"Mercury" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but still carefully preserved) could speak, they might tell of many an historic love tryst. The little house is octagonal in form, and on its bell-shaped roof, surmounted by a cupola, there poises what was originally a figure of Mercury. At present, however, the statue, bereft of both wings and arms, cannot be said greatly to resemble the ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... says, that the noblest of them were styled the royal Palms; and supposes that they were so called from their being set apart for the king's use. But they were very early an emblem of royalty: and it is a circumstance included in their original name. We find from Apuleius, that Mercury, the [4]Hermes of Egypt, was represented with a palm branch in his hand: and his priests at Hermopolis used to have them stuck in their [5]sandals, on the outside. The Goddess [6]Isis was thus represented: ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... clear enough when I left the bark, and though the [v]mercury was out of use and coiled up snugly in the bulb, it wasn't as cold as you might think, for just then there was no wind. It's a breeze up in the Arctic that makes you feel the chill. There was no sun, of course; there never is sun up there ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... the analyst puts a little of the brew in a small glass test-tube, pours in some distilled water, and carefully drops in some hydrochloric acid. Now, if there is either silver, mercury, or lead, in the brew, down goes a white powder; if none of these things ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... region we continually wander among ruins, and see every where around us the relics of the past. Thus a short walk brought us from Cicero's villa to the ruins of three temples—those of Diana, Venus, and Mercury. Of the first, one side and a few little cells, called the "baths of Venus," alone remain. Part of Venus's temple stands in the rotunda. It was built on acoustic principles, so that any one who puts his ear to a certain part of the wall can hear what is whispered ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... if we cannot arrive at some moral agreement, as necessary as a political agreement. Partition is no settlement, because there is no geographical limitation of these passions. There is scarce a locality in Ireland where antagonisms do not gather about the thought of Ireland as in the caduceus of Mercury the twin serpents writhe about the sceptre of the god. I ask our national extremists in what mood do they propose to meet those who return, men of temper as stern as their own? Will these endure being termed traitors to Ireland? Will their friends endure it? Will those who mourn their dead endure ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... put in along the east coast of the northern island, on his first visit to the country. He calls him Teratu; and he found his authority to extend, he says, from Cape Turnagain to the neighbourhood of Mercury Bay. The eight districts, too, into which this island was divided by Toogee,[AZ] in the map of it which he drew for Captain King, were in all likelihood the nominal territories, or what we may call feudal domains, of ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... millimeters, Q, of the bar, and observing the temperature, t, in degrees Centigrade, its conductivity, x, as compared with mercury can be determined. If L be the distance, h l or k i, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... in February. The mercury had run down till it had almost disappeared in the bulb and Winnipeg was having a taste of forty below. Through this exhilarating air Kalman was hurrying home as fast as his sturdy legs could take him. His fingers were numb handling the coins ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... bacteria may be killed by starvation, by want of moisture, by being subjected to high temperature, or by the action of certain chemical agents of which carbolic acid, the perchloride and biniodide of mercury, and various chlorine preparations are ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... the physiological functions were regulated by planetary influence. The sun controlled the heart, the moon the brain, Jupiter the lungs, Saturn the spleen, Mars the liver, Venus the kidneys, and Mercury the reproductive powers. But even with this distribution among the heavenly bodies the moon was allowed plenipotentiary sway. As in mythology it is the god or goddess of water, so in astrology it is the embodiment of moisture, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... mystery of the stars, as Dostoievsky would put it. The Topers, The Forge of Vulcan, are pictures that enthrall because of their robust simplicity and vast technical sweep though they do not possess the creative invention of the Mercury and Argus or The Anchorites. This latter is an amazing performance. Two hermits—St. Antony the Abbot visiting St. Paul the Hermit—are shown. A flying raven, bread in beak, nears them. You could swear that the wafer of flour is pasted on the canvas. This picture ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... small quantity of magnesia is thrown into a solution of the corrosive sublimate of mercury, it soon separates part of the mercury in the form of a dark red powder, ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black
