"Contrivance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the cour was simple: in the middle of the further end, a wooden sentry-box was placed just inside the wire; a curious contrivance, which I discovered to be a sister to the booth upstairs, graced the wall on the left which separated the two cours, while further up on this wall a horizontal iron bar projected from the stone at a height of seven feet and was supported at its other end by a wooden post, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... unpardonable error in leaving this important document in my way. My reverence, indeed, for Ludlow was such, that I sometimes entertained the notion that this seeming oversight was, in truth, a regular contrivance to supply me with a knowledge, of which, when I came maturely to reflect, it was impossible for me to make any ill use. There is no use in relating what would not be believed; and should I publish to the world the existence of islands in the space allotted by Ludlow's ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... the darkened chamber I softly tried the door-latch. It yielded at the touch, but not the door. I pulled and braced myself and pulled again. 'Twas but a waste of strength. The door was fast with that contrivance wherewith my father used to bar me in what time I was a boy and would go raccooning with our negro hunters. My enemy was no fool. He had been shrewd enough to lock me in ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... has written opposite this:—'Velez supposes the picture is an innocent contrivance of Osorio's to remove Maria's scruples: Osorio, that it is the portrait of Maria which he had himself given the supposed Wizard.' P. W., ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... more secret, and yet more efficient cause at each advancing step. But all this curiously wrought machinery is not the product of chance, operated without care. A superior cause must be sought in human skill, in the deep and active ingenuity of man. Every contrivance presupposes a contriver. Hence there must have been a power and means sufficient to combine and regulate the power of the water, or generate and direct the steam. That power is vested in man; and hence, man stands as the cause, in relation to the whole process operated by wheels, bands, spindles, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... his country's secrets to the enemy. And in that same instant he felt himself swept upward from the depths of that darkness where he had drifted. He was himself again, bound and helpless before an infernal contrivance of these devil-creatures. They had read his thoughts; the machine beside him had projected them upon the screen for all to see; a steady clicking might mean their reproduction in motion pictures for later study! He, Lieutenant McGuire, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... mouthful, it is swallowed a second time; but instead of returning to the paunch or reticulum, it passes through another valve into a side cavity,—the omasum, where, after a maceration in more saliva for some hours, it glides by the same contrivance into the fourth pouch,—the abomasum, an apartment in all respects analogous to the ordinary stomach of animals, and where the process of digestion, begun and carried on in the previous three, is here consummated, and the nutrient principle, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... have been uniformly understood and enforced in the same way, by all the courts and by all the people; and so peremptory, that no individual interpretation or authority can set them aside with impunity. It is not a ball of clay, to be moulded into any shape that party contrivance or caprice may choose it to assume. It is not a form of words, to be interpreted in any manner, or to any extent, or for the accomplishment of any purpose, that individuals in office under it may determine. It means precisely what those who framed and adopted it meant—NOTHING MORE, NOTHING ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... his florid cheek, his compact figure, smartly arrayed in a bright-buttoned blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale and hearty aspect, altogether he seemed—not young, indeed—but a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, which perpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he knew in Jamaica had that precise opinion of me. Then with a chuckle and muttering, "Warrants—assault—Top—nambo—ha, ha!" he would leave us to ourselves, and continue his waddle up and down the poop. He wore loose silk trousers, and the round legs inside moved like a contrivance made ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... monsters. There was scarcely more probability under George III. than there is under Victoria that the king would try to raise taxes without consent of parliament. George III., however, desired to be more than a contrivance for fixing the great seal to official documents. He had good reason for thinking that the weakness of the executive was an evil. The king could gain power not by attacking the authority of parliament ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... what they want, and a set determination to have their way. In such a contest there is no doubt which side will win. When will is bitter against intellect, it is the latter that succumbs. The determined will forces itself through all opposition that rests only on intelligence, reasoning, contrivance. Intellect does not count for nothing; allied to a strong will, as in Calvin, Cromwell, Napoleon, it helps to effect gigantic results. But in the sphere of action, it is will-power that tells in immediate results. Even here, reason may conquer stupid obstinacy ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... wood and water; for both are close to the shore. 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 ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... it stood six feet high, and was bulged out somewhat by the weight of earth which pressed against it. Facing the tall poplars was a house of two stories. It looked like a short row of houses, for it boasted three front doors. Over each of these was hung a little contrivance which resembled a section of that extinguisher apparatus which is still to be found suspended above the pulpit in some old-fashioned country churches. All the windows of the old house were of diamond panes, and those of the upper story projected from the roof of solid and venerable thatch. A pair ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... protection; therefore they resolved to sail together. In the whole company, there was not above ten that pretended to any skill in navigation; for Avery himself could neither write nor read very well, he being chosen Captain of the Duke purely for his courage and contrivance. ...
— Pirates • Anonymous
