpole, and a branch ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... this plan of campaign is more to please the Ally (Caspian) than from any pressing need for such work to be done en route. Mrs. Shuster impulsively engaged Storm before Caspian met him, and very likely made some sort of contract to which he can hold her if he chooses. Besides, she admires him as much as ever, though she admires Larry more, and in her silly, blundering way, she plays a double game. All sweetness and light to ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... had even seen his namesake's letter to Gregory, in which it was positively stated that the reversion would not be sold. Throughout the morning the Squire went on speaking of his hopes, and saying that this and that should be done the very moment that the contract was signed; at last Ralph spoke out, when, on some occasion, his father reproached him for indifference. "I do so fear that you ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... incessantly obliged to refer to the data of sense or to that totality of visual, tactile, motor, acoustic, thermic, etc., representations that we term the "properties of matter." Our eye, says Tyndall, cannot see sound waves contract and dilate, but we construct them in thought—i.e., by means of visual images. The same remarks are true of chemists. The founders of the atomic theory certainly saw atoms, and pictured them in the mind's eye, and their arrangement in compound ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... desirous of marrying a crowned head, caused proposals of marriage to be made to Elizabeth, queen of England. Letters passed betwixt them, and their portraits were exchanged. At length her majesty informed him, that she would never contract a marriage with any one who sought her, if she did not first see his person. If he would not come, nothing more should be said on the subject. This prince, over-pressed by his young friends (who ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... behalf of Protestantism; and James said that he would not allow his daughter to be restricted in the exercise of her religion, not even if she were to be Queen of the world.[354] On the 16th of May the members of the Privy Council signed the contract in which the marriage was agreed upon between 'My Lady Elizabeth,' only daughter of the King, and the Grand-Master of the Household and Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, Frederick Count Palatine, and the necessary provisions were made as to dower and settlements. This may be regarded as the ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... breaches of contract, has lost all patience, and for want of that temperance and moderation which should be used by a man of sense upon these occasions, will, I fear, represent us in a light we little deserve; for, instead of blaming ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... phenomena of Little Dorrit. Besides her consideration money, her daily contract included meals. She had an extraordinary repugnance to dining in company; would never do so, if it were possible to escape. Would always plead that she had this bit of work to begin first, or that bit of work to finish ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... along, Teddy. We will have a meal, and it won't be at a contract hotel, either," said the showman, with ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... after waiting for nearly two days, the rebel portion of the conspirators, with the exception of Capt. Beall, returned to Canada. On their return, they said that the persons whom they had bribed were afraid to toe the mark—that is, were afraid to carry out their infamous and hazardous part of the contract. The rebels were in great fear, lest something had happened that would put an end forever to their hopes, in regard to the steamer, but in a few days after this, the non-appearance of the engineer and friends, were duly explained, and the alarm caused ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer

... read some of Marryat's novels, "Sindbad the Sailor," "The Pirate's Own Book," and others of a similar nature, which had smitten him with a virulent attack of sea fever. This is a mental disease which many robust, adventurous boys are apt to contract in their teens. Garfield felt that he must "sail the ocean blue." The glamour of the sea was upon him. Everything must give way before it. His mother, however, could not be induced to assent to his plans, and, after long pleading, would only compromise by agreeing that he might, if he could, secure ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... the contract which they enter into for their ground?-Yes; but it is also understood that we are to give them the current ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing

... condition of the Saints. He reminded the brethren that all had suffered alike for the sake of the gospel. The rich and the poor had been brought to a common level by persecution; many of the brethren owed debts that they had been forced to contract in order to get out of Missouri alive. He considered it unchristianlike for the brethren to demand the payment of such debts; he did not wish to screen anyone from the just payment of his debts, but he did think that it would be for the glory of the Kingdom ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee

... a contract fair To call each hour, from town to town, And carry the dead folks' souls up there, And bring the unborn ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... admitted that they were still running at a loss, but if they could get enough states interested, they'd eventually come out even, and maybe they could reduce the cost. Why, they even have a contingent-clause in the contract stating that if the cost were lowered, they would make a rebate to cover it. That's so the first users will not bide their ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... the system of legal indenture in Illinois, servants now are "bought."[A] A short time since, hundreds of foreigners who came to this country were "bought" annually. By voluntary contract they engaged to work for their purchasers a given time to pay for their passage. This class of persons called "redemptioners," consisted at one time of thousands. Multitudes are bought out of slavery by themselves or others, and remove into ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... to force Bella's father to accept two hundred dollars in payment for what he had done on the story. As her contract with Mr. Hammond called for a generous royalty, she would make much more out of the scenario than the sum John Pike had hoped to get by selling the ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson

... made Turchi convulsively contract his lips, but he restrained any expression of feeling, and ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience

... funds are granted to aid the aged, infirm and helpless deaf. By this plan Maine is said to have been without a deaf-mute pauper in ten years. The amounts allowed, however, for this purpose are not large, being $200 a year in Maine and $150 in New Hampshire.[85] In Ohio the counties are allowed to contract with private homes for the maintenance of the aged and infirm deaf—there being but one such in the state, that supported by the deaf themselves—and the state board of charities is given power to remove deaf persons thereto ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best

... talked with me a while, when the young lady again clapped her hands and behold, a side door opened and out of it came the Kazi with his four assessors as witnesses; and they saluted us and, sitting down, drew up and wrote out the marriage contract between me and the youth and retired. Then he turned to me and said, "Be our night blessed," presently adding, "O my lady, I have a condition to lay on thee." Quoth I, "O my lord, what is that?" Whereupon he arose and fetching a copy of the Holy Book ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... daughter, the whole covey of them, no better than a set of swindlers, took leg-bail, and made that very night a moonlight flitting; and Johnny Hammer, honest man, that had wrought from sunrise to sunset for two days, fitting up their place by contract, instead of being well paid for his trouble as he deserved, got nothing left him but a ruckle of his own good ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... bonnes gens en seront offensez, les malins en feront leur risee," so now Coligny and the Huguenot gentlemen of his suite united with the Protestant ministers in begging him to renounce his present course of life, and contract a second honorable marriage. The latter held up to him "il pericolo et infamia propria, et il scandalo commune a tutta la relligione per esserne lui capo;" the former threatened to leave him. I have seen no injurious reports affecting Conde's morals after ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... Williams, Howard Ingraham, and Butler Johnson, who were raising crops around the stockades by permission of Captain Rench, and demanded rent, that Mr. Crawford called upon us four, with Mr. B. B. Dikes and Esquire Souber, and compelled us to sign a written contract, which they had prepared, that each of us four would pay forty bushels of corn each for rent; that he (Williams) was unable to pay the forty bushels of corn, but did pay ten dollars in money, ten bushels of corn which he gathered and hauled ...
— A Letter to Hon. Charles Sumner, with 'Statements' of Outrages upon Freedmen in Georgia • Hamilton Wilcox Pierson

... the division come earlier, as had been predicted often enough, or had Mrs. Stuart ever given in her younger days a handle for any gossip. But her conduct had been so frigidly correct that it stood in good service at this crisis. She would not have permitted a scandal. That also was in the contract. ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

... perceived that we were satisfied with one another, she clapped her hands a second time, and a cadi[35] with four witnesses, entered, who wrote and signed our contract ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous

... domestic virtues that would suffer greatly in the other state. Yet this is but a faint image of the total independency. Oaths were sacred only through the temporal judgments supposed to overtake those who insulted the Gods by summoning them to witness a false contract. But this would have been only part of the evil. So long as men acknowledged higher natures, they were doubtful about futurity. This doubt had little strength on the side of hope, but much on the side of fear. The ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... the Prophet, Baruch or another. More deserving of consideration is the criticism which Duhm, with great unwillingness, makes of the terms and substance of the prophecy. He objects to the term covenant: a covenant is a legal contract and could hardly have been chosen for the frame of his ideal by so pronounced an anti-legalist as Jeremiah. The passage "promises a new Covenant—not a new Torah but only a more inward assimilation of the ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... called in French une folie, on my part, and hardly less so on the part of the young lady. We had, however, a kind of inward assurance that in spite of the difference of nationality and other differences, we were, in truth, nearer to each other than most people who contract matrimonial engagements. The "elective affinities" act in spite of all appearances and ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... of her own, though that is neither here nor there with her folk. But it's no easy throwing a bloodhound off the track, and now I hear he has gained his purpose, and afore he left the Court and came back to his evil trade in Scotland the contract of marriage was settled, and ane o' these days we will be hearing that a Graham has married a Graham, and that both o' them have gotten the portion that belongeth to the unrighteous. Ye ken, Jean, that I have never loved the foolish gossip which fills the minds ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... by others. The germ of this tenure was the right of private taxation over certain districts, granted by the Norman duke to his barons and warriors as the reward for their help in battle. Feudal land tenure never was, and never pretended to be, a contract between cultivator and landowner for their mutual benefit. It was rather the right to prey on the farmer, assigned to the landowner by the king, and paid for in past or present services to the king. In other words, the head of the Norman army invited his officers to help themselves ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston

... Assyrian times we have certain examples of advances of corn, or money, at harvest-time for the payment of reapers, which have already been noticed under loans.(722) An advance of money and food to workmen may perhaps be put here. But it is also a contract to ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... on his death-bed, had to own that 'Cave was a penurious paymaster; he would contract for lines by the hundred, and expect the long hundred.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... colour, which had been brilliant the first moment of her entrance, faded away as she gazed; but her eyes—her beautiful eyes—usually so soft and grave, seemed to fill with fire, and her brows to contract, as she took the resolution to come forwards and take her place among the three, who were all looking at her with different emotions. She moved calmly and slowly forwards; Mr. Preston went a step or two to meet her, his hand held out, and ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... he was the heir, not to the uncle, but to Buston, and had gradually been taught to look upon Buston as his right,—as though he had a certain defeasible property in the acres. He now began to perceive that there was no such thing. A tacit contract had been made on his behalf, and he had declined to accept his share of the contract. But he had been debarred from following any profession by his uncle's promised allowance. He did not think that he could ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... henceforth aid the interests or share the schemes of the man whose perfidies she then denounced; and as to Rugge, he had not appeared at Gatesboro'. Mrs. Crane had prudently suggested that his presence would not be propitiatory or discreet, and that all reference to him, or to the contract with him, should be suppressed. Thus Waife was wholly without one guiding evidence, one groundwork for conjecture, that might enable him to track the lost; all he knew was, that she had been given up to a man whose whereabouts ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... another factor which must be considered while discussing lift. The volume of gas is affected by temperature, as gases expand or contract about 1/500 part for every degree Fahrenheit rise or fall ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale

... enactments were hazardous in those who know this business only by the eye,—let us here hint at simply one widest universal principle, as the basis from which all organisation hitherto has grown up among men, and all henceforth will have to grow: The principle of Permanent Contract instead of Temporary. ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... Contract fire. Extend both arms horizontally, fingers extended, arms parallel, palms facing each other; bring hands together once, and hold them so and look at ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... aside and looked on while Flexinna, as matron of honor, led Brinnaria to Almo and joined their right hands, while they seated themselves side by side on the traditional cushioned stools, while the Flamen of Jupiter offered on the house-altar the old-fashioned contract-cake, and said the formal prayers for the happiness of the bride and groom; while the Flamen's assistant, one of Flexinna's older boys, carried the cake to Almo and Brinnaria and each broke off a piece and ate it, she uttering the ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... not wishing to contract a new marriage, and comprehending the importance of having a successor elected to the throne, proposed her nephew, Eric, Duke of Pomerania. This proposal the clergy and nobility approved, and they elected him to be king of Denmark and Norway after Margaret's death. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... observing at several places never before visited by Europeans. The Chinese account quoted in the Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses, vol. 23, states that the young men and women marry on this island by choice, and not, as in China, by a contract made without any personal knowledge of each other. We took every opportunity of interrogating them on this subject, but as the question was always evaded, we fear that their practice in this respect is not so praiseworthy as that ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall

... world! Dreadful, indeed—because he knew that he had never loved her, never could love her! Dreadful—doubly dreadful—for he now knew what love might be; and it was not what he had believed it when he executed the contract which must ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... hospital have been cut off from the hospital proper by a heavy partition that has been put up at the end of the long corridor, and these rooms are now being calcimined and painted. They were originally intended for the contract surgeon. We will have our own little porch and entrance hall and a nice yard back of the kitchen. It will all be so much more private and comfortable in every way than it could possibly have been in quarters ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... valves that are in the orifices of the other two vessels, through which they pass out, causing in this way all the branches of the arterial vein and of the grand artery to expand almost simultaneously with the heart which immediately thereafter begins to contract, as do also the arteries, because the blood that has entered them has cooled, and the six small valves close, and the five of the hollow vein and of the venous artery open anew and allow a passage to other ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes

... muscular" system, the initial exercises are toneless drills in breathing. The basic exercise, of which all the others are variations, is as follows: "Fill the lungs, then hold the breath an instant, and forcibly contract all the chest muscles. Then force the air out slowly and powerfully through the glottis." Practice of this exercise is always accompanied by a hissing sound, caused by the escape of the air through the ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor

... good conversation was a very great inconvenience, and, though he conceived he could order his thinking as well as another, yet he found a great defect. In the country, in long time, for want of good conversation, one's understanding and invention contract a moss on them, like an old ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... he, "in that their lives are not their own to dispose of as they will. They belong to the State which they were born to govern, and in nothing else does this become of so much importance as in their mating. It behoves them to contract such alliances as shall redound to the advantage of their people." A toss of her auburn head was Valentina's interpolation, but her uncle continued relentlessly in his cold, formal tones—such tones as those in which he might have addressed ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini



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