... not a horse, and but a single ass. Achilles Ashe, with formidable jaw Assails a Trojan band with fierce hee-haw, Firing the night with brilliant curses. They With dark vituperation gloom the day. Fate, against which nor gods nor men compete, Decrees their victory and his defeat. With haste, good Mercury, betake thee hence And salivate him till ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... definition which includes not only sodium stearate, oleate and palmitate, which form the bulk of the soaps of commerce, but also the linoleates of lead, manganese, etc., used as driers, and various pharmaceutical preparations, e.g., mercury oleate (Hydrargyri oleatum), zinc oleate and lead plaster, together with a number of other metallic salts of fatty acids. Technically speaking, however, the meaning of the term soap is considerably restricted, ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... and is, therefore, in many places still strongly impregnated with salt which acts as a refrigerant.[19] Again, when the north wind comes down from the snowy summits of Armenia or Kurdistan, it is already cold enough, so that, during the months of December and January, it often happens that the mercury falls below freezing point, even in Babylonia. At daybreak the waters of the marshes are sometimes covered with a thin layer of ice, and the wind increases the effect of the low temperature. Loftus tells us that he has seen the Arabs of his ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... broad sunny being, visited us in August, and in the same month the warm genius of Shelley came, as Hunt used to tell him, "from the planet Mercury" to our earth. Coleridge and Keats, with whose song a deep bar of sorrow was to mingle, like the music of falling leaves, or of winds wailing for the departure of summer, arrived in October,—that month, the beauty of which is the child of blasting, and its glory the flush ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... common run and marvelous in its way. It stood in a shadowy city over whose dark streets the buildings toppled, until spiders spun their webs across from roof to roof. And to this cobbler the god Mercury himself journeyed to have wings sewed to his flying shoes. High patronage. And Atalanta, too, came and held out her swift foot for the fitting of a running sandal. But perhaps the cobbler's most famous customer was a well-known giant who ordered of him his seven-league boots. These boots, ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... Armado, an artificial mind. At the end of the play the "learned men" are made to compile a dialogue "in praise of the owl and the cuckoo." The dialogue is of a kind not usual among learned men, but the choice of the birds is significant. The last speech of the play: "The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo," seems to refer to Marlowe, as though Shakespeare found it hard to justify an art so unlike his master's. Marlowe climbs the peaks in the sun, his bow never off his shoulders. I walk the roads of the earth ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... free to do what Congress could not do, or to reject Douglas and endorse Davis's ultimatum—that in substance was the issue. "In this convention where there should be confidence and harmony," said the "Charleston Mercury", "it is plain that men feel as if they were going into a battle." In the committee on resolutions where the States were equally represented, the majority were anti-Douglas; they submitted a report affirming Davis's position that territorial legislatures ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... of bichloride of mercury in hydrochloric acid, and add of this one to six parts of water. This I pour over the collodion plate, and watch it till the whitening process is quite complete. Having well washed the surface with water, I pour over it a solution of iodide of potassium, very weak, not more than two or ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... sat on the doorstep in the shade, and fairly panted like a corpulent old dog. Her mouth was open and her tongue even lolled a little. She was, in reality, suffering frightfully. She had both flesh and nerves, and, given these two adverse conditions to endurance, and the mercury ninety in the shade, there is torture ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... course the hansom stopped dead. The whole scene was as quick as the flashing of a biograph. The driver struggled to keep his seat, clawing at the shiny roof of the cab; his fare, in a silk hat and pathetic frock coat, shot from the vehicle like a flying Mercury, and this time it seemed that nothing could keep us from telescoping the vehicle thus suddenly ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... means the rise of temperature can be detected often before any serious symptoms set in, and due means taken to check trouble in its early stages. The instrument is used by putting it under the armpit, or, with children, between the legs, so that the mercury bulb is entirely enfolded and hidden between the arm, or leg, and the body. Left in this position for five minutes, it is taken out and read. It may also be held in the mouth, under the tongue, with ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... were the expedients of some of them to induce us to give them a good strong cup of tea, made doubly hot with red pepper. In their estimation such a dose was good for almost any disease with which they could be afflicted, and was especially welcomed in the cold and wintry days, when the mercury was frozen hard, and the spirit thermometer indicated anything between forty and sixty ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... often used for such a purpose. Quakers were hanged there in the middle of the seventeenth century, and we find in the "Salem Mercury" for Tuesday, Nov. 27, 1787, that the previous Thursday one John Sheehan was executed for burglary in this noted