... tapping at the well-known door. A voice—of another sweetness—cried 'Come!' and instantly he had the sensation that his touch on the handle had launched upon him, as by some elaborate electric contrivance, a tall and beautiful American, a rustling tea-gown, a shimmer of rings, a reek of patchouli, and ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... hopeless, and took again to the paths—going very slowly, and taking his direction at intervals. But, try as he would, there were the kinks and twists in the paths which turned him out of his course. The endless game- tracks formed a worse snare than any he had been in of human contrivance; and at places, moreover, the ground was boggy, catching hold of his feet, and exhausting him by the heavy going. Several times animals broke cover and crashed away unseen. At one spot in the ooze he saw the form of a huge crocodile, and at another ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... such son or grandson to become himself the head of a new family and the root of a new set of Parental Powers. But a woman, of course, has no capacity of the kind, and no title accordingly to the liberation which it confers. There is therefore a peculiar contrivance of archaic jurisprudence for retaining her in the bondage of the Family for life. This is the institution known to the oldest Roman law as the Perpetual Tutelage of Women, under which a Female, though relieved from her Parent's authority by his decease, continues subject ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... of the helmet allows it to hang in front of the wearer's face. This contrivance should be made of wood, the helmet to be modeled in three pieces, the skullcap, peak and lobster shell neck guard in one piece, and the ear guards in two pieces, one for each side. The center of the ear guards are perforated. All of the helmets are made in ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... the top projecting forward like a roof, the bottom slanting toward the back. Along this slanting part was built a narrow charcoal fire about four feet long and by it were placed two small iron supports, upon which a roasting spit was laid, with a contrivance for turning it. However, the spit resting upon the supports proved to be something more than a mere rod. In fact the spit itself was run lengthwise through a hollow wooden cone, which had a covering of greased ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... of soured milk[FN441] and will say to you, 'Ye are weary with wayfare: take this milk and drink it.' And when ye have drunken thereof, ye will become blind like us.' Said I to myself, 'There is no escape for us but by contrivance.' So I dug a hole in the ground and sat over it. After an hour or so in came the accursed Ghul with bowls of milk, whereof he gave to each of us, saying, 'Ye come from the desert and are athirst: so take this milk and drink it, whilst I roast you ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... (Bog's contrivance all this) was to inquire at the gambling houses where Mr. Van Quintem, jr., was most likely to be, and, when he was found, to send this note in to him by a servant. Bog, having delivered the note, was to withdraw to the sidewalk, lie in ambush, till young Van Quintem came out, and ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... drawn into forty-quart cans, which are set in very cold spring water, where they are made to revolve rapidly by a mechanical contrivance in order that their ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... in Dr. Baumgartner's meals certainly provided richer fare than that. There was a top-floor of soup in the portable contrivance, and before the meat a risotto, which the doctor praised ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... our getting a patent laying-box, furnished with (what he apologised to my aunt for calling) a false front. My aunt did not at first grasp the idea, but what Nibletts did in fact refer to was a contrivance that would admit one sitter only at a time, subsequent unauthorised entrance being cut off by an ingenious drop slide. Further elaborate construction also prevented the sitter herself from turning round to peck. She had to remain sitting till ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... slavery, was the cotton gin of Eli Whitney, which formed the other half—the other hand, so to speak—of the spinning frame. The new power loom in England created a growing demand for raw cotton, which the American contrivance enabled the Southern planter to meet with an increased supply of the same. Together these inventions operated naturally to enhance the value of slave labor and slave land, and therein conduced powerfully to the slave revival in the United States, which followed ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... 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 ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... first dignities of the empire, seems to prove that he was a bold and able leader. But his boldness prompted him to aspire to the throne, and his abilities were employed to supplant, not to serve, his indulgent master. The minds of the soldiers were irritated by an artificial scarcity, created by his contrivance in the camp; and the distress of the army was attributed to the youth and incapacity of the prince. It is not in our power to trace the successive steps of the secret conspiracy and open sedition, which were at length fatal to Gordian. A sepulchral monument was erected to his memory on the spot ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... not understand, some contrivance of the tyrant Man to curb them, to harness them, to make them his slaves. The waters were angry. They gloomed fearsomely. As they swelled higher in the broad basin their wrath grew apace. They chafed against ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... 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 that it would have seventy-two ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... contrivance. Tarlton produced a piece called "The Plat-form of the Seven Deadly Sins;" and in "Sir J. Oldcastle," by Drayton and others, first printed in 1600, it is used with the same meaning as in the text, viz., a contrivance for giving effect ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... replied the architect; "tall, dark, with a little moustache that became her to perfection.... You see the effect of my roller contrivance—a vast sky shedding an equal illumination over the actors and giving every object its natural shadows. La Muette is being played, we will say; the famous cavatina, the slumber-song, is heard beneath a transparent ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... Committee, however, finds that the far greater part of the law of evidence to be found in our books turns upon questions relative to civil concerns. Civil cases regard property: now, although property itself is not, yet almost everything concerning property and all its modifications is, of artificial contrivance. The rules concerning it become more positive, as connected with positive institution. The legislator therefore always, the jurist frequently, may ordain certain methods by which alone they will suffer such matters to be known and established; because their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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
... net on the fire and leaped into the river. When the asas came to the house, he entered first who was wisest of them all, and whose name was Kvaser; and when he saw in the fire the ashes of the net that had been burned, he understood that this must be a contrivance for catching fish, and this he told to the asas. Thereupon they took flax and made themselves a net after the pattern of that which they saw in the ashes and which Loke had made. When the net was made, the asas went to the river and cast it into ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... that was on board the Henlopen. As slings were all ready, little delay was necessary, but a mare soon rose through the hatchway, was swung over the vessel's side, and was lowered into the water. A very simple contrivance released the creature from the slings, and off it swam, making the best of its way towards the land. In three minutes the poor thing was on the beach, though actually staggering from weakness, and from long ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... mood Steve was not without a feeling of repulsion at the sight. His mask held him impervious to the deadly fumes of the oozing sap, but well enough he knew that, in such a presence, it was only that ingenious contrivance that stood ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... the stage. The Federals are brought up twenty at a time, judged, and condemned, they are then marched out on to the Place, with their hands tied behind their backs. A mitrailleuse, standing a hundred yards off, mows them down like grass. It is an expeditious contrivance. In a yard, in the Rue Saint-Denis, is a stable filled with corpses; I have myself seen them there. The Porte Saint-Martin Theatre is quite destroyed, a guard is stationed near. This morning three petroleuses were shot there, the bodies are still lying on the boulevards. ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... assign a fabulously high age to any antiquity of theirs the origin of which dates back to a period where history merges in myth. At the present day the Hindoos possess, among their numerous rude instruments of the Fiddle class, an extraordinarily primitive contrivance, which they believe to be the instrument invented by Ravanon. Their opinion has actually been adopted by some of our modern musical historians as if it were ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... this contrivance, whenever anyone reported "tracks," Mac and the Boy would hasten to the scene of action, and set a new snare, piling brush on each side of the track that the game had run in, so barring other ways, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... morning was fine; and after much contrivance, we succeeded in taking with us whatever was essential to our future security, and the whole of the provisions except two casks or flour. The horses were, however, very heavily laden, carrying at least three hundred and fifty pounds each; a weight which I was fearful the description ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... myself that David shed blood to cover his adultery, and that by the sword of the children of Ammon; a work that could not be done, but by continuance, deliberate contrivance, which was a great aggravation to his sin. But then this would turn upon me: Ah! but these were but sins against the law, from which there was a Jesus sent to save them; but yours is a sin against the Saviour, and who ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... Application of him who studies Graces is only subject to Time, and to the Bass; but in those, that are accompanied with more Instruments, the Singer must be also attentive to their Movement, in order to avoid the Errors committed by those who are ignorant of the Contrivance of such Accompaniments. ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... opened it, and reading it, cried out, 'This is one of thy tricks, and hadst thou not reared me, I would lay violent hands on thee forthright! Verily God hath afflicted me with this merchant: but all that hath befallen me with him is of thy contrivance. I know not whence this fellow can have come: none but he would venture to affront me thus, and I fear lest this my case get wind, the more that it concerns one who is neither of my rank nor of my peers.' 'None would dare speak of this,' rejoined the old woman, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... a moment of elation, "I will do it alone;" but he knew even then that he could not. Two hands were necessary to start the car; afterwards, he might manage it alone. Descent was even possible, but to give the contrivance its first lift required a second mechanician. Where was he to find one to please him? And what was he to do if he did not? Conquer his prejudices against such men as he had seen, or delay the attempt, as Oswald had suggested, till he could get one of his old cronies on from New York. ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... when chimneys upon the present mode were first constructed in England? It was apparently not sooner than Henry the Eighth's time; for Leland, when he visited Bolton Castle, in Yorkshire, seems to have been greatly surprised by the novelty and ingenuity of the contrivance. "One thing (says he) I much notyd in the haull of Bolton, how chimneys was conveyed by tunnills made in the sydds of the waulls, betwixt the lights; and by this meanes is the smoke of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... Guillotin invented, with humane intent, the expeditious machine which solved all the difficulties involved in the problem of capital punishment. Convicts and prisoners from the hulks forthwith investigated this contrivance, standing as it did on the monarchical borderland of the old system and the frontier of modern legislation; they instantly gave it the name of l'Abbaye de Monte-a-Regret. They looked at the angle formed by the steel blade, and described its action as repeating ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... 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 are always formed on the Grecian model ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... caught, and the captor had the ends of two fingers and toes bitten off. The soko or gorillah always tries to bite off these parts, and has been known to overpower a young man and leave him without the ends of fingers and toes. I saw the nest of one: it is a poor contrivance; no more architectural skill shown than in the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... having been undressed by Matilda, she was lying in the dark on a narrow bed, hard, very hard, as hard as Mrs. Gilbert's folding contrivance—and once more, after this her second move, she was studying the ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... by collecting photographs of the persons with whom I propose to deal. They must be similar in attitude and size, but no exactness is necessary in either of these respects. Then, by a simple contrivance, I make two pinholes in each of them, to enable me to hang them up one in front of the other, like a pack of cards, upon the same pair of pins, in such a way that the eyes of all the portraits shall be as nearly as possible superimposed; in which case ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... which a spring of bent wood, upon being released, drives a bamboo spear that has been attached to it into the side of a passing pig or deer. The whole apparatus is laid horizontally about 1 foot above the ground, and is carefully concealed. It is a simple contrivance, speedily and cheaply made, and in the rainy season very successful. Accidents to human beings from these traps are rare, due to the keen sight and forest instinct with which the Manbo is endowed. As the pig or deer passes along the trail, it releases the spring and is speared ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... it did not open, and he made them try it. Lock and key were mysteries they had no thought of, and they almost started back with surprise when Sile pushed a thin bit of steel into one side of that contrivance and all the upper part of it could be ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... 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 is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 the ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... head, if he were 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 blind old ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... short time after the latter had made up their minds to secure the hands of these two young ladies, if possible, there was a mutual confession of the fact. This was followed by the putting of their heads together for the contrivance of such plans as would best lead to the effectuation of the end each had proposed to himself. It is a curious fact, that on the very Sunday afternoon on which we have seen Mr. and Mrs. Larkin conversing about the danger ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... to me that unusual shoals of fish were seen moving in the clear waters of the Susquehanna. I went, and was surprised to find that they were herrings. We made something like a small net, by the interweaving of twigs, and by this rude and simple contrivance we were able to take them in thousands. In less than ten days each family had an ample supply, with plenty of salt. I also obtained from the Legislature, then in session, seventeen hundred ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... They have already succeeded so far, that your Eyes are ever in Search of Strephon, and turn themselves of Course from Damon. They meet and compare Notes upon your Carriage; and the Letter which, was brought to you the other Day, was a Contrivance to remark your Resentment. When you saw the Billet subscribed Damon, and turned away with a scornful Air, and cried Impertinence! you gave Hopes to him that shuns you, without mortifying him that languishes for you. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... other means than the bare fall. It was the property of a man called Jephcot, who, when the water began to fail, contrived means to bring it into London from great distances, and thus to secure a supply when the ordinary means were useless. He kept his contrivance secret, and supplied the city when other men's resources were exhausted; and he grew exceedingly rich by this exercise of his ingenuity, and built himself the palace which you see there. But when the failure of water amounted to absolute famine, the rich ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... 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, ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... intelligence. The theory is founded upon the monstrous assumption that unintelligent animals and plants, can, by aimless effort arrive at such perfection as the organs of the human body, exceeding anything in mechanical contrivance, invented to date by the genius of man. Indeed, that wonderful invention of the telescope is but a poor imitation of the eye, and does not begin to equal it in marvelous design. Who would say that the ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... with an appearance of art, I address myself to my father and mother, to whom I am forbidden to approach, or to write. Hard it is to be reduced to such a contrivance! Forgive likewise the plain dealing I have used in the above, with the nobleness of a gentleman, and the gentleness due from a brother to a sister. Although of late you have given me but little room to hope either for your ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... 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 is to be certain landmarks of his own contrivance upon ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... painfulness, in watching often, in hunger and thirst, in fasting often, in cold and nakedness . . . yet always rejoicing!" "Rejoicing in tribulation" even, because to the brave man every obstacle and failure is so much further opportunity for courage and contrivance, for matching himself against things. "Human joy," writes the author of the Simple Life, "has celebrated its finest triumphs under the greatest tests of endurance." The Apostle Paul is but one of many who have welcomed each rebuff, and ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... Inconstant, revived at Covent Garden in 1825, and also by Daly in America in 1885, non of Farquhar's other plays has been put on the stage for upwards of a century. Hallam says: 'Never has Congreve equalled The Beaux-Stratagem in vivacity, in originality of contrivance, or in clear and rapid development of intrigue'; and Hazlitt considers it 'sprightly lively, bustling, and full of point and interest: the assumed disguise of Archer and Aimwell is a perpetual amusement to the mind.' The action—which commences, remarkably briskly, in the evening and ends ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... of the Rev. Didymus Bean, the Minister at that time, towards the Arminian Heresy may have had something to do with it, and that the Serpent supposed to have been killed on the Pulpit-Stairs was a false show of the Daemon's Contrivance, he having come in to listen to a Discourse which was a sweet Savour in his Nostrils, and, of course, not being capable of being killed Himself. Others said, however, that, though there was good Reason to think it was a Daemon, yet he did come with Intent to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... being that the candle on which he counted to start the fire was blown out. The reader must remember that in those days matches were unknown and the task of relighting had to be done with the steel, flint and tinder. Though the contrivance is an awkward one, we cannot help thinking the excuse of the Lieutenant was weak, but the result was a failure on his part to carry out the important work assigned ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... supply of static electricity, which passes in a stream of sparks between two contact-points in the open end of the stem D. The latter is tubular, and contains a wire insulated from the metal of the tube, and forming with the tube the circuit for the electric discharge. The handle enables the contrivance to be readily applied. The apparatus is one of the few successful practical applications of ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... 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 ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... is, we do not. There are so many contrivances these cunning rascals devise for a white man's destruction, that one needs to have a schooling of years in their ways to understand them. However," he added, in a whisper, "I understand that contrivance yonder." ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... curiously it is contrived, our common sense will tell us at once that some one has made it; and if any one answers—Oh! the flower was not made, it grew—our common sense would tell us that that was only a still more wonderful contrivance, and that there must be some one who gave it the power of growing, and who makes it grow. And so our common sense would tell us, as it told the heathens of old, that there must be GODS—beings whom we cannot see, who made the world. But if we watch ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... in the steerage; our captain, or the juragan, gives 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 very small hole, so that when placed to float in the bucket a fine thread of water squirts ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the Palais Royal and the Luxembourg, at Paris, is a specimen of this contrivance invented by one Rousseau. A burning-glass is fixed over the vent of a cannon, so that the sun's rays, at the moment of its passing the meridian, are concentrated by the glass, on the priming, and the piece is fired. The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... majesty, and drew from it music whose echoes roll through eternity? And how has science mapped and parcelled it, like a dead planet. Here is the "island of Reil," here the "pons Varolii"; here is the "arbor vitae"; and here is the "subarachnoid space"; and here that wonderful contrivance of the great Designer that regulates the arterial supplies. I lift my hat ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... 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 ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... well be otherwise; for beyond a contrivance like your Leyden jar, for collecting "air electricity," no means of collecting, still less concentrating, electricity of any ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... not our design to enter into an elaborate description of this piece of mechanism, as every student of philosophy, who is well acquainted with the reflection and refraction of rays of light, will understand how an ingenious contrivance produced the results spoken of. The same principle enters into the arrangement of the camera obscura. There was an aperture very artfully cut through the wall, and so guarded on the outside as to escape ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... furniture were placed candlesticks with metal candles, from the top of each of which issued a steady light, like that of a lamp burning with spirits of wine. These different receptacles were supplied with inflammable gas by means of tubes communicating with an apparatus underneath. By this contrivance, in short, all the apartments were warmed very comfortably, and illuminated in ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... he knew that it was an up-to-date flying machine, and the presence of aluminum pontoons under the body of the contrivance also told him that for the first time in his life he was looking at a hydro-aeroplane, capable of alighting on the water and starting up again, after the manner ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... often. In the meantime, Emily and I are sufficiently busy, as you may suppose: I manage the ironing, and keep the rooms clean; Emily does the baking, and attends to the kitchen. We are such odd animals, that we prefer this mode of contrivance to having a new face amongst us. Besides, we do not despair of Tabby's return, and she shall not be supplanted by a stranger in her absence. I excited aunt's wrath very much by burning the clothes, the first ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Athenians had voted an alliance with the Olynthians, and resolved to send succors. But the sending of them was delayed, partly by the contrivance of the opposite faction, partly from the reluctance of the people themselves to engage in a war with Philip. Demosthenes stimulates them to exertion, and encourages them, by showing that Philip's power is not so great as ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... the opinions of Cardinal du Perron, was compiled from his conversation by C. Dupuy, and published by Vossius in 1666, by the same contrivance which put him in possession of the Scaligerana. The Thuana, or observations of the president de Thou, have usually been published along with the Perroniana, but first appeared in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... issued in a full spring-tide; Much did inrich the Stage, much flow'd beside. For that thou couldst thine owne free fancy binde In stricter numbers, and run so confin'd As to observe the rules of Art, which sway In the contrivance of a true borne Play: These workes proclaime which thou didst write retired From Beaumont, by none but thy selfe inspired; Where we see 'twas not chance that made them hit, Nor were thy Playes the Lotteries of wit, ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... in no doubt. He defines nature to be "the aggregate action and product of natural laws; and laws are the sequence of events as ascertained by us." It had been objected that he often uses teleological language, speaking of purpose, intention, contrivance, adaptation, etc. In answer to this objection, he says: "It has been said, that I speak of natural selection as a power or deity; but who objects to an author speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planet?" He admits that in the literal sense ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... His first contrivance was to change names with an old American in the depot. It so happened that the captain of a French privateer had applied to the prison for a crew of foreigners to man his ship, then lying at Morlaix. The ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... And hence so mighty an increase of knowledge in this department, that what the last age knew of the subject has been altogether overgrown. Vast additions, too, have been made to the province of mechanical contrivance: the constructive faculties of the country, stimulated apparently by the demands of commerce and the influence of competition both at home and abroad, have performed in well-nigh a single generation the work ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... most tender affection for him, could not think of sending him away in that condition.—He went in the morning to his bedside, and finding him, as he imagined, a little feverish, presently ordered a physician, who did not fail to countenance the young gentleman's contrivance, either that he really thought him out of order, or that he had rendered himself so in good earnest, through abstaining from food, a thing very uncommon with him. A prescription was sent to the apothecary for him, and a ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... application of the gum that was much extolled. Curiosity induced him to enter the store to examine the life-preservers. He bought one and took it home with him. A native of Connecticut, he possessed in full measure the Yankee propensity to look at a new contrivance, first with a view to understand its principle, and next to see if it cannot be improved. Already he had had some experience both of the difficulty of introducing an improved implement, and of the profit to be derived from its introduction. His father, the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... diagram becomes so large that it has to be carried out on the floor of the studio with long strings, &c., which is a very clumsy and unscientific way of setting to work. The architects in such cases make use of the centrolinead, a clever mechanical contrivance for getting over the difficulty of the far-off vanishing point, but by the method I have shown you, and shall further illustrate, you will find that you can dispense with all this trouble, and do all your perspective either inside ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... 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 direction, but at every turn ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... men, and without their knowledge or contrivance, this lute of 3000 strings has existed for ages, accepting the music of the outer world, and rendering it fit for reception by the brain.... I do not ask you to consider these views as established, but only as probable. They present the phenomena in a connected and intelligible form; and should ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... with their small dories, to pass over these waters, (whom we met coming from their church) being all of them very clean and decent in their apparel—their houses and plantations suitable in neatness and contrivance. They are all of the same opinion with the church of Geneva. Towards the afternoon we came to Mons. L'Jandro's,*2* where we got our dinner. We got that night to Mons. Galliar's,*3* who lives in a very curious contrived house, built of brick and stone, which is gotten near that place. ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... mainjib. Meanwhile he set two men to making a sort of stirrup out of blocks of wood. This was fastened to the deck far up in the bows. When the spars came up he had one of them rigged with a tackle running to the foremast, and set its foot in the wooden contrivance just finished. It swung out forward like a great jibboom. The crew saw what was in the Captain's mind and gave a ringing yell of joy. A score of willing hands made fast the stays to windward and others spread the spare sail from the upper end of ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... 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 ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... senses in which our organs perceive nothing, a world which is closed to us. The eye of the camera sees the invisible and photographs the image of the ultra-violet rays; the tympanum of the microphone hears what to us is silence. A scientific toy, a chemical contrivance surpass us in sensibility. Would it be rash to attribute similar faculties to the delicate organization of the insect, even with regard to agencies unknown to our science, because they do not fall within the domain of our senses? ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... because it excuses some of my involuntary social shortcomings, and enables me to thank collectively all those kind members of the profession who trained all the artillery of the pharmacopoeia upon my troublesome enemy, from bicarbonate of soda and Vichy water to arsenic and dynamite. One costly contrivance, sent me by the Reverend Mr. Haweis, whom I have never duly thanked for it, looked more like an angelic trump for me to blow in a better world than what I believe it is, an inhaling tube intended to prolong my mortal respiration. The best thing in my experience was recommended ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... enter the Castle through a great breach which had been made in the course of the siege, and across which there had been made a sort of by-path to drive the cattle down to their pasture in the wood. By this contrivance the Lady Peveril imagined she had altogether avoided the various risks which might occur from two such parties encountering each other, and disputing for precedence. Several other circumstances of less importance were adjusted at the same time, and apparently so much to the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... wrecked; and yet, unless he has been previously made aware of some method of steering it, no purpose may be answered but that of protracting the misery of the people under his charge. Nothing can be more simple, or more easy of application, than the South American contrivance. Near both ends of the centre spar there is cut a perpendicular slit, about a couple of inches wide by one or two feet in length. Into each of these holes a broad plank, called guaras by the natives, is ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... country and himself. The canvass for Lincoln was conducted by the ablest men in the party, and was marked by great earnestness and enthusiasm. It was a repetition of the Fremont campaign, with the added difference of a little more contrivance and spectacular display in its demonstrations, as witnessed in the famous organization known as the "Wide-Awakes." The doctrines of the Chicago platform were very thoroughly discussed, and powerfully contributed to the further political education of the people. ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... no very civil use of such personages: but the contrivance was, nevertheless, ingenious enough, and had its effect. And this will now plainly appear, if, instead of serious and comic, we supply the words duller and dullest; for the comic was certainly duller than anything before shown ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... however, any sudden device of Shungie's, but merely the contrivance in general use in such ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... this in earnest,' said Fairford; 'you cannot really mean to avail yourself of so poor a contrivance, to evade the word pledged by your friend, your ghostly father, in my behalf. I may have been a fool for trusting it too easily, but think what you must be if you can abuse my confidence in this manner. I entreat you to reflect ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... by the street, for the gate was blocked with masonry, and the nodding ruin still threatened further avalanches. But between the Doctor's garden and the one on the right hand there was that very picturesque contrivance—a common well; the door on the Desprez' side had chanced to be unbolted, and now, through the arched aperture a man's bearded face and an arm supporting a lantern were introduced into the world of windy darkness, ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would hold, and often found himself far from his base of supply, with game in sight, and without means to kill it. The pouch in which the mother kangaroo carried her young suggested to his mind a like contrivance for carrying stones. Since he had cut his foot on the shell, he had known the potency of a sharp edge, but not until he needed to remove charred and useless flesh from his food did he appreciate the utility. It was an easy advance for him roughly to skin a female kangaroo and wear the ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... our lives and fortunes here, and our hopes of happiness hereafter, in its defense and support. Were we mistaken, my countrymen, in attaching this importance to the Constitution of our country? Was our devotion paid to the wretched, inefficient, clumsy contrivance, which this new doctrine would make it? Did we pledge ourselves to the support of an airy nothing—a bubble that must be blown away by the first breath of disaffection? Was this self-destroying, visionary theory the work of the profound ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... obtained 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 sight of ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... saw of this wonderful world, and all the order and contrivance in it, the more sure they were that one mind must have planned it, ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... visited half a dozen times by human beings. The naturalist found the birds and water-fowls so tame that it was but a waste of ammunition to shoot them. Fixing a noose on the end of a long stick, he captured them by putting it over their necks and hauling them to him. In some cases not even this contrivance was needed. A species of mockingbird in particular, larger than ours and a splendid songster, made itself so familiar as to be almost a nuisance, hopping on the table where the collector was writing, and scattering the pens and paper. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Acrimony between Mr Hancock & me, was owing to his Attachment to General Washington, & my being on the Contrary, desirous of his Removal. This is an old Story which Men have believd and disbelievd as they pleasd, without much Concern of mine. It was a pityful Contrivance to render me obnoxious to the General & our common Friends. If there has been any Difference between Mr H and me, Rivington knows not the Origin of it. Mr Hancock never thought me an Enemy to Gen1 Washington. He never thought that I was desirous of his being removd, & therefore ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... name upon a slip of paper, twice or thrice. In doing so, I observed that she kept her left hand always touching, and following up, her right, in which, of course, she held the pen. No line was indicated by any contrivance, but she ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... helices, it was clear that an upward and downward movement of the rod would follow, 'and that a shackle-bar attached from this oscillating rod, and to a crank, would convert this reciprocating motion into a continuous one.' To this contrivance the name of 'Jumper' was given, of which one was exhibited, the helices weighing 800 lbs., and the rod 526 lbs.; and by the means above mentioned, it has been converted into a working-engine, with a twelve-inch crank, and a fly-wheel of four and a half feet in diameter. 'On the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... headman and the fatherly advice of an R.E. corporal. Looking up the Canal the fatigue party, already late for their dinners, perceive a P. & O. liner about four miles away majestically crawling south. Their only hope is now the horse-ferry, an aged flat-bottomed contrivance wound across by a squad of natives and a chain. With the assistance of a friendly military policeman, the headman of this gang is discovered some hundred of yards away lying asleep with his feet in the Sweet-Water Canal, Bilharziosis doubtless entering at every pore. When aroused he breaks into ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... itself in the underground laboratory of my thought so that some changes had to be made in what I had written. As I proceeded, the slight story which formed a part of my programme eloped itself without any need of much contrivance on my part. Given certain characters in a writer's conception, if they are real to him, as they ought to be they will act in such or such a way, according to the law of their nature. It was pretty safe to assume that intimate relations would spring up between some members of our mixed company; ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... mortification is not at throwing away the characters, or the contrivance;—it is all at throwing away the time,—which I with difficulty stole, and which I have buried in the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... than caricature," if such a proverb existed. Crawling behind an infirm horse, a metropolitan hackney carriage drew up on wobbly wheels and with a maimed driver on the box. This last peculiarity caused some embarrassment. Catching sight of a hooked iron contrivance protruding from the left sleeve of the man's coat, Mrs Verloc's mother lost suddenly the heroic courage of these days. She really couldn't trust herself. "What do you think, Winnie?" She hung back. The passionate expostulations of the big-faced cabman seemed to be squeezed out ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... upon him. He beheld in this strange visitation another and a manifest interposition of Heaven, fighting against the cause he had unhappily espoused. Rest was out of the question, his whole thoughts being occupied in the contrivance of measures for his own ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... handsomely for riding, I out, and by water to Westminster, to Mr. Creed's chamber, and after drinking some chocolate, and playing on the vyall, Mr. Mallard being there, upon Creed's new vyall, which proves, methinks, much worse than mine, and, looking upon his new contrivance of a desk and shelves for books, we set out from an inne hard by, whither Mr. Coventry's horse was carried, and round about the bush through bad ways to Highgate. Good discourse in the way had between us, and it being all day a most admirable pleasant day, we, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... to the witchcraft in the village, that belike was the contrivance of old Lizzie, seeing that she bore a great hatred towards Rea, and had long been in evil repute, for that the parishioners dared not to speak out, only from fear of the old witch; wherefore Zuter ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... factors, the growing political power of the working classes, the growing social sympathy of many members of all classes, and the belief, based on the growing authority of scientific method, that social arrangements can be transformed by means of conscious and deliberate contrivance.[1] ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... 15th and 20th came to hand by the last post. I am well pleased with the manner in which your House have testified their sense of the treaty: while their refusal to pass the original clause of the reported answer proved their condemnation of it, the contrivance to let it disappear silently respected appearances in favor of the President, who errs as other men do, but errs with integrity. Randolph seems to have hit upon the true theory of our constitution; that when a treaty is made, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... That these incidents were fashioned in my sleep, is supported by the same indubitable evidence that compels me to believe myself awake at present; yet the words and the voice were the same. Then, by some inexplicable contrivance, I was aware of the danger, while my actions and sensations were those of one wholly unacquainted with it. Now, was it not equally true that my actions and persuasions were at war? Had not the belief, that evil lurked in the closet, gained admittance, and had not my actions betokened an unwarrantable ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... exertions, and his explicit and solemn assurance that the proofs which were necessary to establish legitimately the identity of Freiherr Roderick von R—— should be produced in a very short time, that the surrender of the estate to the young Baron was deferred, and the contrivance of the administration of it in trust agreed to, until after the case should ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... be a Cornish church. You never see that contrivance outside the Duchy: though it's worth copying. It keeps out sheep and cattle, while even a child ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... least a natural resource for astronomers who could afford to adopt the plan—would be to build up masses of masonry, in which there should be tubular holes or tunnellings pointing in certain required directions. In one sense the contrivance would be clumsy, for a tunnelling once constructed, would not admit of any change of position, nor even allow of any save very limited changes in the direction of the line of view through them. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... Three greenheart rods of about 16 ft. are displayed fanwise; that is to say, there is a rod in the middle extended straight forwards, the rods right and left slant outwards, and they are kept in position by a contrivance in the bottom of the boat into which the button of each rod handle fits, and by grooves on the gunwale on either side in which the rod rests and is kept at the proper angle. The butts of these rods are ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... called for, if the callus is not yet firmly consolidated, it may be possible, under an anaesthetic, to bend the bone into position or to re-break it, either with the hands or by means of a strong mechanical contrivance known as an osteoclast. In the majority of cases, however, an open operation yields results which are more certain and satisfactory. When the deformity is comparatively slight, the bone is divided with an osteotome and straightened; when there is marked bending ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... pretty well thought out the correct theory of this noise, that it was on purpose to hide the trap-door from any prying eyes which might pass, and prying eyes must be few, he felt, or else the smugglers would not have had recourse to so clumsy a contrivance. ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... string. The count soon mastered the mechanism, the gate opened, and he then found himself in a little garden, about twenty feet long by twelve wide, bounded on one side by part of the hedge, which contained the ingenious contrivance we have called a gate, and on the other by the old tower, covered with ivy and studded with wall-flowers. No one would have thought in looking at this old, weather-beaten, floral-decked tower (which might ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the Emperor Theodosias, (A.D. 385) from which we also learn that it was usual for those who hired post-horses, to provide their own saddle, and that the saddle should not weigh more than sixty pounds, a cumbrous contrivance, more like the howdahs placed on the backs of elephants than the light and elegant saddle of modern times. Side-saddles for ladies are an invention of comparatively recent date. The first seen in England was made for Anne of Bohemia, wife ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... presence of the extra 6 or 7 milligrams of silver must have been due to a different cause. There can, thus, be little doubt that the cause of the greater part of the "cupellation loss" is a chemical one and cannot be counteracted by a mechanical contrivance.[13] In cupellation, then, there is a loss, apart from imperfect working, inherent in the process itself; and as the amount of this loss varies under different conditions, it is necessary to study it ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... expression of function and truth in architectural works reduces itself to this principle. The useful contrivance at first appeals to our practical approval; while we admire its ingenuity, we cannot fail to become gradually accustomed to its presence, and to register with attentive pleasure the relation of its parts. Utility, as we have ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... Denville, where preparations were quickly made for crossing the river. The horse was taken on board, the boat securely fastened by a strong rope at the bow and stern, so as to hold her broadside against the current, and then the contrivance began dragging her slowly ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... close with and grapple and conquer the forces that dominate him, is the fundamental being of man. And from the very outset of his existence, from the instant of his birth, if the best possible thing is to be made of him, wise contrivance must surround him. The soft, new, living thing must be watched for every sign of discomfort, it must be weighed and measured, it must be thought about, it must be talked to and sung to, skilfully and properly, and presently it ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... Raglan waters. In lord Herbert's absence not a person in the place but she and Caspar understood their management, and except lady Margaret, the marquis, and lord Charles, no one besides even knew of the existence of such a contrivance as ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... out, all unsuspected by the owner of the garden, large enough to contain fourteen men, and thither one after another of the Christian slaves contrived to make his way. From February to September fugitives were hiding there, fed by stealth by the contrivance of Cervantes, who succeeded in sending information to some of the vessels visiting the port either with merchandise or to treat for the ransom ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... their sanction, we have, properly speaking, no constitution. The only arrangement found necessary would be, first, a centre having no will of its own, but which should take into consideration what appeared to be the necessities of the State, and, secondly, a contrivance for calling the members of the State together, for taking the votes, and for performing the arithmetical operations of reckoning and comparing the number of votes for the different propositions, and thereby deciding upon ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... this Scheme is well on the way every Salvation Officer in every I and will have it imposed upon him as one of the duties of his calling to keep his eyes open for every useful notion and every conceivable contrivance for increasing the yield of the soil and utilising the employment of waste labour. By this means I hope that there will not be an idea in the world which will not be made available for our Scheme. If an Officer in Sweden can give us practical hints as to how they manage food ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... regard it as only a means of conveying abstract truth from mind to mind, as if it were so many algebraic formulae, are apt to overlook the fact that its being alive is all that gives it poetic value. We do not mean what is technically called a living language,—the contrivance, hollow as a speaking-trumpet, by which breathing and moving bipeds, even now, sailing o'er life's solemn main, are enabled to hail each other and make known their mutual shortness of mental stores,—but one that is still hot from the hearts and brains of a people, not hardened ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... always have notice of her coming and so be able to escape. This proposition was hailed with the greatest applause, and was agreed to at once unanimously. Upon this, an old Mouse, who had sat silent all the while, got up and said that he considered the contrivance most ingenious, and that it would, no doubt, be quite successful; but he had only one short question to put; namely, which of them it was who would ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Phoenix.—Ver. 307. He was the son of Amyntor. Having engaged in an intrigue, by the contrivance of his mother, with his father's mistress, he fled to the court of Peleus, king of Thessaly, who entrusted to him the education of Achilles, and the command of the Dolopians. He attended his pupil to the Trojan war, and became blind ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... or by contrivance of her fair companions,—girls are so wily and sympathetic with each other,—had been left seated by the side of Philibert, on the twisted roots of a gigantic oak forming a rude but simple chair fit to enthrone the king of the forest and his dryad queen. No sound came to break the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... new contrivance with interest. His steering-gear was rude, being a single runner under the tender with tiller attachment, but it served the purpose. The road was so nearly a straight line that little ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... from their parents, on the slightest touch they feigned death, and ceased to shine; nor did irritation excite any fresh display. I kept several of them alive for some time: their tails are very singular organs, for they act, by a well-fitted contrivance, as suckers or organs of attachment, and likewise as reservoirs for saliva, or some such fluid. I repeatedly fed them on raw meat; and I invariably observed, that every now and then the extremity of the tail was ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the development of 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 ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... the fire; the intelligence had not even yet got to the bottom of him. After stirring the embers he rose to his feet; all the force of her disclosure had imparted itself now. His face had withered. In the strenuousness of his concentration he treadled fitfully on the floor. He could not, by any contrivance, think closely enough; that was the meaning of his vague movement. When he spoke it was in the most inadequate, commonplace voice of the many varied tones she had ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... her elder brothers, and she had scarcely enough to pay her debts; while the rebukes were renewed from the mouths of her brothers, one of whom, being civil lieutenant, had the power to separate her again from her lover. This must be prevented. Lachaussee left the service of Sainte-Croix, and by a contrivance of the marquise was installed three months later as servant of the elder brother, who lived with the civil lieutenant. The poison to be used on this occasion was not so swift as the one taken by M. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... achieved or missed. With the shrewdness of an experienced politician he grasped the fact that if he was ever to present his Covenant to the world clothed with the authority of the mightiest states, now was his opportunity. After the Conference it would be too late. And the only contrivance by which he could surely reckon on success was to insert the Covenant in the Peace Treaty and set before his colleagues an irresistible incentive for elaborating ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... time enough to think of that when the could weather sets in." Everything about the house wore a Robinson Crusoe aspect, and though there was not any appearance of original plan or foresight, there was no lack of ingenious contrivance to meet every want as ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... recognized, however, that there was intelligence behind its movements, because of the sense of direction it displayed, and by the fact that it had turned the sharp corner of the stairs; but the idea presented itself in fugitive fashion to his mind—Heaven alone knows why—that it might be some mechanical contrivance that was worked from the hall by a hand. For the sound was too light to be the tread of a person, yet too "conscious" to be merely a sound of the night operating mechanically. And it was unlike the noise that the feet of any animal would make, any animal that he could think of, that is. A four-footed ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... 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 of the boat under ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... generation to generation, Regents would continue to administer the government in the name of vagrant and mendicant Kings. There was no doubt that the Regents must be appointed by Parliament. The effect, therefore, of this contrivance, a contrivance intended to preserve unimpaired the sacred principle of hereditary monarchy, would be that the monarchy would ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
