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Mercury   Listen
noun
Mercury  n.  
1.
(Rom. Myth.) A Latin god of commerce and gain; treated by the poets as identical with the Greek Hermes, messenger of the gods, conductor of souls to the lower world, and god of eloquence.
2.
(Chem.) A metallic element mostly obtained by reduction from cinnabar, one of its ores. It is a heavy, opaque, glistening liquid (commonly called quicksilver), and is used in barometers, thermometers, etc. Specific gravity 13.6. Symbol Hg (Hydrargyrum). Atomic weight 199.8. Mercury has a molecule which consists of only one atom. It was named by the alchemists after the god Mercury. Note: Mercury forms alloys, called amalgams, with many metals, and is thus used in applying tin foil to the backs of mirrors, and in extracting gold and silver from their ores. It is poisonous, and is used in medicine in the free state as in blue pill, and in its compounds as calomel, corrosive sublimate, etc. It is the only metal which is liquid at ordinary temperatures, and it solidifies at about -39° Centigrade to a soft, malleable, ductile metal.
3.
(Astron.) One of the planets of the solar system, being the one nearest the sun, from which its mean distance is about 36,000,000 miles. Its period is 88 days, and its diameter 3,000 miles.
4.
A carrier of tidings; a newsboy; a messenger; hence, also, a newspaper. "The monthly Mercuries."
5.
Sprightly or mercurial quality; spirit; mutability; fickleness. (Obs.) "He was so full of mercury that he could not fix long in any friendship, or to any design."
6.
(Bot.) A plant (Mercurialis annua), of the Spurge family, the leaves of which are sometimes used for spinach, in Europe. Note: The name is also applied, in the United States, to certain climbing plants, some of which are poisonous to the skin, esp. to the Rhus Toxicodendron, or poison ivy.
Dog's mercury (Bot.), Mercurialis perennis, a perennial plant differing from Mercurialis annua by having the leaves sessile.
English mercury (Bot.), a kind of goosefoot formerly used as a pot herb; called Good King Henry.
Horn mercury (Min.), a mineral chloride of mercury, having a semitranslucent, hornlike appearance.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mercury" Quotes from Famous Books



... e-h/7990 gives the numerical value of the pressure in millimeters of mercury for h measured in meters. The negative exponent indicates that the pressure decreases as h increases. In inches as units of length of the mercury column, ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... pretty poesies pleasingly passionate. She, I say—my mother (God rest her!), e'en she with tongue most harsh, most bitter and most unwearying, hath enforced me, her son (whom Venus bless!)—e'en I that am soul most transcendental—I that am a very wing-ed Mercury—me, I say she hath, by torrential tongueful tumult (gentle lady!), constrained to don the habit of a base, brawling, beefy and most material Mars! Wherefore at my mother's behest (gracious dame!) I ride nothing joyful to be ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... appointed habitations, two eager souls met, struck, rebounded, lost their way, and arrived each at the wrong place. The soul of the princess was one of those, and she went far astray. She does not belong by rights to this world at all, but to some other planet, probably Mercury. Her proclivity to her true sphere destroys all the natural influence which this orb would otherwise possess over her corporeal frame. She cares for nothing here. There is no relation between her ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... resistance of a thread of mercury at the temperature of melting ice, 14.4521 grams in mass, of uniform cross-section and a ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins

... Scotland. Yet in these flying Galloway landscapes there was an impression of the mystic and melancholy, which reminded Sir S. of "The Twilight of the Gods": strange purple rocks jutting out into water coldly bright as a sheet of mercury, and desolate islands remote and haunted as the place where Gunter and his sister lived in the opera. We seemed to be travelling through vast, lonely places, though it was but a part of Galloway, and all ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... them in a case of lymphosarcoma with metastases in the bone-marrow. A. Lazarus observed their transitory occurrence in moderate number in a severe posthaemorrhagic anaemia. M. Beck observed them in the blood of a patient with severe mercury poisoning. They are also frequently found in children's diseases, especially in anaemia pseudoleukaemica infantum. K. Elze established their presence in a boy of 15 months, suffering from a slowly progressing tuberculosis of the ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... moderate pressures used—from 2" to 80" of mercury—the results show that the rate of flow, other things being equal, is directly proportional ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various

... the head of the Pantheon. Next in order to them we find a group of five minor deities, the representatives of the five planets,—Nin or Ninip (Saturn), Merodach (Jupiter), Nergal (Mars), Ishtar (Venus), and Nebo (Mercury). These together constitute what we have called the principal gods; after them are to be placed the numerous divinities of the second and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson

... of its kind-hearted inhabitants, whose warm feelings and excellent qualities excited in him the warmest admiration. In the neighbouring harbour of Callao, he was fortunate enough to see the passage of the planet Mercury over the disk of the sun, of which transit he made very important observations; and from thence passed into the province of New Spain, where he remained an entire year, sedulously engaged in agricultural, political, and statistical, as well as physical enquiries, the fruits ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... poet, in whose writings they are girded, and wear thick or embroidered Phrygian robes. Mercury stands with them for the same reason, not because argument or eloquence commends benefits, but because the painter chose to do so. Also Chrysippus, that man of piercing intellect who saw to the very bottom of truth, who speaks only to the ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... double-strength detonators are used of not less strength than 1 gram charge consisting by weight of 90 parts of mercury fulminate and 10 parts of potassium chlorate (or its equivalent), except for the explosive 'Masurite M. L. F.' for which the detonator shall be of not less strength than ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson

... months; but 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

... I pass ten minutes of more intense excitement. During this interval we had fairly unearthed an oblong chest of wood, which, from its perfect preservation and wonderful hardness, had plainly been subjected to some mineralizing process—perhaps that of the bichloride of mercury. This box was three feet and a half long, three feet broad, and two and a half feet deep. It was firmly secured by bands of wrought iron, riveted, and forming a kind of open trelliswork over the whole. On each side of ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... Got a stiff gel out of the pot and drew it into a quarter of a pound of fibers. I only had time to determine that the fibers were amorphous—no time to draw them further to see if they would develop crystallinity. I put them in an open-mouth jar which I later found had been used to store mercury. One evening I took them out and found they had developed crystallinity on standing. Furthermore, the fibrous ends had split, and the split ends seemed to be tacky—seemed a natural to me to make a sheet of ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness

... keep blooming bulbs through the winter is to pack them in crates, and pile these in a cellar without artificial heat, where the mercury ranges from thirty-five to forty degrees ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford

... Well-favored—you 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 ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... A thermometer on the terrace showed the mercury clinging stubbornly to a point above zero; but the still air was keen and stimulating, and the sun argued for good cheer in a cloudless sky. We had swallowed some breakfast, though I believe no one had manifested an appetite, and we were cheering ourselves with ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson

... of the voyagers, the narrow escapes, their strange expedients, and the fun and jollity when danger had passed, will make boys even unconscious of hunger." —New Bedford Mercury. ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger

... Homoeopathic remedies tried by him in modifying, so far as he could observe, the progress or termination of diseases. It deserves notice that he experimented with the most boasted substances,—cinchona, aconite, mercury, bryonia, belladonna. Aconite, for instance, he says he administered in more than forty cases of that collection of feverish symptoms in which it exerts so much power, according to Hahnemann, and in not one of them did it have the slightest ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. "And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-up on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... Good-bye, Paddy [Sir Patrick grunts] good-bye, goodbye. Good-bye, my dear Blenkinsop, good-bye! Goodbye, Ridgeon. Dont fret about your health: you know what to do: if your liver is sluggish, a little mercury never does any harm. If you feel restless, try bromide, If that doesnt answer, a stimulant, you know: a little phosphorus and strychnine. If you ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw

... of singular wisdom and refinement. He lived, till he came to London for the later education of his boys, in a small country house at Claybrook, near Lutterworth, and was proprietor of the 'Northampton Mercury,' one of the oldest papers in England, founded, I believe, by his grandfather. This Claybrook house was the scene of some of our happiest childish days. My aunt was a most devoted mother of four sons, whose ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... Euripides, Spinoza, Poe, 710 Confucius, Hiram Smith, and Fo, Came (as it seemed, somewhat de trop) With a disembodied Esquimaux, To say that it was so and so, With Franklin's expedition; One testified to ice and snow, One that the mercury was low, One that his progress was quite slow, One that he much desired to go, One that the cook had frozen his toe, 720 (Dissented from by Dandolo, Wordsworth, Cynaegirus, Boileau, La Hontan, and Sir Thomas Roe,) One saw twelve white bears in a row, One saw eleven and a crow, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... the machine-like precipitation of accumulated moisture. Possibly the most notable thing that occurred through the weary weeks was the gliding of the temperature up to the unprecedented height of fifteen below. To atone for this, outer space smote the earth with its cold till the mercury froze and the spirit thermometer remained more than seventy below for a fortnight, when it burst. There was no telling how much colder it was after that. Another occurrence, monotonous in its regularity, was the lengthening of the nights, till day became a mere ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... condition, but in combination with the alkali metals it occurs widely distributed in the form of rock-salt (sodium chloride); as sylvine and carnallite, at Stassfuert; and to a smaller extent in various other minerals such as matlockite and horn-mercury. In the form of alkaline chlorides it is found in sea-water and various spring waters, and in the tissues of animals and plants; while, as hydrochloric acid it is found ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... unpopular and heavy, Franklin very wisely decided to establish his own reputation as a vivacious writer, before entering upon the important undertaking of issuing a journal in his own name. There was a small paper then published in the city called "The Mercury." He commenced writing a series of very witty and satirical articles over the signature of "Busy Body." The first number contained the following sentences as intimations of what was ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... jealous. The monopolizing instinct of strong-natured and deeply affectionate women was fiercely alive in her. Always, no doubt, she had had it. Long ago, when first she was in Sicily alone, she had dreamed of a love in the South—far away from the world. When she married she had carried her Mercury to the exquisite isolation of Monte Amato. And when that love was taken from her, and her child came and was at the age of blossom, she had brought her child to this isle, this hermitage of the sea. Emile, ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... neither the shaking earth, nor the rending heaven, nor the rock without, nor the vulture within, could cause regret for past benevolence, or terror for future evil, or envy, even amidst tortures, for the dishonourable prosperity of his insulter! [Mercury.—See the "Prometheus" of Aeschylus.] Who that has glowed over this exalted picture will tell us that we must make Virtue prosperous in order to allure to it, or clothe Vice with misery in order to revolt us from its image? Oh! who, on ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... we drove to the railway, we passed through the public square, where the Bastille formerly stood; and in the centre of it now stands a column, surmounted by a golden figure of Mercury (I think), which seems to be just on the point of casting itself from a gilt ball into the air. This statue is so buoyant, that the spectator feels quite willing to trust it to the viewless element, being as sure that it would be borne up as that a ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Mrs. Ruggles, which was also her kitchen and dining-hall, hung a frame containing a seven-by-nine mirror, which was the frame's excuse for being, although a compartment above and one below held squares of glass covered with paint instead of mercury. The lower one was colored like the contents of a wash-tub after a liberal use of indigo; and in the centre was a horizontal stroke of red, surmounted by a perpendicular dash of white, intersected by an oblique line of black—all of which represented a red boat, with ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... a letter from my Master to his cousin, and then, of course, an answer to that. I had need go get myself fitted like Mercury, with wings at his heels. To be the lacquey of a man that hath quarrelled with his mistress! And to know the final issue all the time, that it is sure to be made up between them. And to hear him mutter "the last," between his teeth, while sealing it. He was to have journeyed ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... Monster of Monsters, by Tom Thumb, Esq.," an essay that contained some uncomplimentary reflections on several official personages. The "Gazette" was the pioneer journal of the province. It was followed at the close of the same year by "The Mercury and Weekly Advertiser," published by a former apprentice of Fowle, a certain Thomas Furber, backed by a number of restless Whigs, who considered the "Gazette" not sufficiently outspoken in the cause of liberty. ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Duhsasana proceeded against that mighty car-warrior, viz., Prativindhya, who was advancing (against Drona), scorching his foes in battle. The encounter that took place between them, O king, looked beautiful, like that of Mercury and Venus in the cloudless firmament. Duhsasana pierced Prativindhya, who was accomplishing fierce feats in battle, with three arrows on the forehead. Deeply pierced by that mighty bowman, thy son, Prativindhya, O monarch, looked ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... into the world, at Frankfort-on-the-Main. My horoscope was propitious: the sun stood in the sign of the Virgin, and had culminated for the day; Jupiter and Venus looked on him with a friendly eye, and Mercury not adversely; while Saturn and Mars kept themselves indifferent; the moon alone, just full, exerted the power of her reflection all the more, as she had then reached her planetary hour. She opposed herself, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... individual, and the ordinary laws of motion to and from any given point do not apply to him. He is a Flying Frenchman—here, there, and everywhere; especially everywhere. So mercurial, that he will be in advance of Mercury himself, and having written a letter in the morning to say he is coming, it is not unlikely that he will travel by the next train, arrive before the letter, and then wonder that you weren't prepared to receive him. Such, in a brief ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various