locality. Sheehan was a native of Cork in Ireland. With its cows and its executions, the Common must have presented a somewhat different appearance in those days ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... plenty more. I ask you whether even the seasons have not changed in our unhappy country; have we not summer with unusual, unexampled heat, and winters without cold; when shall we ever see the mercury down below sixty degrees again? never, sir. What is summer but a season of alarm and dread? Does not the cholera come in as regularly as green peas—terrifying us to death, whether we die of it or not? Of what advantage are the fruits of the earth so bountifully bestowed—have they ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... final pieces that spelled his rise from a special reporter helping out with a police shake-up coverage, through a regular leg-man turning up rackets, and on up like a meteor until.... He'd made his big scoop, all right. He'd dug up enough about the Mercury ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... and second causes are out of doors; yet propriety is to be observed even here. The gods are all to manage their peculiar provinces; and what was attributed by the heathens to one power, ought not to be performed by any other. Phoebus must foretel, Mercury must charm with his caduceus, and Juno must reconcile the quarrels of the marriage-bed; to conclude, they must all act according to their distinct and peculiar characters. If the persons represented were ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... the landlord of the Gross Hands described as a capable and respectable man; and I suggested stopping at the inn, and taking him with us. Mr. Finch instantly brightened at that proposal. His sense of his own importance rose again, like the mercury in a thermometer when you put it ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... Berengario da Carpi was, in fact, a great physician, surgeon, and student of anatomy. He is said to have been the first to use mercury in the cure of syphilis, a disease which was devastating Italy after the year 1495. He amassed a large fortune, which, when he died at Ferrara about 1530, he bequeathed to ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... afternoon for a five day cruise of visits amongst the islands of Lake Huron. Won't you come with me? I know it would be good for me and think it might give you what I'm sure is a much needed rest. My Mercury, I mean the ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... of thin leather with the ointment of ammoniacum with mercury, and cut out a place for the mouth, eyes, and nostrils. This forms what is called a mask, and, after anointing the eyelids with a little blue ointment, it should be applied to the face, and allowed to remain for three days for the distinct kind, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... nothing finished in the marble. There were many casts of his former works, which, judging from their appearance in plaster, must be of no common excellence—for the sculptor can only be justly judged in marble. I saw some fine bas-reliefs of classical subjects, and an exquisite group of Mercury and Psyche, but his masterpiece is undoubtedly the Orpheus. There is a spirit in this figure which astonished me. The face is full of the inspiration of the poet, softened by the lover's tenderness, and the whole ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... animal group in a region where the ground at the depth of a few inches is continually frozen, appears to me exceedingly remarkable—and from a general point of view the occurrence of insects in a land which is exposed to a winter cold below the freezing-point of mercury, and where the animal cannot seek protection from it by creeping down to a stratum of earth which never freezes, presupposes that either the insect itself, its egg, larva, or pupa, may be frozen stiff without being killed. Only very few species of these small animals, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... Wanderer, of London; and as the meal proceeded, he told us the story of the disaster that had befallen him. It appeared that, like ourselves, they had been becalmed on the previous night; and, like myself, Baker had retired at midnight, without, however, having noticed the fall in the mercury that had given us our first warning of the coming blow. On the top of this oversight, the officer of the watch had made the fatal mistake of supposing that the change, when it made itself apparent, meant nothing more serious than the working up of a thunderstorm. He had ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... and yearned for exercise, a rise in temperature and fair weather were in order. He amassed a large fortune in making weather bets, but one day when the thermometer was down below zero, he stepped on a tack and all the mercury ran out of his heel. After that he lost all his money betting with a neighbor who had a rheumatic left joint, and died ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See what a grace was seated on this brow; Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald Mercury New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; A combination and a form indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal To give the world assurance of a man; This was your husband. Look you now, What follows: Here is your husband: like a mildewed ear, ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... cold carbon to produce a perfect kind of vacuum, which may, perhaps, be the nearest approach to absolute vacuum that has yet been attained: probably higher than can be attained by any kind of mechanical or mercury pump. ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... most present remedy: it expels cares, alters their grieved minds, and easeth in an instant. Otherwise, saith [3493]Plutarch, Musica magis dementat quam vinum; music makes some men mad as a tiger; like Astolphos' horn in Ariosto; or Mercury's golden wand in Homer, that made some wake, others sleep, it hath divers effects: and [3494]Theophrastus right well prophesied, that diseases were either procured ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... quicksilver. The ore was then carried and placed in the bottom of large casks, and water and quicksilver were added, and then they were set rolling by machinery for several days, until the silver had formed an amalgam with the mercury, while the baser metals in the ore were disengaged from the silver. The whole mass being now poured out into troughs, the scoria was washed off from the amalgam, which was gathered and put into a stout ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... me, who advances propositions, to which I do not assent, that Caesar dyed in his bed, that silver is more fusible, than lead, or mercury heavier than gold; it is evident, that notwithstanding my incredulity, I clearly understand his meaning, and form all the same ideas, which he forms. My imagination is endowed with the same powers as his; nor is it possible for him to conceive any idea, which I cannot conceive; nor conjoin ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... this rather mysterious person we need have little to do. It is, down to the dialogue-form, an obvious imitation of Lucian—a story about the ancient divinities (especially Mercury) and a certain "Book of Destiny" and talking animals, and a good deal of often rather too transparent allegory. It has had, both in its own day and since, a very bad reputation as being atheistical or at least anti-Christian, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... indifferent figurantes, probably from the Ambigu Comique, or la Gaiete, made their appearance at Cincinnati while we were there; and had Mercury stepped down, and danced a pas seul upon earth, his godship could not have produced a more violent sensation. But wonder and admiration were by no means the only feelings excited; horror and dismay were produced in at least an equal degree. ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... extensive range of workshops for the manufacture of plated and silver ware, in which are produced the most superb breakfast and dinner services. The method of making the silver plate here and at Birmingham merits special notice, because the ancient method was by dissolving mercury in nitrous acid, dipping the copper, and depending on the affinity of the metals, by which a very slight article was produced. But at Sheffield and Birmingham, all plate is now produced by rolling ingots of copper and silver together. About the eighth of an inch in thickness ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... victim into a melancholic or neurasthenic state. He suffers, too, from want of occupation, from the absence of exercise, from the anticipation of worse changes in the near future, and usually by the time he reaches the specialist has been more or less poisoned with iodide of potash and mercury, and perhaps ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... not been out, even to exercise, since the Snobston-Green day, and were as wild as hawks. They were ready to run anything. Furious and Furrier tackled with a cow. Bountiful ran a black cart-colt, and made him leap the haw-haw. Sempstress, Singwell, and Saladin (puppies), went after some crows. Mercury took after the stable cat, while old Thunderer and Come-by-chance (supposed to be one of Lord Scamperdale's) joined in pursuit of a cur. Watchorn, however, did not care for these little ebullitions of spirit, and never having been accustomed to exercise the ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... have seen him—exquisite In courtly compliment, of simple manners; You may not hear a merrier laugh than his From any boatman on the bay; well-versed In all such arts as most become his station; Light in the dance as winged-foot Mercury, Eloquent on the zither, and a master ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... the five catalpa trees in the Embankment-gardens the finest has been blighted. The tree is close to the National Liberal Club."—Leicester Daily Mercury. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... so completely in his element as when the snow lies two feet deep upon the earth's brown breast. An open winter is his bane, Jack Frost his best friend; and there was a perceptible rise in the spirits of the occupants of Camp Kippewa as the mercury sank lower and lower in the tube of the foreman's thermometer. Plenty of snow meant not only easy hauling all winter long, but a full river and "high water" in the spring-time, and no difficulty in getting the drive of logs that ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... of crops of vegetables throughout the year; peas are green in January, which is, indeed, said to be the most verdant month of the twelve, the fields in summer becoming parched and yellow. The mercury usually ranges from 50 deg. to 80 deg., winter and summer; but we were there during an unusually cool season, and it went down to 45 deg.. This was regarded as very severe by the thinly clad Fayalese, and I sometimes went into cottages and found the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... thirty thousand pounds, and had he been permitted to carry out his original design, no doubt it would have introduced us to some classic fane in character with the lofty Titanic columns: for instance, a temple to Mercury the winged messenger and god of Mammon. But, as is very common in this country,—for familiar examples see the London University, the National Gallery, and the Nelson Column,—the spirit of the proprietors evaporated with the outworks; and the gateway leads to a square court-yard ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... While he was in that condition, a beautiful female apparition floated before his eyes, and, on being questioned, announced her name to be Moralization. John Baptist begged her to inform him whether it were true, as had been stated, that Jupiter had just sent Mercury to the Netherlands. The phantom, correcting his mistake, observed that the king of gods and men had not sent Hermes but the Archduke Ernestus, beloved of the three Graces, favourite of the nine Muses, and, in addition to these advantages, nephew ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Ingleton took up "The Liverpool Mercury" and tried to read the news of the day. The March wind roared outside and made the windows rattle. She listened to it and forgot the chronicle of the passing hour. She was a women who cared to know the big things that were ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... made. Had Eustacia mingled with the other girls in their ordinary daily walks the case would have been different: here she was not inconvenienced by excessive inspection, for all were wrought to their brightest grace by the occasion. Like the planet Mercury surrounded by the lustre of sunset, her permanent brilliancy passed without much notice in the temporary glory of ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... difficulties were now started, and many such there were, a profusion of words demonstrated the reasonableness of the whole design; impressing all who heard, with the conviction that the citadel was too strong for assault. The Mercury at these times was generally Mr. Coleridge, who, as has been stated, ingeniously parried every adverse argument, and after silencing his hardy disputants, announced to them that he was about to write and publish a quarto volume in defence of Pantisocracy, in which a variety ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... rhythmical fall and kind of close at the end of every blank verse in trying to write that measure for the first time. Still, as we say, there is good verse in Surrey's translation. Take the following lines for a specimen, in which the fault just mentioned is scarcely perceptible. Mercury is the ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... my health, Plutus would insure me wealth; Mercury looks after trade, Hera smiles on youth and maid. All are kind, I own their worth, After Momus, god ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... cuckoo-song closes the play; but we shall add no more criticisms: 'the words of Mercury are harsh after ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... the place where the Venus of Milo or the winged Mercury had stood in the days when wealth and fashion inhabited Houston Street, sat Jocko, draped in Mrs. Hoffman's brocade shawl, her Sunday hat tilted rakishly on one side, and with his tail at "port-arms" over his left shoulder. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... to bring up the three-headed watch-dog, Cerberus, from the doors of Tartarus. Mercury and Pallas both came to attend him, and led him alive among the shades, who all fled from him, except Medusa and one brave youth. He gave them the blood of an ox to drink, and made his way to Pluto's throne, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... old camp ground,' 's good enough, up here in the summer," he said to the boys, "but with the mercury loafing around sixty below zero, canvas is no sort of shelter. A log house is better but it is almost impossible to make the caulking of ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... talks of "the herald Mercury New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill:"[517] And some such visions crossed her Majesty, While her young herald knelt before her still. 'T is very true the hill seemed rather high, For a Lieutenant to climb up; but skill Smoothed even the Simplon's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... six orbits, Jupiter's right on the line. And Mercury won't be leaving until Jupe crosses that line." The "line" that Mike had indicated with his pencil across the screen would have, in the first display shown all but one of the first six planets already on ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... smiles again. The dust also on the roads is laid and a grateful incense rises from the ground, the sides of the water chatty grow dark and moist and cool themselves in the hot air, and through the dripping interstices of the khuskhus tattie a chilly fragrance creeps into the room, causing the mercury in the thermometer to retreat from its proud place. Nay, the seraph finds his way to your very bath-room, and discharging a cataract into the great tub, leaves it heaving like the ocean after a storm. When you follow him there, you will thank that nameless poet who gave our humble ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... much to the south. There was very poor grass, it being old and dry, but as the new range to the west was too distant, we encamped, as there was water. This watercourse was called Rudall's Creek. A cold and very dewy night made all our packs, blankets, etc., wet and clammy; the mercury fell below freezing point, but instantly upon the sun's appearance it went up enormously. The horses rambled, and it was late when we reached the western range, as our road was beset by some miles of dense scrubs. The range was ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... thus in pantomime; then, as swiftly composing his features into a mask-like expression, he turned the handle and entered. On the big thermometer nailed outside the Orderly-room the mercury may have registered anything between twenty and thirty below zero, but inside Barrack-room No. 3 the temperature at that moment ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... resolute protestant in the best sense of the Church of England." In the great plague he fled with Murray from London to Oxford, and thence went to the house of Samuel Kem at Albury, where he died on February 27, 1665/6, of mercury accidentally getting into his nose while he was operating. He was buried at Albury on March 1st. Writing in 1673, Anthony a Wood gives a list of his alchemical and mystical treatises published between 1650 and 1655. Of these he had received a list from Olor Iscanus (Henry Vaughan). They all bear ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... And falling stocks quite cur'd an unbelief? While the sun shines, Blunt talks with wondrous force; But thunder mars small beer, and weak discourse. Such useful instruments the weather show, Just as their mercury is high or low: Health chiefly keeps an atheist in the dark; A fever argues better than a Clarke: Let but the logic in his pulse decay, The Grecian he'll renounce, and learn to pray, While C—— mourns, with an unfeign'd zeal, Th' apostate youth, who reason'd once so well. C——, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... lying at full length on the floor of the little porch, watching with drowsy, half-closed eyes the assembled birds in the tree. But she seemed to have relinquished the pleasures of the chase until the mercury ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... to Chicago, to the shipping corrals near the Cantonment, and it was mid-afternoon before he was able to put spurs to his smart little cowpony and start on the long ride to Elkhorn. The day was bitterly cold, with the mercury well down toward zero, and the pony, fresh and impatient, went along at a good rate. Roosevelt had not gone many miles before he became conscious that darkness was falling. The trail followed along the bottom for a half-dozen miles and then turned ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... shepherds, back! Enough your play Till next sun-shine holiday. Here be, without duck or nod, Other trippings to be trod Of lighter toes, and such court guise As Mercury did first devise With the mincing Dryades On the lawns and on ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... a sin to omit his whole designation—Timothy Oldmixon, I say, burning with hate and eager with haste, turning a corner of the street with his basket well filled with medicines hanging on his left arm, encountered, equally eager in his haste, and equally burning in his hate, the red-haired Mercury of Mr Ebenezer Pleggit. Great was the concussion of the opposing baskets, dire was the crash of many of the vials, and dreadful was the mingled odour of the abominations which escaped, and poured through the wicker interstices. Two ladies from ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... Corn Husk, "Keepin' the mercury runnin' up and down the tube like that, fust thing ye know the durn thing'll be worn out, and long'll go twenty-five cents ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... because of the tragic memories that haunt it; in the foreground were my companions agreeably playing the fool and posing as living statues on the broken columns: he whose solemnity of demeanour accorded with his belief that his real sphere was the pulpit, throwing out an unaccustomed leg as Mercury on one column, and on another the Architect, an apologetic Apollo in frock coat with silk hat for lyre. In my lightheartedness, and accustomed to the ways of the English, I thought them absurd but funny. A French ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Greek myth relates that the Crocus "sprang from the blood of the infant Crocus, who was accidentally struck by a metal disc thrown by Mercury, whilst playing a game" (448.299). In Ossianic story, "Malvina, weeping beside the tomb of Fingal, for Oscar and his infant son, is comforted by the maids of Morven, who narrate how they have seen the innocent ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... their overflowing population, which settled there in large numbers and established plantations. The Spaniards, on the other hand, only regarded their huge possessions as exclusive markets to be merely visited by them. Rich mines of gold, silver, and mercury were discovered in Mexico and Peru, especially in the far-famed mines of Potosi, and these were exploited entirely in the interests of Spain, which acted as a sieve by which the precious metals were ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... Eve a heavy packing-case was bumped onto my doorstep. From wrappings of sacking there emerged a large model of Eddystone lighthouse; a thermometer was embedded in its chest, minus the mercury, I noted. And Aunt Emily wished me as per enclosed card ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... together. The platina is shorter than the zincs, to prevent its reaching the quicksilver in the bottom of the cell; and the wax balls on its sides are to insulate it from the zinc plates. This platina should never be allowed to touch the mercury or ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark
... canal, is a spacious court, the offices on each side having a communication with the house by two little bending piazzas and galleries that form the wings. This front is adorned with two ranges of pilasters of the Corinthian and Tuscan orders, and over them is an acroteria of figures, representing Mercury, Secrecy, Equity, and Liberty, and under them this inscription in large golden characters, viz., SIC SITI LAETANTVR LARES (Thus situated, may the household ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... had received information of mines of antimony and mercury, but considered the information vague. I am well assured of the existence of the latter in the form of a native cinnabar, which is called Sabita by the natives, and is exported to ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... mats of rush or asphodel. These dwellings, which were called mapalia, are the modern gourbis. African epigraphy has revealed the names of some of their deities: deus invictus Aulisva; the god Motmanius, associated with Mercury; the god Lilleus; Baldir Augustus; Kautus pater; the goddess Gilva, identified with Tellus, and Ifru Augustus (Tissot i. 486). The Johannis of Corippus mentions three native divinities: Sinifere, Mastiman and Gurzil. There were also local divinities in all the principal districts. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... these rats was strange. One heavy, stormy summer's day, when the mercury was nearly up to a hundred degrees, their cage had been put in the garden, in an arbour covered with creepers, as they seemed to feel the heat greatly. The storm burst with lightnings, rain, thunder, and squalls of wind. The tall poplars on the river ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... laboratory, too, so as to show them some beautiful experiments— fire burning under water, throwing potassium on the river to make it blaze; use some phosphorescent oil; and startle them with Lycopodium dust in the air; or a little fulminating mercury ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... Caspar begins his infernal work after cautioning Max not to enter the circle nor utter a word, no matter what he sees or who comes to join them. Into the melting-pot Caspar now puts the ingredients of the charm: some lead, bits of broken glass from a church window, a bit of mercury, three bullets that have already hit their mark, the right eye of a lapwing, the left of a lynx; then ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... there is a pretty story that Mercury fell in love with Rhea (or the Earth), and wishing to do her a favor, gambled with the Moon, and won from her every seventieth part of the time she illumined the horizon, all of which parts he united together, making up five days, and added them to the Earth's year, ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... distribution as part of his natural inheritance. Many articles of almost inestimable value to man, in relation to his physical well-being (at any rate bearing such a value when substitutional remedies were as yet unknown) such as mercury, Jesuit's bark, through a long period the sole remedy for intermitting fevers, opium, mineral waters, &c., were at one time locally concentred. In such cases, it might often happen, that the medicinal relief to an hospital, to an encampment, to a nation, might depend ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... nine o'clock—that is to say, a short time prior to my closing up the mouth of the chamber, the mercury attained its limit, or ran down, in the barometer, which, as I mentioned before, was one of an extended construction. It then indicated an altitude on my part of 132,000 feet, or five-and-twenty miles, and I consequently surveyed at that time an extent of the earth's area amounting ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... least of our planets were known from all antiquity, and their characteristic colours and appearances carefully noted. Sometimes each was thought to be a hawk-headed Horus. Uapshetatui, our Jupiter, Kahiri-(Saturn), Sobku-(Mercury), steered their barks straight ahead like Iauhu and Ra; but Mars-Doshiri, the red, sailed backwards. As a star Bonu, the bird (Yenus) had a dual personality; in the evening it was Uati, the lonely star which is the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... unshaded sun registered 98. My noontide bath failed to detect any difference in temperature between air and water, and putting my perceptions to scientific test found the sea to be heated to 90. With the bulb buried in the sand six feet from the edge of the water, the mercury rose to 112 in a ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... with mercury, it forms an amalgam that takes the place of zinc in Bunsen cells. The mercury is never depleted. Only the sodium is consumed, and the sea itself gives me that. Beyond this, I'll mention that sodium batteries have been found to generate the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... Ross's expedition (in 1848-49) were well warmed and ventilated. Where there has not been sufficient warmth, their provisions—even brandy—became so frozen as to require to be cut by a hatchet. The mercury in a barometer has frozen so that it might be beaten on ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... ten days or two weeks, if the acute painful condition has entirely subsided, vesication is indicated. The ordinary mercury and cantharides combination does very well. Depending upon the course taken in any given case, one is guided in the treatment employed. If prompt resolution comes to pass, the subject may be given ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... lives like a lord, And works like a Trojan hero; Then loafs all winter upon his hoard, With the mercury at zero. ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... two daughters (Venus and Mercury) and twenty men kill them; but after fifty days, they return ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... other objects adapted to stimulate the nerves, which terminate in variety of membranes, and those especially which form the terminations of canals; thus the preparations of mercury particularly affect the salivary glands, ipecacuanha the stomach, aloe the sphincter of the anus, cantharides that of the bladder, and lastly every gland of the body appears to be indued with a kind of taste, by which it selects ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... described as circular in form, with a well-balanced movable plate. 'Upon the side of the valve is an inverted syphon, with a bulb at one end, the other being open; the lower part of the tube contains mercury; the bulb, atmospheric air. An increase of temperature expands the air in the bulb, drives the mercury down one side and up the other, thereby destroying the balance, and causing the valve to open by turning on its axis. A diminution ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... chances. If you are connected with the Ffrenches who manufacture the Mercury car, you should know something of automobile racing yourself. I noticed your limousine ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the nights while remaining clear were hardening. The mercury in the tube sank by possibly a degree every two nights, at last touching zero; and it correspondingly failed to arise by as much at noon. The days were cruelly short. Darkness lasted until eight in the morning; ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... Jet; Amber. Dr. Franklin's discovery of disarming the Tempest of it's lightning. Liberty of America; of Ireland; of France, 349. VII. Antient central subterraneous fires. Production of Tin, Copper, Zink, Lead, Mercury, Platina, Gold and Silver. Destruction of Mexico. Slavery of Africa, 395. VIII. Destruction of the armies of Cambyses, 431. IX. Gnomes like stars of an Orrery. Inroads of the Sea stopped. Rocks cultivated. Hannibal ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... Napoleon is often unfathomable. Herein lies much of the charm of Napoleonic studies. He is at once the Achilles, the Mercury, and the Proteus of the modern world. The ease with which his mind grasped all problems and suddenly concentrated its force on some new plan may well perplex posterity as it dazed his contemporaries. If we were dealing with any other man than Napoleon, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... to be sucked up from the sea. The theory of waterspouts in the present day does in fact admit the supposition here referred to; that the air, being rarefied by particular causes, has its equilibrium restored by the elevation of the water, on the same principle that mercury rises in the barometer, or the contents of a well in a common pump. The opinions of the learned traveller on this subject are extremely loose and unscientific, and are only valuable in our times as marking a certain stage in the progress of ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... almost as sensitive to atmospheric changes as mercury itself. It is a question among many as to what depth milk should be set to get the most cream. It does not make so much difference as to the depth as it does the protection of the milk from acid or souring. ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... Nora said afterward that I stared at everything, until she was ashamed,—but what else was there for me to do? And it was such a pretty room! furnished in light blue, with touches of yellow here and there; some lovely pictures hung on the walls, a graceful bronze Mercury stood on a pedestal between the curtains of one of the windows, growing plants were scattered about, and everywhere were books and flowers. It was all very sweet and lovely: it matched well with Mrs. Erveng, who looked daintiness itself lying ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... the rain upon the deck Ryan and I both with one accord glanced hastily at the barometer that was hanging suspended in gimbals in the skylight; the mercury had dropped slightly, but not sufficient to arouse any uneasiness, and we therefore went quietly on with our dinner, although Ryan shouted ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... but good nature equal to thy wit, Petulant, Tony Witwoud, who is now thy competitor in fame, would show as dim by thee as a dead whiting's eye by a pearl of orient; he would no more be seen by thee than Mercury is by the sun: come, I'm sure ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... there is something so genial in the air of the ocean during summer, and something so chilling and repulsive in the rival season, that most of us fancy that the currents of air correspond in strength with the fall of the mercury. Roswell knew better than this, it is true; but he also fully understood where he was, and what he was about. As a sealer, he had several times penetrated as far south as the ne plus ultra of Cook; but it had ever before been in subordinate ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... stood the train, the engines cold and fires unlit. I had full time, but my good luck—the first since I started—put me in a glow, and I stepped out in a juvenile pace that would have done credit to "the Boy" in training days. As I came nearer, my mercury went rapidly down to zero. Every car was jammed, aisles packed and box-cars crowded even on top. The doorways and platforms were filled with long rows of gray blankets that smelt suggestively human! Crowds of detained passengers and three ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon |
