"Contrivance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... past him and crept to the end of the dock. The paddle dipped on silently and evenly in the still water, but the sound grew fainter. A canoe is the most graceful, the most sensitive, the most inexplicable contrivance of man. With its paddle you may dip up stars along quiet shores or steal into the very harbor of dreams. I knew that furtive splash instantly, and knew that a trained hand wielded the paddle. My boyhood summers in the Maine woods were not, I ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... march. The same day we fell in with a sheik, the head of a family that actually dwells at no great distance 5 from this part of the desert during nine months of the year. The man carried a matchlock, and of this he was inordinately proud, on account of the supposed novelty and ingenuity of the contrivance. We stopped, and sat down and rested awhile, for the sake of a ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... bitter ceaseless objurgation. It never had a toy, or knew what a coral meant. It grew up without the lullaby of nurses, it was a stranger to the patient fondle, the hushing caress, the attracting novelty, the costlier plaything, or the cheaper off-hand contrivance to divert the child; the prattled nonsense (best sense to it), the wise impertinences, the wholesome lies, the apt story interposed, that puts a stop to present sufferings, and awakens the passion of young wonder. It was never sung to—no one ever told ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... which incited her to intercept this provision intended him, suggested another project, worthy of such a disposition. She endeavoured to rid herself from the danger of being at any time made known to him, by sending him secretly to the American Plantations; but in this contrivance her malice ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... from Dr. Smollet, that his master kindly interested himself in procuring his release from a state of life of which Johnson always expressed the utmost abhorrence. He said, 'No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned[1043].' And at another time, 'A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company[1044].' The letter ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... is a raft of reeds or bamboo; on which is erected an apparatus not unlike the mast and yard of a square-rigged ship. To one end of the yard is attached a net which may be raised from and lowered into the water. This contrivance is called by the natives timba. See full description of the salambao, and of other native modes of fishing, in Zuniga's Estadismo (Retana's ed.), i, pp. 199, 200; and illustration of this apparatus in F. Jagor's Travels in the Philippines ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... merchant to his customers and creditors; the man of leisure to his cronies and companions, the professional man to his clients; even the ladies to their bosom friends at tea or euchre—suppose, I say, that every word you had uttered had been taken down by some marvelous mechanical contrivance, and should be published verbatim tomorrow morning with your names attached showing just what each of you had said. What do you think would happen? I can tell you from observation. You would likely spend next year explaining, denying, apologizing and repenting. ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... of maps may be deduced from Egypt, yet they were not the native Egyptians, by whom they were first constructed. Delineations of this nature were the contrivance of the Cuthites, or Shepherds. They were, among other titles, styled Saitae; and from them both astronomy and geometry were introduced in those parts. They, with immense labour, drained the lower ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... "my feathered clock goes too fast: it cannot possibly be today yet!" So saying, he leaped precipitately out of a piece of furniture of his own ingenious contrivance, which, sustaining the part of bed by night, (sustaining it badly enough too,) did duty by day for all the rest of the furniture which was absent by reason of the severe cold for which the past ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... shows, the question whether the optical contrivance 'sorts out' from the chaotic light a particular periodicity, or whether it 'impresses' this on the light, becomes just 'a matter of expression'.11 So here, too, the modern investigator is driven to a resigned acknowledgment of the ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... down again. Pharaoh is behind my flock Israel, in the south is Baal-zephon, in the north Midgol, and before us the sea lies spread out. [24] Thou knowest, O Lord, that it is beyond human strength and human contrivance to surmount the difficulties standing in our way. Thine alone is the work of procuring deliverance for this army, which left Egypt at Thy appointment. We despair of all other assistance or device, and we have recourse only to our hope ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... in a northwesterly direction, through a tract of country excessively wild and desolate, where no trace of a human footstep was to be seen. Legrand led the way with decision; pausing only for an instant, here and there, to consult what appeared to be certain landmarks of his own contrivance upon a ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... had informed himself of all the circumstances from Waters, and by privately questioning the others, had satisfied himself that the entire scheme of the mutiny was of Campo's contrivance, and that they had been led into it solely by his persuasion and threats, ordered Waters to speak. The seaman told a straight story of what he had heard and seen. Cosmo himself then related the events of the night. When ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... poor miller, had been brought into the Queen's room in a warming-pan, and passed off as the son of the Queen. It was said that Father Petre, a Catholic clergyman, had been instrumental in carrying out this contrivance, and therefore the enemies of the royal family talked of the young prince as Perkin or Petrelin. The warming-pan was one of the most familiar objects in satirical literature and art for many generations after. ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... of children was poured in on us, and everything imaginable done to interrupt, and render everything rational impossible. I know it was Rosamond's contrivance, she looked so triumphant, dressed in an absurd fancy dress, and her whole train doing nothing but turning me into ridicule, and Mrs. Tallboys too. Whatever you choose to call her, you cannot approve of a stranger and foreigner being insulted here. It is that about ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... began to hint at its own hideous nature with every convulsive tick of the metre. It hiccuped nickels, and as Win's terrified eyes, instead of taking in New York, watched the spendthrift contrivance yelping for her dollars, she remembered that she owned but two hundred. She had had to be "decent" about tips on board. But forty pounds—two hundred dollars—had looked magnificent in her hand bag that ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... kitchen wall in a frame of oak canopied with faded velvet—an ingenious and puzzling contrivance, somewhat like the calendar prefixed to the Book of Common Prayer, with the names of the Brethren inserted on movable cards worn greasy with handling. In system nothing could be fairer; but in practice, human nature being what it is, and the crowd without ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... affair, hanging feebly between two grandfatherly old posts, which hypocritically tried to maintain an air of solidity, though perfectly aware that they were wellnigh rotted away at the base. The action of this gate was assisted—or more correctly encumbered—by the contrivance of a sliding ball and chain, creating a most dismal clatter and flap as often as it was opened. The white-washed picket fence, scaled and patched by the weather, kept the posts in excellent countenance; and inclosed a moderate grass-plot, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... be observed that the problem is not coextensive with the whole field of rights. Some rights cannot be transferred by any device or contrivance; for instance, a man's right a to bodily safety or reputation. Others again are incident to possession, and within the limits of that conception no other is necessary. As Savigny said, "Succession does not apply to possession ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... divergent movements with their different rates of speed. And when Gallus moved [i.e., set in motion] the globe, it was actually true that the moon was always as many revolutions behind the sun on the bronze contrivance as would agree with the number of days it was behind in the sky. Thus the same eclipse of the sun happened on the globe as would actually happen, and the moon came to the point where the shadow of the ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... reason,' said Aunt Becky, who, as usual, had got up a skirmish, and was firing away in the cause of Mossop and Smock-alley play-house; 'why, she would be fraudulently arrested in her own chair, on her way to the play-house, by the contrivance of the rogue Barry, and that ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... may be living with me, and that will supply a check upon me of some kind. At present I am too much without it. Here I am in my cosy little room, after my delicious breakfast of perfect coffee, made in Jem's contrivance, hot milk and plenty of it, dry toast and potato. Missionary hardships! On the grass between me and the beach—a distance of some seventy yards—lie the boys' canvas beds and blankets and rugs, having a good airing. The schooner lies at anchor beyond; and, three or four miles ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conveyed that at least there was a good stock of fuel always on hand. The box was made of tongued and grooved boards, and one of these in the front could be slipped out, thus forming a door. Into this box all the food and silverware were put. No little ingenuity was needed in making this contrivance. The nails that were drawn out to let this board slip back and forth left tell-tale nail-holes, but these were filled up with heads of nails, so that all the boards looked just alike. I remember once a soldier was sitting on this box while mother was ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... standing joke with the young Carrolls, but their mother had a serene belief that some day SOMETHING might be done with the little contrivance she had thought of some years ago, by which the largest of windows might be washed outside as easily as inside. "I believe I really thought of it by seeing poor maids washing fifth-story windows by sitting on the sill and tipping out!" she confessed one day to Susan. Now she ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... the course, guided partly by the compass and partly by the direction of the wind, and a watch of two or three on the poop look after the trimming of the sails and call out the hours by the water-clock. This is a very ingenious contrivance, which measures time well in both rough weather and fine. It is simply a bucket half filled with water, in which floats the half of a well-scraped cocoa-nut shell. In the bottom of this shell is a ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... beneath it valleys of a vast depth, and of an almost perpendicular declivity; insomuch that the king was doubtful for a long time what to do, by reason of a kind of impossibility there was of attacking the place. Yet did he at length make use of a contrivance that was subject to the utmost hazard; for he let down the most hardy of his men in chests, and set them at the mouths of the dens. Now these men slew the robbers and their families, and when they made resistance, they sent in fire upon them [and burnt them]; and as Herod was desirous of saving ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... perseverance, worthy of a better cause, which bad men will exercise in working out their plans. Then with a flash of bitter irony, led on by his imagination to say more than he had meant, he adds this scathing parenthesis, as if he said, 'Yes, they spin spiders' webs, elaborate toil and creeping contrivance, and what comes of it all! The flimsy foul thing is swept away by God's besom sooner or later. A web indeed! but they will never make a garment out of it. It looks like cloth, but it is useless.' That is the old lesson that all sin ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... will gather, and luckless birds and insects pass horrible last hours of ineffectual struggle. It may have automatic window-cleaning arrangements, but they will be hidden by "picturesque" mullions. The sham chimneys will, perhaps, be made to smoke genially in winter by some ingenious contrivance, there may be sham open fireplaces within, with ingle nooks about the sham glowing logs. The needlessly steep roofs will have a sham sag and sham timbered gables, and probably forced lichens will give it a sham appearance of age. Just that feeble-minded contemporary ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... of the night—not for work, not for the learning of a single lesson, but only that he might stare out of the window for a while, and then get into bed again. For my part, nevertheless, I think it a most useful contrivance. For all lovely sights tend to keep the soul pure, to lift the heart up to God, and above, not merely what people call low cares, but what people would call reasonable cares, although our great Teacher teaches us that such ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... and whose arm wrought for him,—not for his personal aggrandisement indeed, but for the weal of the nation. It was Jehovah. Alike what was done by the deliberate purpose of Moses and what was done without any human contrivance by nature and by accident came to be regarded in one great totality as the doing of Jehovah for Israel. Jehovah it was who had directed each step in that process through which these so diverse elements, brought together by the pressure of necessity, had ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... rags," replied Katherine. "I call it my happiness skirt, and I wear it only when I feel happy. To-day the winter has somehow got into my bones or up in my head, and I feel as light-hearted and reckless as if I had been having oxygen pumped into me by a special contrivance; so plainly this is the proper time ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... into the sea, by which means it makes a sort of little tongue or slip of land, washt on one side by itself, on the other side by the sea. In this slip, upon an open shore, I saw Yarmouth, a very neat harbour and town, fortified both by the nature of the place and the contrivance of art. For, though it be almost surrounded with water, on the west with a river, over which there is a drawbridge, and on either side with the sea, except to the north, where it is joined to the continent; yet it is ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... solicitous not to suffer these things to interfere with religion, a due attendance on which he apprehended to be the surest method of attaining all desirable success in every other interest and concern in life. He therefore abhorred every thing that looked like a contrivance to keep his soldiers employed with their horses and their arms at the seasons of public worship—an indecency which I wish there were no room to mention. Far from that, he used to have them drawn ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... that used to be reckoned by the value of land, is now computed by the rise and fall of stocks: and although the foundation of credit be still the same, and upon a bottom that can never be shaken; and though all interest be duly paid by the public, yet through the contrivance and cunning of stock-jobbers, there has been brought in such a complication of knavery and cozenage, such a mystery of iniquity, and such an unintelligible jargon of terms to involve it in, as were never known in any other ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... Holl(an)d dined here yesterday, and we had the contrivance to keep our party a secret from Craufurd, for, although he was engaged to two other places, he told March that he should have been glad to have come, and certainly would, if he had known it. I think verily he grows ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... ecclesiastical trick intended to impress the populace. There is a saying by an antique wit that no two priests or augurs could ever meet and look at each other without a knowing wink of recognition. Hero is said to have been the author of this contrivance also. The temple doors would open by themselves when the fire burned on the altar, and would close again when that fire was extinguished, and the worshippers would think it a miracle. It is interesting because it contained the principle upon which ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... a pig? She sank into a kind of furious apathy, a state of inert anger against fate. Her faculty for "managing" deserted her, or she no longer took sufficient pride in it to exert it. It was well enough to "manage" when by so doing one could keep one's own carriage; but when one's best contrivance did not conceal the fact that one had to go on foot, the effort was ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... looking-glass inserted in the bevel of the window-jamb, and common to all the dwellings of Carlsruhe—a handy article, an entertaining distraction, a discreet but immoral spy, which places at your mercy all the mysteries of the public street. This contrivance, which enables you to see the world without being seen, certainly gives you a tempting advantage over the untimely caller or the impertinent creditor; but it encourages, in my opinion, a habit of vision ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... triangular ship, with seats for three, but it was heavy. The two men moved it with desperate exertion. Aten pointed, panting, to slide-rail and it took them five minutes to get the plane about that rail and engage a curious contrivance in a ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the tired company dispersed, and the soldier also sought his room. There he found the landlord's daughter before him with the warming-pan. She had spread