... was enthusiastically received by the critics and press; and was highly praised by such papers as the Edinburgh "Scotsman," "Glasgow Herald," "Manchester Guardian," "Bristol Mercury," "Yorkshire Post," "The Whitehall Review," "Pall Mall Gazette," the London "Athenaeum," the London "Academy," "Black and White," ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... 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, and four days for ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... such advantage. During the month of November tempestuous weather prevailed along the coasts, causing many wrecks and much loss of life. Early in December, the severity of winter fell upon the British Isles. On the 10th, the mercury was fourteen degrees below the freezing-point in London. This severe weather added to the sufferings of the people, already pressed by scarcity of food. In the Highlands of Scotland, and in Ireland, stern destitution was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... depository were appointed in the settlement. Mrs. Gordon's was one of these, from whence they were duly despatched by the first chance to their destinations on the Nashwaak, Waterloo, or Windsor clearings. Although our Mercury would duly have signalised his approach as he passed our own dwelling, I possessed myself of my treasure here—my share of the priceless wealth of that undying intellect which is allowed to pour its brilliant ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan

... precipitous side of the gorgeous-colored Funeral Range, and on the west by the Panamint Mountains, which rise to the height of ten thousand feet. The climate is cool and salubrious in winter, but is a fiery furnace in summer, when the mercury in the thermometer sometimes climbs to one hundred and ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... extant; but it is to be regretted that Mr. Christie's widow has been robbed, and that by the hand of no common thief, of some most important documents collected by and belonging to her late husband—Quebec Mercury, 5th ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... so full that there was not the least trace of air remaining above the tap or in the escape tube; this artificial wort had, however, been itself aerated. The curved tube was plunged in a porcelain vessel full of mercury, resting on a firm support. In the small cylindrical funnel above the tap, the capacity of which was from 10 cc. to 15 cc. (about half a fluid ounce) we caused to ferment, at a temperature of 20 degrees or 25 degrees C. (about ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... after the sun, moon, and five planets known to the ancients, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. You easily recognize sun, moon, and Saturn, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday are from names given by some of the Northern tribes of Europe to Mars, Jupiter, and Venus. Mercury's day seems scarcely at all connected ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... are certain sounds that excite certain movements, and the song and dance go together, so there are, no doubt, certain thoughts that lead to certain tones of voice, or modulations of sound, and change "the words of Mercury into the songs of Apollo." There is a striking instance of this adaptation of the movement of sound and rhythm to the subject, in Spenser's description of the Satyrs accompanying Una to ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... So hot a blast of air swept over the town as to fill the people with terror. This burning wind raised dense clouds of fine dust. Birds dropped dead from the trees. The people shut themselves up in their thick adobe houses. The mercury rapidly rose to 133 degrees, and continued so for three hours. Trees ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... the commanding officer of the one cavalry troop at the post was ordered to detail three non-commissioned officers, with a brace of troopers apiece, as bearers of despatches to Date Creek, Wickenberg, Sandy and the reservation, while Sanchez, the Mexican-Apache Mercury, was ordered to hasten back to Almy by way of the Mazatzal. It was then but ten A.M., and to the annoyance of the adjutant-general, Sanchez shook his black mane and said something that sounded like hasta la noche—he ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... cow-boy, trudging along, wondered what we could be gazing at. After spying about some time, he found it could only be the sunset, and looking, too, a moment, he said approvingly "that sun looks well enough;" a speech worthy of Shakspeare's Cloten, or the infant Mercury, up to everything from the cradle, as you please ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... finding DuQuesne leaning over a delicate electrical instrument, his forbidding but handsome face strangely illuminated by the ghastly glare of his mercury-vapor arcs. ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... about the Platform, did not think about it as a weapon. It was the first rung on the stepladder to the stars. From it the moon would be reached, certainly. Mars next, most likely. Then Venus. In time the moons of Saturn, and the twilight zone of Mercury, and some day the moons of Jupiter. Possibly a landing could be dared on that giant planet itself, ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... on the afternoon of the third day following the suicide of the skipper that the Trade wind, which up to then had been blowing with its usual steadiness, began to weaken, and upon consulting the barometer I found that the mercury was falling rather rapidly. At the same time I became aware that the aspect of the firmament was undergoing a subtle change, the clear, brilliant blue of the sky gradually fading to a colourless pallor, as though a succession of veils of white gauze ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... priest; but the boundaries of the land attached to the mine were even then in dispute. Other men were in search of quicksilver; and the whole range of mountains near the New Almaden mine was stained with the brilliant red of the sulphuret of mercury (cinnabar). A company composed of T. O. Larkin, J. R. Snyder, and others, among them one John Ricord (who was quite a character), also claimed a valuable mine near by. Ricord was a lawyer from about Buffalo, and by some means had got to the Sandwich Islands, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... Diego during eight years is 51 deg.. This occurred but once. In those eight years there were but twenty-one days when the mid-day temperature was not above 55 deg.. In all that time there were but six days when the mercury fell below 36 deg. at any time in the night; and but two when it fell to 32 deg., the lowest point ever reached there. On one of these two last-named days it went to 51 deg. at noon, and on the other to 56 deg.. This was the great "cold ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... 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 of arguments would ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... boat. So down, down through the creaking house, carefully, as though he were a Jason picking his way among the coils of the sleeping dragon; and soon he was shooting through the phantom streets, like Mercury ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... who was called Argus in mythology, who had a hundred eyes, of which only two were ever asleep at the same time. This bird gets his name from him; though the story is that Mercury killed him, and Venus transferred his eyes to the tail ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... and ash pricked up here and there from ivy-grown stumps, moss gleamed where it could, through the flood of primroses. The wild green of the mercury, holding its strong shield to the sun, the violets, and the virgin white of the anemones were drowned in the uneven waves and billows and shallows of that sea of primroses. They who come in meekness year by year to roadside hedgerow and homely meadow had come in power. The meek had inherited ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... Tacitus. According to the former, the Germans knew only those visible and palpably useful gods, the Sun and the Moon, and Fire; they had never even heard of any others by report. Tacitus, on the contrary, says, that they worship Hercules and Mars, and, above all, Mercury; that, at the same time, their religious sense is eminently spiritual, for they repudiate the thought of enshrining the celestials within walls, or representing them by the human form; that they venerate groves and forest-glades, and that by ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... warmth of an expiring camp fire, the figures of two stalwart men lay stretched out on the hard, frozen ground, bundled up in heavy army blankets. The mercury was forty-five below zero and still falling, but they did not appear to mind. Gaunt and hollow-eyed, enfeebled from long fasting, they had succumbed at last to utter physical exhaustion, and fallen into a sound ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow

... of the week have the same mysterious connexion with the astral bodies that they have in Europe. Aditwar or Raviwar is sun's day (Sunday); Somwar is moon's day (Monday); Mangalwar is Mars' day (mardi); Budhwar is Mercury's day (mercredi); Brihaspatiwar is the day of Diespiter or Jupiter (jeudi); Shukrawar is Venus' day (vendredi); ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid

... where he has the sun in the physical, to regulate, enlighten, and cheer." C. C. Burleigh, alluding to this remark, in our meeting at the Tabernacle, said: "Thus he calls his Convention, in which Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, and Neptune are appointed a committee of arrangements, and says the Sun shall ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... show the direction of the wind. There, too, stood the tutela, or chosen patron of the ship, to whom prayers and sacrifices were daily offered. The selection of this deity was guided by either private or professional reasons, and as merchants committed themselves to the protection of Mercury, or lovers to the care of Cupid, warriors, it will at once be surmised, made Mars the object ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... the swarm of fighting and serving men. There was a squire who had served him long. To this man, Diego Lopez, I was committed, with enough told to enlist his intelligence. He managed for me in the intricate life of the place with a skill to make god Mercury applaud. Don Enrique and I were rarely together, rarely were seen by men to speak one to the other. But in the inner ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... along the main road, heading north, branching off to the farm-houses by the way to sell his cure-all. He sold one guileless housewife a bottle, assuring her that it would convert brass spoons into real silver. A little mercury in a rag helped this trifling deception. On the third day Nickie had to buy some gingernuts to make a fresh supply of the Healing Mixture, and bottles were running short. He saw fortune ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... passes through a narrow glass tube, a b, into the wider tube, c d e, which is made air-tight at e. This latter tube has an exit tube at f, by which the gas is supplied to the gas stove. At e it is hermetically closed, and at its deepest part it contains mercury, upon which a little sulphuric ether floats in the hermetically-closed limb, e.g. Lastly, there is a minute opening in the narrowest tube at i. The whole apparatus, or, at least, the under part of it, is dipped into the water bath warmed by the gas boiler. ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... the resumption of hostilities after the armistice of Amiens; and Scott's attention to his quartermastership, which he still held, seems to have given Lord Napier the idea that he was devoting himself, not only tam Marti quam Mercurio, but to Mars rather at Mercury's expense.[7] Scott, however, was never fond of being dictated to, and he and his wife were still at Lasswade when the Wordsworths visited them in the autumn, though Scott accompanied them to his sheriffdom on their way back to Westmoreland. He had not ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... by Dantor, the Rulan scientist." Then blind rage overcame him. She had tried to kill Ulana; before his eyes! "You she-devil!" he roared. "I've half a mind to choke the vile life from your tainted body. Damn you! May the heat devils of Mercury burn and sear and shrivel you ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... to resume. Mercury, who used to spend weekends in Athens and Corinth and those places, was sent to try and find her. Mercury has to get old Charon, who is the ferryman for rowing souls over the Styx ... which is a river all the dead have to cross ... and my aunt, who's dead and full of fun ... oh, I'm sure she ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker

... the suggestions in this book may be helpful or at least have a placebo effect. Beware of the many recipes that include kerosene (coal oil), turpentine, ammonium chloride, lead, lye (sodium hydroxide), strychnine, arsenic, mercury, creosote, sodium phosphate, opium, cocaine and other illegal, poisonous or corrosive items. Many recipes do not specify if it is to be taken internally or topically (on the skin). There is an extreme preoccupation with poultices (applied ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... clothes they found, in a case, different powders, genuine mercury in vials and boxes, phosphorus in a glass bottle, and a ring, which we immediately knew to be magnetic, because it adhered to a steel button that by accident had been placed near it. In his coat-pockets were ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... numerous. Hesiod tells us they had thirty thousand. Temples were erected to all the passions, fears, and diseases to which humanity is subject. Their supreme god, Jupiter, was an adulterer, Mars a murderer, Mercury a thief, Bacchus a drunkard, Venus a harlot; and they attributed other crimes to their gods too horrible to be mentioned. Such gods were worshiped, with appropriate ceremonies, of lust, drunkenness, and bloodshed. Their most ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... brushed on to the fur, which is cut from the skin by a suitable sharp cutting or shearing machine. A Manchester furrier, who gave me specimens of some fur untreated by the process, and also some of the same fur that had been treated, informed me that others of his line of business use more mercury than he does, i.e. leave less free nitric acid in their mixture; but he prefers his own method, and thinks it answers best for the promotion of felting. The treated fur he gave me was turned yellow with the nitric acid, ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith

... astronomer, is away just at present, but we were kindly received by Mrs. Gould, who conducted us over the building. They have a fine collection of various instruments and some wonderful photographs of the principal stars—Saturn, with his ring and eight moons, Jupiter, with his four moons, Venus, Mercury, &c. If we could have stayed longer we might have seen much more; but it was now quite dark, and we had only just time for a short visit to the observing room itself. Our ride down to the city in the dark would have been exceedingly risky if our horses had been less sure-footed, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... Galileo's difficulties, and he immediately drew the conclusion, which he considered to be indubitable, "that there were in the heavens three stars which revolved round Jupiter, in the same manner as Venus and Mercury revolve round the sun." On the 12th of January, he again observed them in new positions, and of different magnitudes; and, on the 13th, he discovered a fourth star, which completed the four secondary planets with which ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... 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, and seems really ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... drawn "high comedy" from it; I could never have so happily closed the fifth act with a pinch of the Beaudesert mixture! No, no; to my homely sense of man's life and employment there was nothing alluring in the prospect of watching over the golden tree in the garden, with a "woe to the Argus if Mercury once lull him to sleep!" Wife of mine shall need no watching, save in sickness and sorrow! Thank Heaven that my way of life does not lead through the roseate thoroughfares, beset with German princes ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... improvement has been made in this division,—not of primary bodies (those idols of the modern atomic chemistry), but of causes, as Sir T.B. rightly expresses them,—that is, of elementary powers manifested in bodies. Let mercury stand for the bi-polar metallic principle, best imaged as a line or 'axis' from north to south,—the north or negative pole being the cohesive or coherentific force, and the south or positive pole being ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... date back to mythology. Tradition tells us that Hermaphroditus, a son of Venus and Mercury, was educated by the Naiades dwelling on Mount Ida. At the age of fifteen years, he began his travels; while resting in the cool shades on the woody banks of a fountain and spring near Caira, he was approached by the presiding nymph of the fountain, Talmacis, who, becoming enamored ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... god to human form when they came into close contact with the Etruscans and the Greeks. For all the important deities poetry and art combined to evolve an appropriate bodily form, which gradually became conventional, so that the ordinary notion of a Jupiter, a Juno, a Mercury, or a Ceres was approximately that which had been gathered from the statue thus developed. This trouble was not taken with all the most ancient divinities. Many of the old rural and local deities, and many of those with quite minor provinces, were left vague and unrealised. They were represented ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... ore, petroleum, natural gas, mercury, tin, tungsten, antimony, manganese, molybdenum, vanadium, magnetite, aluminum, lead, zinc, uranium, ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... body, 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 ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... coast, the islands of Haute and Major were sighted; but during this exploration of the bay, the weather was so severe that the chart of it then laid down cannot be considered very trustworthy. After leaving this bay, the corvette reached the Bay of Mercury; surveyed Barrier Island, entered Shouraki or Hauraki Bay, identified the Hen and Chickens and the Poor Knights Islands, finally arriving at the Bay of Islands. The native tribes met with by D'Urville ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... certain as we are that the moon has no atmosphere, so we are equally certain that some of the planets possess that attribute. Still there are other circumstances that render the notion of their being inhabited by beings like ourselves exceedingly improbable. Mercury, for example, is so embarrassed by the solar rays, that lead must always be in a state of fusion, and water, if not reduced to a state of vapor, will be hot enough to boil the fish that are in it. Uranus, at the other extremity of the system, receives ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... thirty-five observations with the view of determining with the utmost precision the latitude of the fountains of the Nile, and I found the mean result to be 10 deg. 59' 25" north latitude. Equally careful observations proved them to be 36 deg. 55' 30" east longitude. The mercury in the barometer indicated a height above the sea of more than two miles. The Shum of Geesh, whose title is kefla abay, "the Servant of the Nile," told me that the Agows called the river "The Everlasting God, Light of the World, Eye of the World, God of Peace, Saviour, Father ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... youth upon the stage even though he had to hobble to his hackney-coach when the piece was ended, made his last exit in the autumn of 1732. Booth followed on the same long journey in the May of 1733, after an illness during which the great patient was dosed with crude mercury, bled, plastered, blistered, and otherwise helped onward to his death. Verily, it is a wonder that the physicians of old did not ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... there was the sun above them, whose business it was to dry them. There were no leaves yet on the few trees and hedges, but preparations had long been made, and the sap was now rising in their many stems, like the mercury in all the thermometers. Up also rose the larks, joy fluttering their wings, and quivering their throats. They always know when the time to praise God is come, for it is when they begin to feel happy: more cannot be expected of ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... is very well; but next morning the newspaper nips these early buds of sentiment. The telegraph announces, "Twenty feet of snow at Ogden, on the Pacific Road; winds blowing a gale at Omaha, and snow still falling; mercury frozen at Duluth; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... concealed motive powers derived from the ether, and we cannot now tell what the engines of the future will be like. For ought we know, the time is coming when there will be a regular mail service between the earth and Mars or Venus, cheap trips to Mercury, and exploring expeditions to Jupiter, Saturn, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... you call she must always be at home, nor can she plead another engagement. So, before noon, knowing she could not deny herself, I was again at Hatchardson's, purchasing more postal-cards. But Miss Briggs was not deceived. Nor apparently was any one else. The BEDFORD MERCURY had told how, the previous evening, Frederick Fitzgibbon, an automobile salesman from New York, had been knocked out by an automobile while saving Miss Polly Briggs from a similar fate; and Mr. Hatchardson and all the old ladies who were in the bookstore making purchases congratulated me. It ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis

... consternation in the field was not greater than in every part of the city; many of the outposts were abandoned in panic and flight; and the walls were deserted, as they leaped down each in the part nearest him. Scipio, who had gone out to an eminence called Mercury's hill, perceiving that the walls were abandoned by their defenders in many parts, ordered all his men to be called out of his camp and advance to take the city, and orders them to bring the scaling-ladders. The general himself, covered by the shields of three ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... the planets were propitious at the moment of Michelangelo's nativity: "Mercury and Venus having entered with benign aspect into the house of Jupiter, which indicated that marvellous and extraordinary works, both of manual art and intellect, were to ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... is likewise known that the red precipitate of mercury regains its flowing condition without the addition of an inflammable substance. Since mercury, however, really loses its phlogiston as well by means of vitriolic acid as of the acid of nitre, it must ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele

... replied Bluff. "That would be a tough thing, for the people there to climb out near midnight, and the mercury hovering half way down ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... it was found that their predictions concerning the weather had been amply verified. The mercury had dropped away down in the tube of the thermometer, and every youngster had a happy look on his or her face at school, as though the prospect for ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson

... machines of various sizes and kinds, some of tremendous destructive capacity. Kennedy did not even attempt to study them. All about were high explosives, chemicals, dynamite. There was gunpowder of all varieties, antimony, blasting-powder, mercury cyanide, chloral hydrate, chlorate of potash, samples of various kinds of shot, some of the outlawed soft-nosed dumdum bullets, cartridges, shells, pieces of metal purposely left with jagged edges, platinum, aluminum, iron, steel—a conglomerate mass of stuff that ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... and the peer, with a star and garter, in the language of Cambridge, we must class as—a mere quiz. The man sneezing,—you absolutely hear; and the fellow stealing a bank note,—has all the outward and visible marks of a perfect and accomplished pick-pocket; Mercury himself could not do that business in a ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... just purchased a considerable tract of land," etc. Most philosophical of paragraphists! "Celebrated English banker!"—that sentence is a better illustration of verbal fallacies than all Ben tham's treatises put together. "Celebrated!" O Mercury, what a ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the golden bowl, there was a river bed to cross, on a bridge of planks, but among the burning stones trickled a mere runnel of water, bright as spilt mercury. And Maieddine chose the moment when the minarets of El Aghouat rose from a sea of palms, to point out the strange, pale hills crowned by old koubbahs of marabouts and the military hospital. He told the story ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... three days four hundred sheep were clipped and anointed. Jacky helped clip, but he would not wear gloves, and George would not let him handle the ointment without them, suspecting mercury. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... do you punish my seeming Neglect! I acknowledge I have not sent to you 'till now, but it was because it was utterly impossible, my Father continually keeping so strict a Guard over me himself, that not even Mercury could evade or illude his Vigilance. Alas! my Soul, he is now no Stranger to my Passion for you, which he pretends, at least, is highly offensive to him, for what Reasons I blush to think. But what signifies an Offence to him of so generous a Nature as my Love! I am assured I was born ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... set. Across the hall, and up the stairs, and along the passages, and through the rooms, which are very brilliant in the season and very dismal out of it—fairy-land to visit, but a desert to live in—the old gentleman is conducted by a Mercury in powder ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... meaning be, That to the influencing of these orbs revert The honour and the blame in human acts, Perchance he doth not wholly miss the truth. This principle, not understood aright, Erewhile perverted well nigh all the world; So that it fell to fabled names of Jove, And Mercury, and Mars. That other doubt, Which moves thee, is less harmful; for it brings No peril of removing thee from me. "That, to the eye of man, our justice seems Unjust, is argument for faith, and not For heretic declension. To the end This truth may stand more clearly in your view, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... window, and stood for several moments as still as the bronze Mercury on the mantel. When she turned around, her features were as fixed as if they belonged to ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... Raphael, spirit of rescue, and help me this night in a righteous cause. In the name of Jupiter, the father of the gods, Mercury, his son, and Psyche, ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... from the melee. Dodging the enemy's bewildered secondary defence, and upsetting the umpire with a dull thud, our hero dashed down the field. Line after line vanished behind his flying feet. Shod with the wings of Mercury, he sped on and on and still on toward the far-distant goal line. Cheers thundered from the encompassing stadium, met overhead, broke and descended upon the head of the speeding runner in a shower of fragmentary vowels and consonants. Still on and ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... agency and among the lodges of the assembled Sioux was the morning of the arrival of Lieutenant Davies with a squad of half-frozen troopers at his back. The gale that swept the prairies on Wednesday had died away. The mercury in the tubes at the trader's store had sunk to the nethermost depths. The sundogs blazed in the eastern sky, and even the rapids of the Running Water seemed turned to solid blue. Borne on the wings of the blast, straight from the frozen pole, the Ice King had swooped upon ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... woods, jogging along over the solid crust. Though the air was keenly cold, to the boys it was all delightful. They were warmly clad, even their feet being protected by heavy overshoes. With caps drawn down over their ears, and warm mittens on their hands, why should they mind if the mercury stood ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock

... Paracelsus, with which he pretended to reduce flints into salt; nor archaeus or spiritus rector of that visionary Van Helmont, his simple, elementary water, his gas, ferments, and transmutations; nor shall I enlarge upon the salt, sulphur, and oil, the acidum vagum, the mercury of metals, and the volatilised vitriol of other modern chemists, a pack of ignorant, conceited, knavish rascals, that puzzle your weak heads with such jargon, just as a Germanised m——r throws dust in your eyes, by lugging in and ringing the changes on the balance of power, the Protestant ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... two preparations of mercury I wish to warn you against administering of your own accord, viz.—(1) Calomel, and a milder preparation called (2) Grey-powder (mercury with chalk). It is a common practice in this country to give calomel, on account ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... first step in the direction of the military employment of Negroes as soldiers. Two weeks after the firing upon Sumter took place, the following note appeared in the "Charleston Mercury": ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... Ballantyne. "There's an old mail tin, about a mile or so away from here, near the worked-out alluvial patch. You can always drop a letter in there for me. Haughton's such a good-natured ass that he'll play Mercury for you. Anyway, I'll send him to look in the tin every ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke

... classed, Called this ill chiselled, that too roughly cast; Prized that at fifty thousand: then I knew To buy at profit grounds and houses too, With a sure instinct: till the whole town o'er "The pet of Mercury" ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... dealings with men change as they change from ungodliness to godliness and from disobedience unto obedience. "God's immutability is not that of the stone, that has no internal experience, but rather that of the column of mercury that rises and falls with every change in the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere. When a man bicycling against the wind turns about and goes with the wind instead of going against it, the ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans

... I hope the mercury, if tried, will be used with the most vigilant caution and the most attentive observation of its first effects. I am extremely anxious and apprehensive about the ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... formalities, as ordered by the Queen's Government, might there be perfected. Now, unfortunately, the post-boy had taken his departure before Mary reached the shop, and it was not, therefore, dispatched till Saturday. Sunday was always a dies non with the Greshamsbury Mercury, and, consequently, Frank's letter was not delivered at the house till Monday morning; at which time Mary had for two long days been waiting with weary ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... rider's heart were a hundred things; among them fear, that miserable depression which comes with the first defeats of life, the falling of the mercury from passionate activity to that frozen numbness which betrays the exhausted nerve and despairing mind. The horse could not go fast enough; the panic of flight was on him. He was conscious of it, despised himself for it; but he could not help it. Yet, if he were overtaken, he would ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... with 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 ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield

... will retain their present definitions; the ohm is a resistance equal to 10^{9} absolute unities (C., G., S.), and the volt is an electromotive force equal to 10^{8} absolute unities (C., G., S.). The practical unit of resistance (ohm) will be represented by a column of mercury of 1 square mm. in section at the temperature of 0 deg.C. An international commission will be charged with ascertaining for practice, by means of new experiments, the height of this column of mercury representing the ohm. The name ampere ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various

... 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 family, however, who passed by chance looked as if they ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... other of the present king, her second husband, and he bade her mark the difference; what a grace was on the brow of his father, how like a god he looked! the curls of Apollo, the forehead of Jupiter, the eye of Mars, and a posture like to Mercury newly alighted on some heaven-kissing hill! this man, he said, had been her husband. And then he showed her whom she had got in his stead: how like a blight or a mildew he looked, for so he had blasted his wholesome brother. And the queen was sore ashamed that he should ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... was there a more apparently veracious statement! All the doings of Martin Guerre seemed to be most faithfully described, and surely only himself could thus narrate his own actions. As the historian remarks, alluding to the story of Amphitryon, Mercury himself could not better reproduce all Sosia's actions, gestures, and words, than did the false Martin Guerre those ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... recovered luminary shone bright as before its obscuration, it was with diminished power, for it continued chilly during the rest of the day and night; nor was it before noon on the 1st of December that the mercury recovered from ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... safe return to Mrs. Seal, and the little gods and goddesses of justice,—Pan or Mercury, which is it? And as for you, Grab, look out for sharks as you pull in. If they hear of your being afloat, the souls of persecuted sailors will set them on you, as the devil chases male coquettes. Well, gentlemen, you are balked ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... addressed themselves to the municipal magistrate, who immediately prohibited my book, treating me on all occasions with but little civility, and saying, that had I wished to reside in the city I should not have been suffered to do it. They filled their Mercury with absurdities and the most stupid hypocrisy, which, although, it makes every man of sense laugh, animated the people against me. This, however, did not prevent them from setting forth that I ought to be very grateful for their permitting me to live at Motiers, where they ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... of Edessa possessed a region, which, from time immemorial, had been sacred to that luminary: that there were two subordinate Deities, Monimus and Azizus, who were esteemed coadjutors, and assessors to the chief God. He supposes them to have been the same as Mars and Mercury: but herein this zealous emperor failed; and did not understand the theology which he was recommending. Monimus and Azizus were both names of the same God, the Deity of Edessa, and [101]Syria. The former is, undoubtedly, a translation of Adad, which signifies [Greek: monas], or [102]unitas: ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... French clock on the mantelpiece—a base of malachite surmounted by a flying bronze Mercury with its arms spread gracefully in the air, and not remotely suggestive of Mademoiselle Olympe in the act of executing her grand flight from the trapeze—when the clock, I repeat, struck nine, Van Twiller paid no attention to it. That was certainly a triumph. I am anxious ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... before its time, and with almost unprecedented severity. Early in the last week in November, the whole country was white with snow, the streams were frozen solid, and the cold was intense. Week after week the mercury ranged from zero to ten, fifteen, and even twenty below, and fierce winds howled night and day. It was a terrible winter for old people. They dropped on all sides, like leaves swept off of trees in autumn gales. It was startling to ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... he touched into gold. Contest of skill between Pan and Apollo. The ears of Midas transformed to asses ears. Troy built by Apollo and Neptune. Laoemedon's perfidy. Hesione freed by Hercules, and married to Telamon. Peleus and Thetis. Birth of Achilles. Chione ravished by Mercury, and by Apollo. Slain by Diana. Her sire Daedalion changed into an hawk. A wolf changed by Thetis to marble. Voyage of Ceyx to Delphos. Lost in a storm. Grief of Alcyone. Morpheus acquaints her with her husband's death. Change of both to kingfishers. AEsacus into ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... 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

... brightness, danced along the road, the white cotton dress rising and falling, the white-stockinged legs much in evidence, the arms outstretched as if in flight, straw hat falling off yellow hair, and a little wisp of swansdown scarf floating out behind like the drapery of a baby Mercury. ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... determined that there could not be too much rejoicing at his son's baptism; consequently he gave an entertainment himself, June 23,1811, in the palace and park of Saint Cloud. The palace, with its magnificent halls, its drawing-rooms of Mars, Venus, Truth, Mercury, and Aurora, its Gallery of Apollo, and Room of Diana, adorned with Mignard's frescoes; the park, with its fine trees, its wonderful stretches, its greensward, and abundant flowers; the two grand views from the upper windows, one ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... healing of various diseases. In the hottest well the water where it rises has a temperature of 162 deg. F ( 72.2 deg. C.). The largest number of the sick who seek health at the baths, suffer from syphilis. This disease is now cured according to the European method, with mercury, iodide of potassium, and baths. The cure requires a hundred days, from seventy to eighty per cent. of the patients are cured completely, though purple spots remain on the skin. The disease does not break out anew. A large number of leprous patients also visit ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... service; for now, when a gentleman is ruined, he parts with his house with some credit. Sneer. Service! if they had any gratitude, they would erect a statue to him; they would figure him as a presiding Mercury, the god of traffic and fiction, with a hammer in his hand instead of a caduceus.—But pray, Mr. Puff, what first put you on exercising your talents in this way? Puff. Egad, sir, sheer necessity!—the proper parent ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan

... Your sooty smoky-bearded compeer, he Will close you so much gold in a bolt's head, And, on a turn, convey in the stead another With sublimed mercury, that shall burst i' the heat, And all fly out ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... brow, and fastening her eyes upon Miriam's palm. "What can it mean? A deep cross from the Mount of Venus crosses the line of life, and forks into the line of death! a great sun in the plain of Mars—a cloud in the vale of Mercury! and where the lines of life and death meet, a sanguine spot and a great star! I cannot read it! In a boy's hand, that would betoken a hero's career, and a glorious death in a victorious field; but in a girl's! What ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... He had pills and colored bitter drops of various sorts that were compounded himself in his own pharmacy. Dr. Jennings' patients generally recovered and had few or no complications. This must be viewed in contrast to the practices of his fellow doctors of that era, whose black bags were full of mercury and arsenic and strychnine, whose practices included obligatory bleeding. These techniques and medicines "worked" by poisoning the body or by reducing its blood supply and thus lowering its vital force, ending the body's ability to manifest the undesirable symptom. If the poor ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... was for the purpose of compelling another person to watch her steps with fear and admiration. Crossing her feet, she threw back her garlanded head and drew a long breath. Then she hastily straightened herself, and with the bird cage in one hand and the winged staff of Mercury, which the clown had handed to her, in the other, she advanced to the centre of the rope. There she opened the cage as steadily as if she had been standing on the floor of her own room. The birds fluttered through the little door and went, with a swift flight, directly to their goal. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... a student of horse character. He knew that while biniodide of mercury would blister and put right a bowed tendon, or the firing iron take the life out of a splint, that a much finer knowledge than this was requisite to get fullhearted work out of a thoroughbred. Brain must be pitted against brain; so he studied his horses; and when Diablo ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... or have his Ministers called to an account by a Parliament, was but a King in name. He had a great compass of knowledge, tho' he was never capable of much application or study. He understood the Mechanicks and Physick; and was a good Chymist, and much set on several preparations of Mercury, chiefly the fixing it. He understood navigation well: But above all he knew the architecture of ships so perfectly, that in that respect he was exact rather more than became a Prince. His apprehension was quick, and his ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... grew so that they moved onward even while we looked at them. The brown seed-case shrivelled and was absorbed with an equal rapidity. Have you ever on a cold day taken a thermometer into your warm hand and watched the little thread of mercury creep up the tube? These moon ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... mineral or vegetable origin. Chinese painters have always avoided mixing colors so far as possible. From malachite they obtained several shades of green, from cinnabar or sulphide of mercury, a number of reds. They knew also how to combine mercury, sulphur and potash to produce vermilion. From peroxide of mercury they drew coloring powders which furnished shades ranging from brick red to orange yellow. During the T'ang dynasty coral was ground to secure a ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci

... "You know the Flying Mercury," he answered, "in the Park? Three pathways intersect; there they have made a seat and raised the statue. The spot is handy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... from the bottom of the rule downward into the carpet-binding; a lever, with a small weight on the upper side, and a tooth projecting downward at one end, operated on by the type, and a metallic fork, also projecting downward, over two mercury cups; and a short circuit of wire embracing the helices of the electro-magnet connected with the positive and negative poles of the battery and ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... each side of a sign bearing the figure of Mercury—a sign commonly used in the early part of the last century to denote that post-horses were to be obtained—"der goden boode" became freely translated into English, "the goat in boots." To Le Blon is attributed the execution of this sign and its motto; but, whoever the ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... seldom mad. Have not attainders brought unhop'd relief, 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' ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... determinate existence at a given time; it exists not merely in some particular place, but wherever there is a heavy thing; and, as to relation, at the same moment it combines in iron with solidity and in mercury with liquidity. In fact, a quality is a point of agreement in a multitude of different things; all heavy things agree in weight, all round things in roundness, all red things in redness; and an abstract term denotes such a point (or points) of agreement among the things denoted ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... the Academy had offered to the poet who should best commemorate the progress made by the art of navigation during the last reign. His poem was returned. It was offered, through the agency of a friend, to a paper called "The Mercury." The editor, La Roque, praised the work in florid terms, but said he dared not offend the Academy; he, too, returned the MS. Paul, mistaking the polite fiction for truth, wrote back an angry tirade against the editor's cowardice; and the latter, retorting in as frank a fashion, told the writer ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... Fort Wadsworth, a four company post, in January '68. The winters, always severe, had been doubly so in '67 and '68. I went by team, leaving Sauk Center with the mercury at forty below zero. It never got above forty five below in the morning, while we were on the trip. The snow was three feet on a level and we broke the roads. It took us twelve days to make this three day's trip. My driver was drunk most of the time. There were no trees from Glenwood ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... unite with 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 leathern bag with a cloth bottom, and the unabsorbed ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... from its material, the spirit from the body; but it now struck him like a flash of lightning, that aqua fortis must be the thing; and throwing himself upon this substance in its state of greatest intensity, he tried it first upon silver, then upon common mercury—but all ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various

... attention from rhetorical themes. Yet, spite of this apparently necessary result, some of his grandest and most startling flights of oratory have had their inspiration from incidents connected with stove-nigrification. Bill has, as it were, soared on the legs of the stove, like Perseus on Mercury's sandals, to unexplored realms of space and thought. At such moments the stove-pipe becomes to him a magic telescope, through which he peers far into ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... of very great cold came. Will reckoned that the mercury must be at least forty degrees below zero, and, for a week, the people scarcely stirred from their lodges. Then occurred the terrible invasion of the mountain wolves, the like of which the oldest man could not recall. ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... you won't promise, I'll lay this on this rock," continued Scout Ward, as cool as you please. "You ought to cut the cloth away from that wound; then you dissolve this bichloride of mercury tablet in a quart of water, and flush that hole out thoroughly; then you moisten a pad of this cloth in the water and bind it on the hole with this surgical bandage. See?" ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin

... of the early Spanish explorers that smelting was unknown to the inhabitants of Peru, he states that it would be possible for a people in a low state of culture to discover that an amalgam of gold with mercury is quite plastic, and that after a figure is modeled in this composite metal the mercury may be dissipated by heat, leaving the form in gold, which then needs only to be polished. There is, however, no evidence whatever that these people ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... Leeds Mercury.—The author relies on vivid description, pointed and racy pictures, and lively and striking incident ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie

... detached from the burdened roofs by light puffs of wind. To one glancing upward, the feathery visitors seemed to drop from the widening spaces of pale blue sky. The ringing sound of snow shovels and the crisp crunching of pedestrians' feet indicated a falling mercury. The air was filled with the jocund jingling of sleighbells, now coming, now near at hand, now lessening into the distance, a pleasing confusion of silvery sounds, not inharmonious in their ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... mercury column gauges for gunpowder pressures, which were too large for direct attachment to guns, but were connected with special powder chambers to test the pressure, etc., of confined explosives. The experience thus gained enabled the construction of the instrument here shown, which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various

... enters into an eclipse, and 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; ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... derivation, and not the chemical one, generation, corruption, &c.' In this spirit, she soon surrounded herself with a little mythology of her own. She had a series of anniversaries, which she kept. Her seal-ring of the flying Mercury had its legend. She chose the Sistrum for her emblem, and had it carefully drawn with a view to its being engraved on a gem. And I know not how many verses and legends came recommended to her by this symbolism. Her dreams, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... The moral treatment, hygienic measures, exercise, and suitable occupation were almost wholly ignored. Drastic purgatives, ... the shower bath, large and frequent doses of tartarized antimony, and mercury to the extent of producing ptyalism, were the most popular remedial agents in the treatment of insanity. This, in general terms, was the system advocated and practised when, forty years ago, this institution ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... in coming from the northward down Davis's Strait, this instrument begins to speak a language which has ever been intelligible to us as a weather glass. On the 24th, notwithstanding the change of wind from north to east, the mercury rose from 29.51 on that morning, to 29.72 at three A.M. the following day, but fell to 26.39 by nine P.M. with the strong but not violent breeze then blowing. After this it continued to descend very gradually, and had reached 28.84, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... him a rough-and-ready apparatus for testing any mineral encountered. A blowpipe, a bit of candle, a small bottle of powdered borax, another of mercury, and a bent platinum wire, packed away in an empty jam-tin, formed his assayer's kit—a paraphernalia which induced as much mirth and scoffing contempt from Palmer Billy as it would have done from a skilled and cultured scientist, who, without hair-balances, acids, ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... would have appeared last week, if it had pleased some of the people at the post-office (through which the MS. was sent to the Editors) not to steal it. Perhaps they took it for something valuable; and, perhaps, they were not mistaken. Thanks be to Mercury, we have plenty of wit to spare, and can afford some of it to be stolen now and then. Still we entreat Colonel Maberly (Editor of the "Post" in St. Martin's-le-Grand) to supply his clerks with jokes enough to keep them alive, that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... replied the young man thoughtfully, leaning against a big glass case containing a collection of lares and penates—images of Jupiter, Hercules, Mercury, &c., used as household gods. "I expected that he would be dancing attendance upon her during the whole of the evening; but, curiously enough, soon after his arrival he suddenly disappeared, and was not seen again until nearly two o'clock." Then, looking ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux



Words linked to "Mercury" :   calomel, temperature, dog's mercury, mercury thermometer, mercurous, mercuric, mercury-contaminated, mercury barometer, quicksilver, mercury chloride, bichloride of mercury, metal, inferior planet, Roman deity, cinnabar, herbs mercury, Roman mythology, poison mercury, mercury-vapor lamp, mercury fulminate, mercurial, mercury poisoning, mercury cell, fulminating mercury, solar system, hg, mercury-in-glass clinical thermometer, hydrargyrum, dog mercury, mercurous chloride, herb mercury, mercury-in-glass thermometer



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