open the sheets of his bed and was applying the old-fashioned contrivance for the prevention of rheumatism, but it was evident her mind was not on this commendable housewifely task, for she ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... projections which interlock, much as one's clasped fingers interlock. Only the middle tube is used for the passage of the honey, the side tubes being used, as some think, for breathing purposes, while others hold that they serve to help in pumping up the fluids into the mouth. By this interlocking contrivance the tube can easily be opened and cleaned, should the passage become blocked by ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Wilhelm did with such a mass of wild pork? Not an ounce of it was wasted, every ounce of it brought money in. For there exist Official Schedules, lists as for a window-tax or property-tax, drawn up by his Majesty's contrivance, in the chief Localities: every man, according to the house he keeps, is bound to take, at a just value by weight, such and such quotities of suddenly slaughtered wild swine, one or so many,—and consume them at his leisure, as ham or otherwise,—cash payable at a fixed term, and no abatement ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... what had befallen him and he said, "Thy star agrees not with her star; but an thou wilt I can alter the contract for thee," adding, "'Ware lest another cheat be not in store for thee." And my brother answered him, "See if thou have not another contrivance." Then the clerk left him and he sat in his shop, looking for some one to bring him a job whereby he might earn his day's bread. Presently the handmaid came to him and said, "Speak with my lady." "Begone, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... mortals to frame such predictions as these, which to him would seem as strange and unaccountable as prophesy doth to others. Even they who are blessed with the visive faculty may (though familiarity make it less observed) find therein sufficient cause of admiration. The wonderful art and contrivance wherewith it is adjusted to those ends and purposes for which it was apparently designed, the vast extent, number, and variety of objects that are at once with so much ease and quickness and pleasure suggested by it: all these afford ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... by wariness, care, and contrivance, her meetings with William had been unsuspected; but, in this agony of mind, her fears fore-boded an informer who would defy all caution; who would stigmatise her with a name—dear and desired by every virtuous female—abhorrent to the blushing ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... covered with fur. Now, in these days, such an assertion would be backed by an appeal to some learned Rabbi of a Zoological Society, who had written a deep pamphlet, upon what he would probably call the Theory of Hair. But to whom does Paley refer us? To any dealer in rabbit skins. The curious contrivance in the bones of birds, to unite strength with lightness, is noticed. The bore is larger, in proportion to the weight of the bone, than in other animals; it is empty; the substance of the bone itself is of a closer texture. For these facts, any "operative" would quote Sir Everard ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... our own visit, and he it was who had substituted the barrel for the bottle, adding an invitation to all who should succeed him to use it as the receptacle of letters for different destinations. I mean to improve this ingenious and useful contrivance by forming an actual post-office on the highest point of the peninsula with an inscription in letters of a size so gigantic as to compel the attention of navigators who would not otherwise have touched at Port Famine. Curiosity will then probably ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the contrivance of Conor, Fergus was pressed to join in an ale-feast, while the sons of Usnach were pledged to eat no food in Erin, until they had eaten the food of Conor. So Fergus tarried behind with Dubhtach and Cormac; and the sons of Usnach went on, accompanied ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... trusted and rejoiced, should act what, to Sense, seems so unfriendly a Part: That he should take away a Child; and if a Child, that Child; and if that Child, at that Age; and if at that Age, with this or that particular Circumstance, which seems the very Contrivance of Providence to add double Anguish to the Wound; and all this, when he could so easily have recalled it; when we know him to have done it for so many others; when we so earnestly desired it; when we sought it with such Importunity, and yet, as we imagine, ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... DAUGHTER—I hope that the news I announce will give you as much joy as it has already given our dear Roland and me. Sir John, whose heart you doubted, claiming that it was only a mechanical contrivance, manufactured in the workshops at Vaucanson, admits that such an opinion was a just one until the day he saw you; but he maintains that since that day he has a heart, and that ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... we see evidence of contrivance and design, of method and arrangement, of conception, perception and judgment, which are all the effects and outflowings of intelligence which belong, and alone belong, to mind; and therefore we say, "The machine was made, and there was and must have been a maker." So universally ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... does not admit of being very happily translated into an English term of equal brevity, is the name given by the inventor, Mr. Girard, to a frictionless support, or socket, designed to sustain the axes of heavy wheels in machinery. Since it is a contrivance deriving its efficacy from hydraulic pressure, it may, without impropriety, be considered here. The friction of axles in their supports is the occasion of a considerable loss of power ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... remembered to have observed an ancient, weedy houseboat lying moored beside a tuft of willows. It had stirred in him, in his careless hours, as he pulled down the river under a more familiar name, a certain sense of the romantic; and when the nice contrivance of his story was already complete in his mind, he had come near pulling it all down again, like an ungrateful clock, in order to introduce a chapter in which Richard Skill (who was always being decoyed somewhere) should be decoyed on board that lonely hulk by Lord Bellew and the ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... architecture, we find not only the pyramids, which date from the very earliest period of Egyptian history, and which are to this hour the wonder of the world for size, for boldness, for exactness, and for skilful contrivance, but also the temples, with long ranges of colossal columns wrought in polished granite, with wonderful beauty of ornamentation, with architraves and roofs vast in size and exquisite in adjustment, which by their proportions tax the imagination, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... democracy, where the right of making laws resides in the people at large, public virtue, or goodness of intention, is more likely to be found, than either of the other qualities of government. Popular assemblies are frequently foolish in their contrivance, and weak in their execution; but generally mean to do the thing that is right and just, and have always a degree of patriotism or public spirit. In aristocracies there is more wisdom to be found, than in the other ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... we do not vet know what body can or cannot do, or what would naturally follow from the structure of it; that we experience in the feats of somnambulists something which antecedently to that experience would have seemed incredible. This fabric of the human body exceeds infinitely any contrivance of human skill, and an infinity of things, as I have already proved, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... thousand dollars to suppress my design for an equestrian statue of a distinguished general officer as he would have appeared at the Battle of Buena Vista. This monument is intended as a weathercock to crown the new dome of the Capitol at Washington. By this happy contrivance, the horse will be freed from the degrading necessity of touching the earth at all,—thus distancing Mr. Mills by two feet in the race for originality. The pivot is to be placed so far behind the middle of the horse, that the statue, like its original, will always indicate which way the wind blows ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... The water stunk a little after it had been a few days on board, but it afterwards turned sweet; and even when it was at the worst, the tin machine would, in a few hours, recover a whole cask. This is an excellent contrivance for sweetening water at sea, and is well known in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... ocean. This sail, it has been noticed, 'is set at the same angle as the lateen-sail' of the Malays. We cannot doubt that it is admirably suited to its purpose, and the Malays may be proud of having nature as a voucher for their contrivance. ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... the little boy he had so long wished for to be his page, took pity on the disgraceful situation into which, by his merry contrivance, he had brought his Titania, and threw some of the juice of the other flower into her eyes; and the fairy queen immediately recovered her senses, and wondered at her late dotage, saying how she now loathed the ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... provided for the fire, she carved a set of draughtsmen, and made a board by ruling squares on the end of a settle, and painting the alternate ones with a compound of oil and charcoal. Even the old Baron was delighted with this contrivance, and the pleasure it gave his daughter. He remembered playing at draughts in that portion of his youth which had been a shade more polished, and he felt as if the game were making Ermentrude more hike a lady. Christina ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... head if he was silly enough to put them on. And a helmet of invisibility! How could a helmet make him invisible, unless it were big enough for him to hide under it? And an enchanted wallet! What sort of a contrivance may that be, I wonder? No, no, good stranger! we can tell you nothing of these marvelous things. You have two eyes of your own and we have but a single one amongst us three. You can find out such wonders better than three ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... Street, the first house to the right as one went up from the station. It was two stories high, with a funny red mansard roof of oval slates. The interior was cut up into innumerable tiny rooms, some of them so small as to be hardly better than sleeping closets. In the back yard was a contrivance for pumping water from the cistern that interested McTeague at once. It was a dog-wheel, a huge revolving box in which the unhappy black greyhound spent most of his waking hours. It was his kennel; he ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... adaptation, not indeed to the animal's or plant's own good, but to man's use or fancy. Some variations useful to him have probably arisen suddenly, or by one step; many botanists, for instance, believe that the fuller's teasel, with its hooks, which can not be rivalled by any mechanical contrivance, is only a variety of the wild Dipsacus; and this amount of change may have suddenly arisen in a seedling. So it has probably been with the turnspit dog; and this is known to have been the case with the ancon sheep. But when we compare the dray-horse and race-horse, the dromedary ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... that Samuel Brohl did, even in his wildest freaks, there was somewhat of calculation, or contrivance. Unquestionably, he had experienced intense displeasure at encountering M. Camille Langis at Cormeilles; he had, doubtless, very particular and very personal reasons for not liking him. He knew, however, that there was need for controlling his temper, his impressions, his rancour; and, if he ceased ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... for his pleasure at sea and rivers of Siam; and caused several articles of gold and silver being vessels and various wares and weapons to be made up by the Siamese and Malayan goldsmiths, for employ and dress of himself and his family, by his direction and skilful contrivance and ability. He became celebrated and spread out more and more to various regions of the Siamese kingdom, adjacent States around, and far-famed to foreign countries, even at far distance, as he became acquainted with many and many foreigners, who came from various quarters ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... profound or ingenious development of character, and with a group of personages, not one of whom has any legitimate claims upon either our affection or esteem, it yet, by the admirable skill with which its materials are managed,—the happy contrivance of the situations, at once both natural and striking, —the fine feeling of the ridiculous that smiles throughout, and that perpetual play of wit which never tires, but seems, like running water, to be kept fresh by its own flow,—by all this ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... me awake! How recklessly I had confided myself to the two wretches who had led me into this room, determined, for the sake of my winnings, to kill me in my sleep by the surest and most horrible contrivance for secretly accomplishing my destruction! How many men, winners like me, had slept, as I had proposed to sleep, in that bed, and had never been seen or heard of more! I shuddered at ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... removed the deadly contrivance. Men on watch of his movements could have prepared it against his return; and, indeed, he thought he detected a pair of flitting shadows behind a row of willow bushes lining a Mexican irrigation ditch, but in the dusk he could not be sure. On running thither, he found ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... is gone by; Lord of the secret birth of things is he Within the lap of earth, and in the depths Of the imagination dominates; And his are all things that eschew the light. The time is o'er of brooding and contrivance, For Jupiter, the lustrous, lordeth now, And the dark work, complete of preparation, He draws by force into the realm of light. Now must we hasten on to action, ere The scheme and most auspicious positure ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... would want any more. I thought I had bidden you farewell. But I am seated once again at my writing-table, to write for you—with a strange feeling, however, that I am in the heart of some curious, rather awful acoustic contrivance, by means of which the words which I have a habit of whispering over to myself as I write them, are heard aloud by multitudes of people whom I cannot see or hear. I will favour the fancy, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... how difficult it would be to see such an object as a life-buoy, even with a man in it, at any great distance, from so low an elevation as our deck, I had taken the precaution to have each buoy fitted with a contrivance for hoisting a signal. ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... their dining-rooms. He was not exactly the man to have suggested a modern usage, but he was not so far prejudiced as to banish those which his father had prepared for his use. Mr. Thorne had indeed once suggested that with very little contrivance the front door might have been so altered as to open at least into the passage, but on hearing this, his sister Monica—such was Miss Thorne's name—had been taken ill and had remained so for a week. Before she came downstairs she received a pledge from her brother that the entrance ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the Romish Fox, collected by Sir James Ware, and edited by Robert Ware (8vo., Dublin, 1683), there is a long account of an image of the Saviour which, to the astonishment of the good people of Dublin, and by the contrivance of one Father Leigh, sweated blood in the year 1559. It is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... Directory" of five members. The orders of the Executive were communicated to not more than one of the Provincial Directors, and by him to one of each County Committee, and so in a descending scale, till the rank and file were reached; an elaborate contrivance, but one which proved wholly insufficient to protect the secrets of the organization from the ubiquitous espionage ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... mere rattle of my fellow-prisoner's chains fill me with shivering despair. And because of these sick fears I felt great scorn of myself, and knowing I was in this place of horror by my own will and contrivance, to despair and scorn was added a bitter self-hatred. And now, remembering how Adam had vowed to rescue Sir Richard, I prayed for his coming, at one moment full of hope, the next in an agony of despair lest he should come too late. Thus I fell to my black mood, speaking no word or answering ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... reason to be ashamed of, and many things of which she might have been proud; but it had never been fathomed by the honest minds of Hintock, and she rarely volunteered her experiences. As for her capricious nature, the people on her estates grew accustomed to it, and with that marvellous subtlety of contrivance in steering round odd tempers, that is found in sons of the soil and dependants generally, they managed to get along under her government rather better than they would have done ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... swifter, and go in larger packs. They bring forth their young in burrows on the open plain, and not among the woods, like the other species. They are the most cunning of American animals, not excepting their kindred the foxes. They cannot be trapped by any contrivance, but by singular manoeuvres often themselves decoy the over-curious antelope to approach too near them. When a gun is fired upon the prairies they may be seen starting up on all sides, and running for the spot in hopes of coming in for a share of the game. Should an animal—deer, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... give sketches of such parts of other journeys as do not cover the same ground, and they will lie, with one exception, south of the Yukon. While visiting many of the same points every winter, it has been within the author's good fortune and contrivance to include each year some new stretch of country, sometimes searching out and visiting a new tribe of natives, and blazing the way for the establishment of permanent missionary work amongst them. To these initial journeys belongs a zest that no subsequent travels ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... assassins at Stenay upon the Meuse, now the best town in the duchy of Bar in Lorraine. The people, however, chose Pepin and Martin dukes or governors of Austrasia, who defended their liberty against Ebroin. Martin was afterwards assassinated by the contrivance of Ebroin, and Ebroin by Ermenfrid; but Pepin, in 687, defeated Theodoric III. at Testry, took Paris, and the king himself; from which time, under the title of mayor, he enjoyed the supreme power in the French monarchy. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... also a kind of india-rubber, of which the natives make bottles, boots, and syringes, which, according to Condamine, require no piston. They are of the shape of hollow pears, and are pierced at the end with a little hole, into which a pipe is fitted. This contrivance is much used by the Omaguas; and when a fete is given, the host, as a matter of politeness, always presents one to each of his guests, who use ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... pieces out of it. To facilitate the latter part of the process, the seamen, who are always fond of doing things in their own way, took advantage of a fresh northerly breeze, by setting some boats sails upon the pieces of ice, a contrivance which saved both time and labour. This part of the operation, however, was by far the most troublesome, principally on account of the quantity of young ice which formed in the canal, and especially about the entrance, where, before sunset, it had become so thick that ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... their accustomed words, and they will call 16 a dozen; 120, 112, or any other number, a hundred.' He disapproved, likewise, of thrusting the decimal principle upon things incompatible with it. 'Decimal arithmetic,' said he, 'is a contrivance of man for computing numbers, and not a property of time, space, or matter. It belongs essentially to the keeping of accounts, but is merely an incident to the transactions of trade. Nature has no partiality for the number 10; and the attempt to shackle her freedom with them [decimal gradations], ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... the piano is an evolution of the harp principle. This instrument was known centuries previous to the Christian era. From the best history obtainable, we learn that about three hundred years ago, the first effort was made to interpose a mechanical contrivance between the performer and the strings whereby it would only be necessary to strike the keys to produce tone from the strings, thereby decreasing the difficulty in finding the strings and picking them with the fingers, and greatly increasing the ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... your teeth quite meet, and you won't feel the sandiness at all. Ah! 'tis wonderful what can be done by contrivance!" ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... Egypt, where they have Plagues annually, that the Change of the Wind delivers them from that Evil. Add to this the great Use of Winds in Navigation, and reflect on the Benefits that accrue there from, and we shall see no Cause whatever to doubt that this Motion of the Air is a very wise Contrivance. ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... bamboo walls that look as if smashed with a club. Farther on, half hidden under the drooping bushes, a canoe containing a man and a woman, together with a dozen green cocoanuts in a heap, rocked helplessly after the Sofala had passed, like a navigating contrivance of venturesome insects, of traveling ants; while two glassy folds of water streaming away from each bow of the steamer across the whole width of the river ran with her up stream smoothly, fretting their outer ends into a brown whispering tumble of froth against the ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... the characters with time and circumstances, just according to the degree and kind of interest excited, are not inferior to the expression of passion and nature. It has been ingeniously remarked among other proofs of skill in the contrivance of the fable, that the improbability of the main incident in the piece, the administering of the sleeping-potion, is softened and obviated from the beginning by the introduction of the Friar on his first appearance culling simples and descanting on their virtues. Of the passionate ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... making believe He's invented a clever contrivance for Eve, Who complained that she never could laugh ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... Sir Philip Sidney's sister, appears to have found sexual enjoyment in the contemplation of the sexual prowess of stallions. Aubrey writes that she "was very salacious and she had a contrivance that in the spring of the year ... the stallions ... were to be brought before such a part of the house where she had a vidette to look on them." (Short Lives, 1898, vol. i, p. 311.) Although the modern ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... would not. Still they remained, and still was he determined that they should not see him. With the conserved hope of more than half a year dashed away in a moment, he could yet feel that the cruelty of a protest would be even greater than its inutility. It was absolutely by his own contrivance that the situation had been shaped. Bob, left to himself, would long ere this have been the husband ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... go so far as that,' said the old lady. 'Shakespeare is not everybody, and I am sure that thousands of people who have seen those plays would have driven home more cheerfully afterwards if by some contrivance the characters could all have been joined together respectively. I uphold our anonymous author on the general ground of ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... nose, is the boat with which the boy in the country first makes acquaintance. It is propelled by two oars, usually fastened to the sides by pivot row-locks. This is a handy boat for getting about in, but it is quite impossible to learn the art of rowing from such a mechanical contrivance. ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... Great ingenuity and contrivance were no doubt required to uphold the credit of the oracle; and no less boldness and self-collectedness on the part of those by whom the machinery was conducted. Like the conjurors of modern times, they took care to be extensively informed as to all such matters ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... human being. Trapdoor spiders are among the commonest of these pests. Their bodies grow to great size, two to two and a half inches long, and are covered with hair giving them a horrid appearance. They live in holes bored in the ground, and provided with a trapdoor contrivance which is closed when ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... but to eat? whose life, Chrysippus says, was given it but as salt[239] to keep it from putrefying; and as it is proper food for man, nature hath made no animal more fruitful. What a multitude of birds and fishes are taken by the art and contrivance of man only, and which are so delicious to our taste that one would be tempted sometimes to believe that this Providence which watches over us was an Epicurean! Though we think there are some birds—the alites ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... with the line until the bait was seized, when the line being taughtened, the half-hitch slipped off and the bone remained crossways in the gullet of the fish, which was drawn up by it. Simple as this contrivance was, it answered as well as the best hook, of which I had never seen one at that time. The fish were so strong and large, that, when I was young, the man would not allow me to attempt to catch them, lest they should pull me into the water; but, as I grew bigger, I could master them. Such was ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... phosphorus, and gases. I need not go into a representation of their multiplied and curious combinations to form the many parts of the body complete. But these are the ultimate elements; and a most superb and wonderful structure they here compose. Yet, notwithstanding all the manifest skillfulness of its contrivance, and the power of its accomplishment, and the niceness and beauty of its execution, it were a useless display if unaccompanied with the invisible agents which compose the two other grand constituents of man, to wit: the body electrical and the spirit, ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark
... supplication, was a promise to defer the execution of his baleful purpose for the space of four-and-twenty hours, during which she hoped Heaven would compassionate her sufferings, and inspire her with some contrivance for their mutual relief. Thus he yielded to her fervent request, rather with a view to calm the present transports of her sorrow, than with any expectation of seeing himself redeemed from his fate by her interposition; such at least were his professions when he took his leave, assuring her, that ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... vainly to compete with the reality of nature itself, all noble sculpture constantly struggles: each great system of sculpture resisting it in its own way, etherealising, spiritualising, relieving its hardness, its heaviness and death. The use of colour in sculpture is but an unskilful contrivance to effect, by borrowing from another art, what the nobler sculpture effects by strictly appropriate means. To get not colour, but the equivalent of colour; to secure the expression and the play of life; to expand the too ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... what indeed was the fact, that the ball had been prepared for the verses, and that it was only for the appropriateness of their application that the First Consul had pressed her to dance. He adopted this strange contrivance for contradicting an article which appeared in an English journal announcing that Hortense was delivered. Bonaparte was highly indignant at that premature announcement, which he clearly saw was made for the sole purpose of giving credit ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... for me. The family were at dinner, or at supper, as they would say, eating upon the bare board, without plates, potatoes boiled in their skins. I do not doubt there were hollows cut in the table to serve instead of plates, for this primitive contrivance still lingers in the wildest parts of the Limousin. In answer to my inquiry as to bed accommodation, I was told that I should have to sleep in the same room with others, probably the whole family. I had sufficient taste for civilization left to decline the proposed arrangement, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... of the enormous amount of drift, we set about constructing a gauge, which, it was hoped, would give us a rough estimate of the quantity passing the Hut in a year. Hannam, following the approved design, produced a very satisfactory contrivance. It consisted of a large drift-tight box, fitted on the windward side with a long metal cone, tapering to an aperture three-quarters of an inch in diameter. The drift-laden air entered the aperture, its speed was ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... one, that it is the only of the kind without episode, or underplot; every scene in the tragedy conducing to the main design, and every act concluding with a turn of it. The greatest error in the contrivance seems to be in the person of Octavia; for, though I might use the privilege of a poet, to introduce her into Alexandria, yet I had not enough considered, that the compassion she moved to herself and children, was destructive to that which I reserved for Antony ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... thousand artful tales of misfortune, by which he awakened the compassion, and engaged the attachment of the simple hinds. In order the more effectually to evade that curiosity which would have been fatal to his ease, he assumed every different time that he came among them a different form. By this contrivance, he passed unobserved, he partook freely of their pastimes, he made his observations unmolested, and was perfectly at leisure for the reflections, not always of the most pleasant description, that these scenes, of simple virtue and honest poverty, were calculated ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... also the floors of the edifices were paved with stones of several colors. He also had cut many and great pits, as reservoirs for water, out of the rocks, at every one of the places that were inhabited, both above and round about the palace, and before the wall; and by this contrivance he endeavored to have water for several uses, as if there had been fountains there. Here was also a road digged from the palace, and leading to the very top of the mountain, which yet could not be seen by ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... advised, took a noddy. A minibus is only a small omnibus. A noddy is a contrivance that holds four, and has a door at the end, and only one ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen
... he afterwards qualified himself for the business of a letterpress printer, and in 1816 opened a printing-office in his native town. In 1819, he compiled the "Annals of Peterhead," a duodecimo volume, which he printed at a press of his own contrivance. His next publication appeared shortly after, under the title, "An Historical Account of the Ancient and Noble Family of Keith, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... this great difference between the two cases. Whereas by subsequent inquiry he could ascertain as a matter of fact that the watch was due to intelligent contrivance, he could make no such discovery with reference to the marine bay: in the one case intelligent contrivance as a cause is independently demonstrable, while in the other case it can only be inferred. What, then, is ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... Master-peice; fixeth a Nail Peircer into the Door post, fastens the Knocker thereto with Packthread, breaks the Glass, and takes out three Silver Watches of 15 l. value, the Boy seeing him take them, but could not get out to pursue him, by reason of his Contrivance. One of the Watches he Pledg'd for a Guinea and Half. The same Night they came into Watch-street, Sheppard going into his Master's Yard, and calling for his Fellow 'Prentice, his Mistress heard, ...
— The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard • Daniel Defoe
... and if we advance we shall enter upon rugged paths where we can hardly see our way. As the moon is waning the night will not be lighted up by any stars. The earth is burnt up with the heat, and will afford us no supplies of water. And even if by any contrivance we could get over these difficulties comfortably, still, when the swarms of the enemy fall upon us, refreshed as they will be with rest, meat, and drink, what will become of us? What strength will there be in our weary limbs, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... sound, noise, or motion were concerned, the imitation by words was abundantly obvious."—Blair's Rhet., p. 55. "The pleasure or pain resulting from a train of perceptions in different circumstances, are a beautiful contrivance of nature for valuable purposes."—Kames, El. of Crit., i, 262. "Because their foolish vanity or their criminal ambition represent the principles by which they are influenced, as absolutely perfect."—Life of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... pivoting on Slavery,—just as in Europe there has been an attempt to preserve balance of power among nations pivoting on War. Too tardily is it seen that this famous balance, which has played such a part at home and abroad, is but an artificial contrivance instituted by power, which must give place to a simple accord derived from the natural condition of things. Why should not the harmony which has begun at home be extended abroad? Practicable and beneficent here, it must be the same there. Then would nations ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... There were fifty ways in which a door might shut of its own accord. There might be a hidden spring or tilted hinges; draught, of course, was out of the question. I looked at the hinges, they were of iron and set in the solid masonry. Nor could I discover any spring or hidden contrivance, as when the door was wide open there was an interval of several inches between it and the wall. We tried it again and again with the same result, and at last, as it was closing, I seized it to ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... But, notwithstanding all this—the larder, the cellar, the fire, the jokes, and the tricks—time did occasionally hang rather heavily upon our hands, especially in the evenings. To lessen this weight, we latterly fell upon the contrivance of telling stories, one or two of us each night, by turns. The idea is a borrowed one, as the reader will at once perceive, but we humbly think not a pin the worse on that account. There was no limitation, of course, as to the subject. Each was allowed to tell ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... enough living and lying in the open day to supply the satirist with material. Surely, these imitators of LUCIAN (unconscious imitators, no doubt, for many of them never read a line of his dialogues) would be better employed in imitating the spirit of his works as well as the mere contrivance for producing the ludicrous, than in devastating Fairy Land for materials. It would be more difficult, no doubt, but is that a sufficient reason ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... a dreadful disaster; whether fortuitously, or by the wicked contrivance of the prince[117] is not determined, for both are asserted by historians: but of all the calamities which ever befell this city from the rage of fire, this was the most terrible and severe. It broke out in that part of the Circus which is contiguous ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... through a tortuous and intricate path, which led this way and that by an infinite number of turns, forming a sort of maze, made purposely to bewilder those attempting to pass in and out. Such a place was often made in those days in palace-grounds as a sort of ornament, or, rather, as an amusing contrivance to interest the guests coming to visit the proprietor. It was called a labyrinth. A great many plans of labyrinths are found delineated in ancient books. The paths were not only so arranged as to twist and turn in every imaginable ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... spoken of fishing, could the windlesses refer to any little instrument such as now used upon a fishing-rod? I do not think it. And how do the words windlesses and indirections come together? Was a windless some contrivance for determining how the wind blew? I bethink me that a thin withered straw is in Scotland called a windlestrae: perhaps such straws were thrown up to find out 'by indirection' the direction ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... held the door for him, and then arranged a fur rug over the knees of the boy and the girl. To be in the car gave George intense pleasure, especially when the contrivance thrilled into life and began to travel. He was thankful that his clothes were as smart as they ought to be. She could not think ill of his clothes—no matter who ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... what engineers call a weir, a handy contrivance for measuring the flow of small streams. Experts have figured out an elaborate system of tables as to weirs. All we need to do now, in this rough survey, is to figure out the number of square inches of water flowing ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... a little peculiar on an island. It is covered with skins and is in four leaves, like the swing doors of fashionable restaurants, which allow you to enter without allowing the hot air to escape. During the winter season our castaways have found the contrivance useful, but Crichton's brain was perhaps a little lordly when he conceived it. Another door leads by a passage to the sleeping-rooms of the house, which are all on the ground-floor, and to Crichton's work-room, where he is at this moment, and whither we should like to follow him, but in a play ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... the best of it in forlorn bravery. Heaven had ordained that the earth should be fair and Sypher's Cure invincible. Something was curiously wrong in the execution of Heaven's decrees. He looked again at the preposterous statement, knitting his brow. Surely this was some base contrivance of the enemy. They had been underselling and outadvertising him for months, and had ousted him from the custom of several large firms already. Something had to be done. As has been remarked before, Sypher was a man of Napoleonic ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... secret drawer. She opened it in much excitement. Inside lay a folded sheet of foolscap paper. Her exclamation had called Lilias and Dulcie from the other side of the room, and all three girls admired and wondered at the contrivance of the secret drawer. Together they took out the sheet of paper, unfolded it, and bent ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... would attempt to subdue them, the Phocians took this precaution; at the same time, they diverted the hot water into the entrance, that the place might be broken into clefts, having recourse to every contrivance to prevent the Thessalians from making inroads into their country. Now this old wall had been built a long time, and the greater part of it had already fallen through age; but they determined to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... noticed a small inner circle in the flat steel. It was a small hinged lid, which hid a pocket in the handle. He raised the little lid with his finger-nail, and a shower of percussion caps fell on the bagatelle table. This contrivance for holding caps was not new to Colwyn. He had seen it ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... the troops, on whose capacity for the destruction of their opponents the throne of the tyrant or the liberty of the people may be dependent. Nations, companies, and individuals have expended years of time and millions of money in testing every conceivable contrivance which offered a hope of improvement in precision, force, facility of loading or firing, or any of the minute details which contribute to render the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... is something better than a mechanical contrivance for registering the opinions of electors on certain subjects. Otherwise all Parliamentary debate is a mockery. A representative he is of the majority of electors, but he must act freely and with initiative. Often enough he may be constrained to vote, not as many of his constituents would prefer, ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... certain observations applicable to them all. None of the plots are of his own invention. They are founded either on mythological fable or history; most of them had been previously treated by the Greek dramatists or by Seneca. Rosmunda, the only one which could be supposed of his own contrivance, and which is certainly the least happy effusion of his genius, is partly founded on the eighteenth novel of the third part of Bandello and partly on Prevost's Memoires d'un homme de qualite. But whatever subject he chooses, his dramas ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... accessories of our strange calling lend an interest to our domestic arrangements, and form a kind of free entertainment for the vulgar. To insure privacy, we have sometimes curtained the lower half of our enormous windows; but this contrivance has always proved ineffectual, for in the midst of our labour, the space above the curtains has been gradually eclipsed by the appearance of certain playful blacks who have clambered to the heights by means of the accommodating rails. Gentlemen of colour have little respect for the ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... greater variety of characters in common life, marked with more distinct peculiarities, and without an atom of caricature, than any other novel writer whatever. The extreme subtlety of observation on the springs of human conduct in ordinary characters, is only equalled by the ingenuity of contrivance in bringing those springs into play, in such a manner as to lay open their smallest irregularity. The detection is always complete, and made with the certainty and skill of a philosophical experiment, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... is certainly not graceful; it was apparently introduced about 1830, presumably to show the action and finished method of the lower extremities. If Fanny Ellsler and Duvernay could excel without this ugly contrivance, why is it ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... go on board said Briganteen to Secure and look after their Interest, With Orders to keep them Company Untill some farther Disposition shou'd be Made, which was Intended to be done the next day, but so it happened by Some Misadventure or Contrivance to this Depon't unknown they never Coul'd come up with the Sloops again (th'o they had Severall times sight of Them), Whereupon the said Smith and Company Alledging they shou'd be short Of Provisions ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... to be found in Burns' Poems in the sense of a rustic bit or bridle. The term is still in use in the west of Scotland; and country horses, within the memory of many, were tormented with the clumsy contrivance across their noses. With all its clumsiness it was very powerful, as it pressed on the nostrils of the animal: its action was somewhat like that of a pair ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... did she make, for the giraffe is absolutely dumb, and makes no noise even when dying. On and on she went, trusting to her strong limbs, making curious, frog-like leaps and awkward, jumpy movements, her long neck rocking swiftly up and down as though pulled by some mechanical contrivance, and her tail swishing faster ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... Pellucidar. Here I outlined to Dian and Juag the plans I had in mind. They were to fit the canoe with a small sail, the purposes of which I had to explain to them both—since neither had ever seen or heard of such a contrivance before. Then they were to hunt for food which we could transport with us, and prepare a ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... accordingly carried into execution on the following Monday. Whilst the queen and her party, totally ignorant of the contrivance, were receiving the compliments I had intended them, their good humor and pleasantry were infinitely heightened by the jest I proposed to pass upon the king, in sending him a piece of paper only, carefully wrapped ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... Sangamon town, "Abe" serving as cook of the camp while the boat was being built. Then, loading the craft with barrel-pork, hogs, and corn, they started on their voyage south. At a place called New Salem the flat-boat ran aground; but Lincoln's ingenuity got it off. He rigged up a queer contrivance of his own invention and lifted the boat off and over the obstruction, while all New Salem stood on the bank, first to criticise ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... cuff most in favor can be worn four different ways, and is attached to the shirt by a steel instrument three inches long, with a nipper at each end. The amount of white visible below the coat-sleeve is regulated by another contrivance, mostly of elastic, worn further up the arm, around the biceps. Modern collars are retained in position by a system of screws and levers. Socks are attached no longer with the old-fashioned garter, but by aid of a little harness similar to that ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... in his official surroundings at Richmond. In the three or four days he spent at the rebel capital he found nearly every prominent personage convinced of the hopeless condition of the rebellion, and even eager to seize upon any contrivance to help them ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... extravagance, but generous, brave, and unsuspicious. Orsino was reserved, and haughty; loving power more than ostentation; of a cruel and suspicious temper; quick to feel an injury, and relentless in avenging it; cunning and unsearchable in contrivance, patient and indefatigable in the execution of his schemes. He had a perfect command of feature and of his passions, of which he had scarcely any, but pride, revenge and avarice; and, in the gratification of these, few considerations ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... pack amid a flurry of dust from the sun-baked roads her feet had wearily padded for days; now a sleepy negro on a load of hay, an organ grinder with a chattering monkey or a clumsy bear, another sleepy negro with another load of hay, and a picturesque minstrel with an elaborate musical contrivance drawn by a horse. Now a capering Italian with a bagpipe, who danced grotesquely to his own piping, and piped the pennies out of rural pockets as if they had been so many copper ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... trick, then, no contrivance, that brought her here. No: it was fate. And at least I ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... Thou the work didst fashion In that fair likeness, bidding it put on Perfection through the exquisite perfectness Of every part's contrivance. Thou dost bind The elements in balanced harmony, So that the hot and cold, the moist and dry, Contend not; nor the pure fire leaping up Escape, or weight of waters ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... moments before the conclusion of the race, a big automobile. In it were seated a bronzed man, with broad shoulders, and an alert, wideawake expression, and a boy, whose foot was propped up on an extemporized contrivance ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... mysteries of this wonderful palace. He cordially acquiesced, and, in company with a few friends, we commenced our explorations. I inquired as to the construction of the table from which we had just arisen, so superior to the cumbersome ones of earth. "It is a very simple contrivance," he smilingly remarked. "You observe inserted in these twisted columns, ornamented with leaves, which support the ceiling, an electric wire, similar to that of a telegraph. From each of these central columns, this wire connects with the upper gallery. ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... rapid course, as if nothing extraordinary had happened. The life-buoy is a most admirable invention. It hangs astern the tafrail, and is dropped by pulling a trigger, which is always done by the person next at hand on the occurrence of an accident. If it should happen at night, a similar contrivance fires a train, which lights a lamp in the buoy; and the poor drowning man discerns, in an instant, the means of preserving his life. The gale increasing from the N.W., the storm sails were set; but, by noon, we neared the coast, and ran into the bay of Servia, where we found shelter ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... in a luxuriously upholstered seat. There were his compass, his altimetre, his revolution-counter, his map in its roller case, with a course pricked out on it in a red line. Attached to the machine gun, there was an ingenious contrivance by means of which he fired it while still keeping a steady hand on his controls. The gun itself was fired directly through the propeller by means of a device which timed the shots. The necessity for accuracy in this timing device is clear, when one remembers that the propeller ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... with one less expert would be dangerous; but I have taught her to rail at me occasionally to her mistress, and to praise the favorite, who has never lately been any great favorite with her, having as I guess overlooked her when she had kinder inclinations. She was tickled with the contrivance, which promised to secure her so well from the suspicion of her mistress, and she acts her part tolerably. In fact her mistress seems a being without suspicion, superior to it, and holding it in contempt—So much ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... more slender still by the black draperies, was shown to advantage by a carefully cut dress, the two sides of which met at the shoulders in a single strap without sleeves. At every motion she seemed, like a butterfly, to be about to leave her covering; but the gown held firmly on by some contrivance of the wonderful dressmaker. The robe was of mousseline de laine—a material which the manufacturers had not yet sent to the Paris markets; a delightful stuff which some months later was to have a wild success, a success which went further and lasted longer than most French fashions. The actual ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... contrivance outside the door, Bud hurried in as though something that he had suddenly thought of was bothering him. A minute later he burst into view again, a row of wrinkles across his forehead and words of alarm sounding from ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... passage in a small steamboat, with his family and his two slaves, and presently the bell rang, the stage-plank; was hauled in, and the vessel proceeded up the river. The children and the slaves were not much more at ease after finding out that this monster was a creature of human contrivance than they were the night before when they thought it the Lord of heaven and earth. They started, in fright, every time the gauge-cocks sent out an angry hiss, and they quaked from head to foot when the mud-valves thundered. The shivering ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Chinamen who persisted in committing suicide by placing themselves in front of the train as a protest—and a most effective protest, it must be admitted—against the introduction into their country of this contrivance of the "foreign devils." The contrast in the manner in which the introduction of railways was received in China and Japan respectively is, I think, characteristic of the difference in the disposition and mental attitude of the people of ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... Wardrobe and there, with my Lord, went into his new barge to try her, and found her a good boat, and like my Lord's contrivance of the door to come out round and not square as they used to do. Back to the Wardrobe with my Lord, and then with Mr. Moore to the Temple, and thence to. Greatorex, who took me to Arundell-House, and there showed me some fine flowers in his garden, and all the fine statues in ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... represented the extreme left of the country,—as others, who thought that polity too liberal, (too feeble, they would have said,) represented the extreme right. These men agreed in nothing but this, that the Federal Constitution was but a temporary contrivance, and destined to last only until one extreme party or the other should succeed in overthrowing it, and substituting for it a polity in which either liberty or power should embody a complete triumph. Probably not one of their number ever dreamed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... illuminate our living. Consider the allegory of the centipede. From the beginning of time he had manipulated his countless legs with exquisite precision. Men had regarded him with wonder and amazement. But he was innocent of his own art, being a contrivance of nature, perfectly constructed to do her bidding. One day the centipede discovered life. He discovered himself as one who walks, and the newly awakened intelligence, first observing, then foreseeing, at length began ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... between the poplars that bordered the road. In front was a bench, and on one side a vine, all dripping and forlorn, was trained over a trellis that sloped from the roof, and, with wooden supports, made a shelter for a row of bee-hives placed on a plank beneath; under the front gable was a wicker contrivance for pigeons, and below it, in large gold letters on a blue board, the words, "Cafe et Restaurant." The door opened at once into the little public room of the humblest pretentions, furnished with a ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... to appoint Phillimore to a seat at one of the Boards, but not to be held with his profession, which is a mere contrivance ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos |
