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Cistern   /sˈɪstərn/   Listen
Cistern

noun
1.
A sac or cavity containing fluid especially lymph or cerebrospinal fluid.  Synonym: cisterna.
2.
A tank that holds the water used to flush a toilet.  Synonym: water tank.
3.
An artificial reservoir for storing liquids; especially an underground tank for storing rainwater.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Cistern" Quotes from Famous Books



... of small limited expanses answering to our conservatories, filled with tiers of flowers. Along the sides of the room were flower-beds, interspersed with cushions for repose. In the centre of the floor was a cistern and a fountain of that liquid light which I have presumed to be naphtha. It was luminous and of a roseate hue; it sufficed without lamps to light up the room with a subdued radiance. All around ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... saying my prayers, keeping fasts, and wearing a long and mortified countenance. As he assured me that unless I made a pretence of deep piety I should be starved or stoned to death, I assumed forthwith the character of a rigid Mussulman. I rose at the first call, made my ablutions at the cistern in the strictest forms, and then prayed in the most ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... serviceable state. The former evidently required cleaning; with the powder he was satisfied. Though no leaden pipes were procurable, as bamboo canes serve every purpose for which the former are used in other countries, a leaden cistern and some pigs of lead which had been sent with the muskets were found, and the three troopers who had accompanied the major and his companion were set to work to cast bullets and clean up the arms; while the major, after twice making the circuit of ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... But hold it for a favour seldom known, If he be deign'd the honour to sit down. Soon as the tarts appear, Sir Crape withdraw, Those dainties are not for a spiritual maw. Observe your distance, and be sure to stand Hard by the cistern, with your cap in hand: There for diversion you may pick your teeth, Till the kind voider comes for your relief, For meer board wages, such their freedom sell, Slaves to an hour, and vassals to a bell: And if th' employments of one day be stole, They are but prisoners out ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... lower animals possess the chromatophoric function. Several years ago, I placed in a large cistern several specimens of gilt catfish. This is a pond fish and is quite abundant throughout the middle United States. It is of a beautiful golden yellow color on the belly and sides, shading into a lustrous greenish yellow ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... abundant and help to make a pleasing picture. Outside the village there are many orange-groves and vineyards, each with its red-tiled house, which has, either inside or in a separate building, a well with an engine for pumping water into a stone cistern, from which it is allowed to run, as required, along concrete gullies, and thus distributed ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown

... consisting of hard pan, cisterns in some parts of the country are built without brick walls, the walls of the excavation being simply cemented. I do not approve of such cheap construction, particularly where the cistern is located near a privy or cesspool. Pollution of cistern water is often due to the cracking of the cement lining. Overflows of cisterns should never be connected with a drain, sewer, or cesspool. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various

... treating a "roturier" landlord: to measure him with the eyes from head to foot; to hand the rent—the ten-dollar bill—with the tips of the fingers; to scorn a look at the humbly tendered receipt; to say: "The cistern needs repairing, the roof leaks; I must warn you that unless such notifications meet with more prompt attention than in the past, you must look for another tenant," etc., in the monotonous tone of supremacy, and in the French, not of Journel's ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King

... fierce debate, or to disgust That nicer sense, on which the sportsman's hope, And all his future triumphs must depend. Soon as the growling pack with eager joy Have lapped their smoking viands, morn or eve, From the full cistern lead the ductile streams, To wash thy court well-paved, nor spare thy pains, For much to health will cleanliness avail. Seek'st thou for hounds to climb the rocky steep, And brush the entangled covert, whose nice scent 160 O'er greasy fallows, and frequented roads Can ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... had reached Mr. Percy's study, which contained his most valuable papers. Mr. Percy, whose voice all his family, in the midst of their terror and confusion, obeyed, directed with great presence of mind what should be done by each. He sent one to open a cistern of water at the top of the house, and to let it flow over the roof, another to tear down the trellis next the part that was on fire; others he despatched for barrows-full of wet mortar from a heap which was in a back yard near the house; others he stationed in readiness to throw the mortar where ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... Tiptree Hall, in England, we observed a large cistern, in which all the manure necessary for the highest culture of 170 acres of land, is liquified, and from which it is pumped out by a steam engine, over the farm. All the water, which supplies the cistern, is collected from tile drains ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... finer grained and better salt, it is necessary that the original salt-crystals should be dissolved, and for this purpose parallel galleries are run into the rock, and there is dug in each of them a dyke or cistern. These dykes are then flushed with water, which is allowed to remain in them undisturbed for the space of from five to twelve months, according to the richness of the soil; and, being then thoroughly saturated with the salt that it has taken up, the brine is drawn off through wooden ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... in our new dwelling, which looked neat and comfortable enough, but we speedily found that it was devoid of nearly all the accommodation that Europeans conceive necessary to decency and comfort. No pump, no cistern, no drain of any kind, no dustman's cart, or any other visible means of getting rid of the rubbish, which vanishes with such celerity in London, that one has no time to think of its existence; but which accumulated so rapidly ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... and the ivy and weeds adding picturesqueness to what would otherwise be commonplace; in an elevated niche on the right, a figure of the Virgin in white robes and blue sash; in front, on the left, a covered marble cistern, with taps; and innumerable crutches and candles, were all the unsuperstitious eye could see. But to those poor wretches gathered round in prayer, influenced by the "light- headed" dreams of a poor swineherd, the spot was the holiest of holy ground. The abject reverence of their attitudes, ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... liquors. I would rather drink like a hermit all my life, than seem to pledge such scoundrels as these in their leavings, like a miserable drawer, who drains off the ends of the bottles after the guests have paid their reckoning, and gone off. And, hark ye, I will taste no water from the cistern out of which these slaves have been serving themselves—fetch me down a pitcher ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... fountain lent Some use for ears, And on the dumb shades language spent, The music of her tears; I drew her near, and found The cistern full Of divers stones, some bright and round, Others ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... town. And there was no cistern in the middle of the town of Korkhah, and I said to all the people: ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce

... there was a mighty tree grew in the midst of the court, and the fruit thereof was good, and the leaves also, and it bore fruit all the year long. And many of them were so kind as to invite me to sit down and eat with them; but that I refused; and they showed me a great cistern, which they had hewn out to themselves, to catch water from the elements; and they had made themselves convenient lodgings in the sides of ...
— A Short History of a Long Travel from Babylon to Bethel • Stephen Crisp

... down into a cavern which cavilers say was once a cistern. It is a chapel, now, however—the Chapel of St. Helena. It is fifty-one feet long by forty-three wide. In it is a marble chair which Helena used to sit in while she superintended her workmen when they were digging and delving for the True Cross. In this ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... had not deceived her. Two figures which had emerged from the upper staircase window of Mr. Rumbold's and had got after a perilous paddle in his cistern, on to the fire station, were now slowly but resolutely clambering up the outhouse roof towards the back of the main premises of Messrs. Mantell and Throbson's. They clambered slowly and one urged and helped the other, slipping and pausing ever and again, amidst ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria, 'Make your peace with me and come over to me; then each one of you shall eat from his own vine and his own fig-tree and drink the waters of his own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land full of grain and new wine, a land full of bread and vineyards, a land full of olive-trees and honey, that you may live and not die. But do not listen to Hezekiah, ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman

... of the living light eternal! Who underneath the shadow of Parnassus Has grown so pale, or drunk so at its cistern, ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante

... even for Peachy's agile limbs, but she was resolved thoroughly to explore the capacities of the roof, and the cistern must not be left unvisited. She clung on to its slippery side and peered down at her own ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... home. 'You seem surprised at my coolness in the position in which I find myself,' said he to me, 'well, let me point out a comparison to you, my dear fellow, it if is commonplace it has, at least, the merit of being accurate. My heart is like a cistern the tap of which has been turned on all night, in the morning not a drop of water is left. My heart is really the same, last night I wept away all the tears that were left me. It is strange, but I thought myself richer in grief, and yet by a single night of suffering I am ruined, cleaned out. ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... the cistern cleaned out and they packed up their pretty china dishes and silver in a big flat sorter box. Charles took them down a ladder to the bottom of the dark cistern and put dirt over it all and then scattered some old rubbish round, took the ladder out. The Yankees never much as peared ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... when R—— and P——, tired with their angling, came in. After demolishing nearly a dozen eggs amongst us, and two capital salmon-trout, which our fast friend, the Anglo-Norwegian, had filched from a large cistern, where they are placed during the winter, for the benefit of his master's table; and after imbibing cauldrons of coffee—so delicious was its flavour—we showed and expressed great anxiety to pay Bruin the compliments of the season, and as strangers and Englishmen to testify to him, as ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... The irregularity of its motion, and the motion of the water in the boiler and cistern, and of ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... agree with you, Robert," said the teacher, "and now, Emily, we will ask you to take us in charge as we pursue a little further this interesting, if not very edifying theme. The economic system of production and distribution by which a nation lives may fitly be compared to a cistern with a supply pipe, representing production, by which water is pumped in; and an escape pipe, representing consumption, by which the product is disposed of. When the cistern is scientifically constructed the supply pipe and escape pipe correspond in capacity, so ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... ceiling, in imitation of the great dial of Syracuse; and here was a huge bath set with gems called Tauromenites. There were also on each side of this deck, cabins for the marine soldiers, and twenty stables for horses; in the forecastle was a fresh-water cistern which held 253 hogsheads; and near it was a large tank of sea-water, in which fish were kept. From the ship's sides projected ovens, kitchens, mills, and other offices, built upon beams, each supported by a carved image nine feet high. Around the deck were eight wooden towers, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... might be pronounced almost impregnable. At the foot of an eminence towards the north there are the remains of a magnificent church as well as of other buildings. On a slope a little farther west there is a cistern connected with a pond, which appears to have had an island in it, and probably some structure suited to the supply of water. These works were also encompassed with a double wall; and it is said that two aqueducts may still be perceived terminating in the basin, one from the Sealed Fountain of Solomon, ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... water poppy, milfoil, willow moss, and floating plants like duckweed. Even if you do not know these by name they are probably common in your neighbourhood. Fill the tank with clean water. That taken from a spring or well is better than cistern water. After two or three days, when the plants seem to be well rooted, put in your fish. You may keep your aquarium in a light place, but always keep it out of the sun in summer and away from the heat of a stove or ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... interior stone exposed to the sunlight, which yet seems sunlight in a prison, and silence over all—that is Mola. The ruins of the fortress are near the gate on the highest point of the crag. Within is a barren spot—a cistern, old foundations, and some broken walls. Look over the battlement westward, and you will see a precipice that one thinks only birds could assail; and, observing how isolated is the crag on all sides, you will understand what an inaccessible ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... morning, and drank his fill; and had brought up a small skin of water to John, who had divided it among the children whom he saw most in want of it—for the pressure of thirst was now heavy. The Romans, from rising ground at a distance, had noticed the women going daily with jugs to the cistern, whence the water was doled out; and the besiegers directed their missiles to that point, and many were killed, ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty

... shall be the shape I give the breach? A "lotus," "cistern," "crescent moon," or "sun"? "Oblong," or "cross," or "bulging pot"? for each The treatises permit. Which one? which one? And where shall I display my sovereign skill, That in the morning ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... name Arundel House is not known. It seems probable that the house was originally a Tudor structure, as some unmistakable Tudor mullions were found built up in an old wall; yet the greater part of it dated from the Stuart period. A large ornamental cistern which stood in the scullery bore date 1703. The back view of the house, with its irregular dark-brick buildings and additions, here and there covered with creepers, was very picturesque. Tradition says that Henry Hallam, the historian, ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... summit stands, Immense and far uplifted above the lower lands, It lacks but little, truly, that with the heavenly sphere Around the earth revolving, its towers would interfere. And they who dwell within it must seek the Milky Way; There is no nearer cistern which win their thirst allay: Their horses there go browsing, and crop the stars that pass, As other beasts the blossoms ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... emerge from the desert, to introduce himself into Alexandria, and to trust his person to the discretion of his friends and adherents. His various adventures might have furnished the subject of a very entertaining romance. He was once secreted in a dry cistern, which he had scarcely left before he was betrayed by the treachery of a female slave; [141] and he was once concealed in a still more extraordinary asylum, the house of a virgin, only twenty years ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... light eternal! Who hath become so pallid under the shadow of Parnassus, or hath so drunk at its cistern, that he would not seem to have his mind encumbered, trying to represent thee as thou didst appear there where in harmony the heaven overshadows thee when in the open air thou ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri

... degree a mass of blancmange turned out of a mould. Four round lunettes of stone, wearily worked by hands now cold, stand four-square to all the winds that blow. In the middle is a great round tower, with a cistern on the top, and underneath an arched cavern which you are pleased to learn is bomb-proof. As you cross the drawbridge, you feel bound to admit that the prospect is not inviting. It seems as if you were going to prison instead ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various

... he has improved wonderfully in size, beauty, manners, &c. You will be perfectly delighted with him. He is no longer a country dog, but is becoming a real city bred gentlemanly dog. The fond companion of Miss Annie Blow in her rambles around the well, cistern, and even out into the alley. And never comes into the dining room, kitchen, or your grandma's room, without being pressingly invited. Having upon his first arrival received divers striking hints, his intellect has become ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless

... Dan discovered the broken, half-choked cistern at the back of the Old Light, Freddy watched the sick man. He had never before seen any one very sick, and it took some pluck to keep his post especially when Mr. Wirt suddenly opened his eyes and looked at him. It was such a strange, wild, questioning ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman

... was a large cistern, or, reservoir, on the southeast of Jerusalem, outside the wall, where the valley of Gihon and the valley of Kedron come together. To go to this pool, the blind man, with two great blotches of mud on his face, must walk through the streets of the city, out of the gate, and into ...
— The Wonder Book of Bible Stories • Compiled by Logan Marshall

... reshape those who take part. Mutual understanding will increase with common action. When men work consistently to create new resources instead of treating their world as a fixed system, when they see it as a fountain, not as a cistern, they will gradually gain a new spirit. The Great Community must create as well as prove the ...
— The Ethics of Coperation • James Hayden Tufts

... who debauch the minds of great men—as sycophants, false informers, and flatterers worse than both, manifestly do—are the centre of all the curses of a nation, as men not only infuse deadly poison into the cistern of a private house, but into the public springs of which so many thousands are to drink. The people therefore laughed at the parasites of Callias, whom, as Eupolis says, neither with fire nor brass nor steel could prevent from supping with him; but as for the favorites of those execrable ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... two being connected by a kitchen and a shed. The house was substantially constructed of wood, the sides being double walled with planking, while the roof sloped gently to the front. There were gutters at the eaves to catch all the water which came down in the form of rain, and convey it to a large cistern just in the rear of the main dwelling. Their host explained that they had a fine spring close to the house, from which they usually obtained their supply of water. "This spring sometimes gives out in seasons ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox

... strength, confidence, and triumph. Bacon says, "Men seem neither to understand their riches nor their strength: of the former they believe greater things than they should; of the latter much less. Self-reliance and self-denial will teach a man to drink out of his own cistern, and eat his own sweet bread, and to learn and labour truly to get his living, and carefully to expend the good things ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... the space of the whole floor; but it was altogether surrounded by rooms of various shapes and sizes, except upon one side of its length, where it gave through Gothic windows of vari-colored glass, upon a small court below,—a green-mouldy little court, further dampened by a cistern, which had the usual curb of a single carven block of marble. The roof of this stately sala was traversed by a long series of painted rafters, which in the halls of nearly all Venetian palaces are left exposed, and painted or carved and gilded. A ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... issued cautiously from the house—a peasant who made his living from visitors to the heights. Attracted by the promising appearance of the strange lady, the hermit came forward to greet her, offering to fetch water from the cistern, and to unveil the image of the miraculous virgin, in ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... something he was busy with in the garden, which something I was dying of impatience to see. At the end of the yard, in a lovely nook under an old plum tree, my brother was making a tiny lake; he had dug it out and cemented it like a cistern, and from the country round about he procured stones and quantities of moss with which to make the banks about the lake romantic looking; he also constructed rocky elevations and grottoes ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... who has followed the history of these men through countless pages of problems, watched them in their leisure hours dallying with cord wood, and seen their panting sides heave in the full frenzy of filling a cistern with a leak in it, they become something more than mere symbols. They appear as creatures of flesh and blood, living men with their own passions, ambitions, and aspirations like the rest of us. Let us view them in turn. A is a full-blooded ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... she forgot to enclose the problem. For by this time, what with Herbert's subaltern, Carey's pawn, and a cistern left me by an uncle who was dining with us that night, I had more than enough ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various

... he takes advantage of his late experience to work out an elaborate treatise on the climate of this region, which is exceedingly important, bearing, as it does, upon the question of the periodical floods on the rivers which drain the enormous cistern-lakes of Central Africa.] ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... more decided. It may have been due merely to the loose condition of the wet earth allowing unsupported portions to fall from the freshly exposed surface, but there was also the risk that the softer earth was sliding under the weight of that above. The workmen, two of whom were experienced well and cistern diggers, declared the risk too great and demanded to be brought to ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... well for the horses, the soldiers were invited to the house where they went to the back porch and refreshed themselves with clean cistern water and fresh towels. While they were getting "slicked up" as some of the soldiers jokingly called their face wash, Colonel Boone called the old negro woman to bring a pitcher of whiskey, glasses, sugar, nutmeg, and eggs, and make them a rich toddy. When ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... they tried to obtain water from wells in this fashion, but the water could never be raised higher than 34 feet. Let us see why water could rise 34 feet and no more. If an empty pipe is placed in a cistern of water, the water in the pipe does not rise above the level of the water in the cistern. If, however, the pressure in the tube is removed, the water in the tube will rise to a height of 34 feet approximately. If now the air ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... Tritas, the third brother, and the ablest as well as best, is persecuted by his brothers," who, "in a fit of jealousy, on account of his wife, the aurora, and the riches she brings with her from the realm of darkness, the cistern or well [into which he has been lowered], detain their brother in the well,"[93] and he compares this form of the myth with that which it assumes in the following Hindoo tradition. "Three brothers, Ekata (i.e. the first), ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... reason to congratulate himself upon having compelled the youthful genius of his son to forsake its natural bent. He fared like the school-boy who attempts to stop with his finger the spout of a water cistern, while the stream, exasperated at this compression, escapes by a thousand uncalculated spurts, and wets him all over for his pains. Even so fared the senior Tinto, when his hopeful apprentice not only exhausted ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... accompanying lyrical intimation that he, and certain imaginary friends, have no intention of going home until the appearance of day-break. State the probable disease; and also what pathological change would be likely to be effected by putting his head under the cock of the cistern. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various

... our ghost story short, without adding another chapter, Mr. Aveling, on looking into the dark chasm by the meagre light of the lowered candle, beheld, to his amazement, the reflection of his own face in the water of a large cistern underneath the staircase, the house having formerly been supplied from the "large brewery" a short distance off. The unearthly noise was no doubt caused by air in the pipes, through which the water rushed ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... Dr. Hamlin of Constantinople, in Lowell, Mass., the tiles came from Marseilles, the stone from the sandstone quarries of Ras Beirut, the stone pavement partly from Italy and partly from Mt. Lebanon, and the eighty iron bedsteads from Birmingham, England. The cistern, which holds about 20,000 gallons, was built at the expense of a Massachusetts lady, and the portico by a lady of New York. The melodeon was given by ladies in Georgetown, D.C., and the organ is the gift of a ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... "'Tis no sin, and not coveting one's neighbour's goods, for neither St. Ursula nor the Jesuits are any Neighbours of mine;" and as for my Master, he stared at a Great St. Christopher, mighty fine in Silver, and said that it would have looked very well as an Ornament for a Cistern in ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... occasion the general execution thereof is stayed or not called on, in good sooth, I cannot tell. This only I know, that every function and several vocation striveth with other, which of them should have all the water of commodity run into her own cistern. ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... God-speed. Delightful, indeed, was the prologue of that from Abd El Kadir: "Allah," it ran, "favour the days of your far-famed learning, and prosper the excellence of your writing. O wader of the seas of knowledge, O cistern of learning of our globe, exalted above his age, whose exaltation is above the mountains of increase and our rising place, opener by his books of night and day, traveller by ship and foot and horse, one whom none can equal in travel." The letter itself was couched in a few simple, heartfelt ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... walls of a certain convent out of which there grows an olive tree: at its foot is kindled a fire whose flames are sufficient to scorch all the leaves, but behold! next day the foliage is seen to glow more bravely green than ever. Perhaps the roots of the tree are near some cistern. These mountain villages, hidden under oaks and vines, with waters trickling through their lanes, a fine climate and a soil that bears everything needful for life, must be ideal habitations for simple folks. In some of them, the death-rate is ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... the pressure exerted by the atmosphere. It consists, in the mercurial form, of a glass tube, over 31 inches long, closed at one end, filled with mercury and inverted, with its open end immersed in a cistern of mercury. The column falls to a height proportional to the pressure of the atmosphere from 30 to 31 inches at the sea level. The "standard barometer" is a height of the mercury or of the "barometric column" of 30 inches or 760 centimeters, measured from the surface of the mercury ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... and i the sound of s; as sincerely, centrick, century, circular, cistern, city, siccity: before a, o, and u, it sounds like k, as calm, concavity, copper, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... barrel; canister, jar; pottle, basket, pannier, buck-basket, hopper, maund^, creel, cran, crate, cradle, bassinet, wisket, whisket, jardiniere, corbeille, hamper, dosser, dorser, tray, hod, scuttle, utensil; brazier; cuspidor, spittoon. [For liquids] cistern &c (store) 636; vat, caldron, barrel, cask, drum, puncheon, keg, rundlet, tun, butt, cag, firkin, kilderkin, carboy, amphora, bottle, jar, decanter, ewer, cruse, caraffe, crock, kit, canteen, flagon; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... Korbes's house, he was not at home; so the mice drew the carriage into the coach-house, Chanticleer and Partlet flew upon a beam, the cat sat down in the fireplace, the duck got into the washing cistern, the pin stuck himself into the bed pillow, the millstone laid himself over the house door, and the egg rolled himself up ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm

... swore on a stack of red chips that we would never own another dog. Six promising pups that had been presented to us, blooded setters and pointers, had gone the way of all dog flesh, with the distemper and dog buttons, and by falling in the cistern, and we had been bereaved via dog misfortunes as often as John R. Bennett, of Janesville, has been bereaved on the nomination for attorney general. We could not look a pup in the face but it would get sick, and so we concluded never ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... time they pointed out the utter impracticability of carrying out my plan; nobody, they said, would be either able or willing to act as my servant there, for, amongst other things, there was no well, and the only water obtainable was from a cistern lying at a frightful depth down in the keep, and even this was not good. Under such circumstances it did not require more than one such obstacle to deter me from the pursuit of such an extravagant ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... some stretches of very good road across this desert, and I reach Aivan-i-Kaif near noon. There has been no drinkable water for a long distance, and, being thirsty, my first inquiry is for tea. "There is a tchai-khan at the umbar (water-cistern), yonder," I am told, and straightway proceed to the place pointed out; but "tchai-khan neis" is the reply upon inquiring at the umbar. In this manner am I promptly initiated into one peculiarity of the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... at Po-ne-sang was full of annoyances and discouragements. For example, we had no running water in our house and were supposed to supply ourselves from a cistern in the yard which had contracted the bad habit of running dry and for inconvenient periods remaining so. We were therefore compelled to carry all our water from a neighbor's spring at least a quarter of a mile away. ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... to have had counterbalanced side levers, one on each side, and a single flywheel on the outboard side. The cylinder is over the condenser or "cistern," connected by the steam line and valve box on the side. The cylinder crosshead is shown in the inboard profile to have reached the underside of the beams of the upper deck. The crosshead was connected by two connecting rods to the side levers. These levers operated the paddle wheel by connecting ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle

... cistern, denotes you are in danger of trespassing upon the pleasures and rights of your friends. To draw from one, foretells that you will enlarge in your pastime and enjoyment in a manner which ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... are, however, the most reliable rat-traps. There is no difficulty in poisoning rats, but they often die in the walls, and create a dreadful odor, hard to get rid of. When poisoning is attempted, remove or cover all water vessels, even the well or cistern. ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... is afire too. Say! This is getting interesting. The wind is setting directly toward Swope's house. It has been so terribly dry this last month or so that the house will go like powder if it ever catches. Why, I think Swope has a well and cistern both. Used to have, anyway, before they put the water-works in, and the board of health condemned the wells. Say! There was a put-up job if there ever was one. Why, sure! Sure he had stock in the water works. Doc. Muzzey? I guess, yes.... Pity they ever traded off ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... Valens that spans the valley between the 4th and 3rd hills of the city, still carry on their beneficent work, and afford evidence of the attention given to the water-supply of the capital during the Byzantine period. The cistern of Arcadius, to the rear of the mosque of Sultan Selim (having, it has been estimated, a capacity of 6,571,720 cubic ft. of water), the cistern of Aspar, a short distance to the east of the Gate of Adrianople, and the cistern of Mokius, on the 7th hill, are specimens of the open reservoirs within ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... during heavy or protracted rains. In some localities where the supply of water is excessively hard or is so meager that it is not sufficient for all household purposes, pipes from the eaves are connected with an underground cistern, thus conserving the prized rain water. Otherwise, the common practice is simply to equip leaders or down-spouts with "quarter-bend" sections at the lower ends to keep water away from the foundation. This is a cheap and easy way; but if the land does not ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets: Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... Experiment.—In the University of London I attended the meeting of Dec. 8th, on the reduction of Examiners' salaries, which were extravagant.—I furnished Col. Colby with a plan of a new Sector, still used in the British Survey.—I appealed to Colby about the injury to the cistern on the Great Gable in Cumberland, by the pile raised for the Survey Signal.—On Jan. 3rd occurred a most remarkable tidal disturbance: the tide in the Thames was 5 feet too low. I endeavoured to trace it on the coasts, and had a vast amount of correspondence: but ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... his useful and humble profession because no one would employ him. The dead dogs in consequence reeked rascally. Then they struck! From every vacant lot and public dumping ground, from every hedge and ditch and gutter and cistern, every crystal rill and the clabbered waters of all the canals and estuaries—from all the places, in short, which from time immemorial have been preempted by dead dogs and consecrated to the uses of them and their heirs and successors forever—they trooped innumerous, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... direct your attention to a piece of sculpture in marble of the noblest workmanship, which is both old and beautiful, and yet which may be known to few among you. It exists on the cistern of my father's house at Corinth, and was executed many centuries since by a great artist of the Peloponnesus. Publius was delighted with the work, and it is in fact beautiful beyond description. It is an exquisite representation of the marriage of Heracles and Hebe—of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... it for the sake of scripture's authority. I honor the godly as Christians, but I prefer the Bible before them; and having that still with me, I count myself far better furnished than if I had, without it, all the libraries of the two universities. Besides, I am for drinking water out of my own cistern: what God makes mine by the evidence of his word and Spirit, that I dare make bold with. Wherefore, seeing, though I am without their learned lines, yet well furnished with the words of God, I mean the Bible, I have contented myself with what I have there found; and having set ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... placed sharp-shooters in it, who at once opened a galling fire with double arquebuses, hand-grenades, and stones on the occupants of the nearest posts held by the defenders. By way of covering themselves from this fire, the besieged at once constructed a new battery on the upper cistern in the Peter Street. From this they were soon able to open fire upon the new Swedish breastwork on the tower at the Peter Gate, the result being the enemy's speedy and enforced retirement into one of the lower and less ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous

... towns, The whole world over, tight as beads of dew Upon a gossamer thread: he sifts, he weighs; All things are put to question; he must live Knowing that he grows wiser every day, Or else not live at all, and seeing too Each little drop of wisdom as it falls Into the dimpling cistern of his heart, O, give us once again the wishing-cap Of Fortunatus, and the invisible coat Of Jack the Giant-killer, Robin Hood, And Sabra in the forest with Saint George! The child, whose love is here, at least doth reap One precious gain, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... operating-room itself must be like a bath room, or, more accurately, the inside of a cistern. Walls, floor, and ceiling are all waterproof and capable of being washed down with a hose. There must be no casings or cornices of any sort to catch dust; and in the best appointed hospitals no one is permitted to ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... finish it. As the case was urgent he sold six more licenses at 1,000 francs each, but he died too soon to see the completion of his favorite work (1698). The new chateau was not finished before 1700, and even then it had no cistern. In a pen sketch of Quebec, on a manuscript map of 1699, preserved in the Depot de Cartes de la Marine, the new chateau is distinctly represented. In front is a gallery or balcony resting on a wall and buttresses at the edge of the cliff. Above the gallery is a range of high ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... was a busy one for us. We had a platform to lay at Morrisania, a chimney to build at Tarrytown, a sidewalk to lay at White Plains, and a large cistern to dig and wall in at Tuckahoe. Besides these, there were platforms to build at Van Cortlandt and Mount Kisco, water-towers at Highbridge and Ardsley, a sidewalk and drain at Caryl, a culvert and an ash-pit at Bronx Park, and some forty ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... terrace that fruit trees were grown amidst the plants of luxuriant foliage and the brilliant Asian flowers. Water for irrigating the gardens was raised from the river by a mechanical contrivance to a great cistern situated on the highest terrace, and it was prevented from leaking out of the soil by layers of reeds and bitumen and sheets of lead. Spacious apartments, luxuriously furnished and decorated, were constructed in ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... are keeping watch while the king holds revel within. Salome, the daughter of Herodias, issues from the banquet chamber, troubled by Herod's gaze. The voice of Jochanaan (John the Baptist), who is imprisoned in a cistern hard by, is heard. Salome bids Narraboth, a young Assyrian, bring him forth. Dragged from his living tomb, Jochanaan denounces the wickedness of Herodias, but Salome has no ears for his curses. Fascinated by the ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... Pilate, And this might be all that has been,— So what is there to frown or smile at? What is left for us, save, in growth Of soul, to rise up, far past both, From the gift looking to the giver, And from the cistern to the river, And from the finite to infinity, And from man's dust to ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... bright beaming stones, That did ingem the sixth light, ceas'd the chiming Of their angelic bells; methought I heard The murmuring of a river, that doth fall From rock to rock transpicuous, making known The richness of his spring-head: and as sound Of cistern, at the fret-board, or of pipe, Is, at the wind-hole, modulate and tun'd; Thus up the neck, as it were hollow, rose That murmuring of the eagle, and forthwith Voice there assum'd, and thence along the beak Issued in form of words, such as my heart ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... supply. The cattle-wheels of Cyprus are very inferior to the sakyeeah of Egypt, but are arranged upon a similar principle, by a chain of earthenware pots or jars upon a rope and wheel, which, revolving above a deep cistern, ascend from the depth below, and deliver the water into a trough or reservoir upon the surface. From the general reservoir small watercourses conduct the stream to any spot desired. This is the most ancient system of artificial irrigation ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... Holding infinity, that, step by step, We may advance, and find, in what seems good To Him, our gladness and our being's crown? If this were not, then what a toy the world! And what a mockery these suns and systems! And how like pumping at an empty cistern Were it to live and study and aspire! Come, then, O Art! and warm me with thy smile! Flash on my inward sight thy radiant shapes! August interpreter of thoughts divine, Whether in sound, or word, or form revealed! ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... spend, we labour and labour, but we buy no bread of contentment, and the waters of satisfaction are far away. The satisfying bread cannot be bought; it can only be begged. The water of life cannot be taken from a cistern; it must be drunk ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... appearance was referable, I dare say, to the bad air of the marshes; but it was difficult to help feeling as if she were too much haunted by the Giants, and they were frightening her to death, all alone in that exhausted cistern of a Palace, among the reeds and rushes, with the mists hovering about outside, and stalking round ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... a one who hath gone into the wilderness and suffered thirst with beasts of prey, disliked only to sit at the cistern with filthy camel-drivers. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... a cistern had greater value in exchange than a vineyard: Martial, III, 56. In Paris, too, drinking water, which is transported only with considerable trouble, costs 1-1/3 thalers per cubic meter. We may also mention snow and ice in summer, which last sells in the capitals of southern Europe ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... upon the roof of the house, and catching it as it came down; but by and by it did not come down—it bounded into the tin eave-trough and rolled slowly along till it came to the big pipe that led to the cistern, and into this it dropped, and went whirring down, and stopped somewhere with ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... measure of your desires is the measure of your possessions of Christ's power. Our faith determines the amount of His cleansing, healing, vivifying energy which will reside in us. The width of the bore of the water-pipe that is laid down settles the amount of water that will come into your cistern. The water may be high outside the lock. If the lock-gate be kept fast closed, the height of the water outside produces no raising of the low level of that within, If you open a chink of the gate a trickle will pass through, and if you ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... a long-continued drought, it is well to divert and discharge upon the surface of the ground the first ten minutes' flow of a shower, so that the impurities of the air and the dust of the roof may first be removed. After this first dash, lead to the cistern all that follows. Even with this precaution, the water will be more agreeable for use if filtered. There are numerous systems for making filters in cisterns, but no other is so simple nor so durable and satisfactory as the separation of that part of the cistern from which ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring

... allowance had been made for the education of her only legitimate son, Conrad, the other having perished by an accident on the day of his father's death. While Don John of Austria was, gathering laurels in Granada, his half-brother, Pyramus junior, had been ingloriously drowned in a cistern at Ghent. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... be reasonable; you must give the cistern a chance to refill and replace that which you ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... Half a score of men and boys, some of them the hired help of Mr. Appleby, were filling pails from a cistern, and at a pump, and dashing the water on the blazing hay. They could not get near enough to make the water effective, and what little they did dash on was almost at once turned to steam by the heat. Then, too, the stack was so large in diameter at the bottom that ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman

... painter's studio and knocked on the door. As he did so, he heard a quick, light step upon the stairs, and a young and very dark man, dressed in a weaver's blouse and carrying a tin pail which he had evidently just filled with water from the cistern, came up. ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... and forgiving love which their own stores cannot supply, they cry not directly for more power of enduring and forgiving, but for more faith which will strengthen them on this side, and on all other sides at the same time. It is as if you had a cistern meant to supply twelve streams, running in various directions, from whose lip twelve conduits were accordingly led: and when water from one of these was suddenly wanted, you opened it but found that ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... in the sun. In the twinkling of an eye, it seemed to me, he had subdued the horse and tied him to a ring in the wall which I, in my bewilderment, had failed to see; had seized me by the collar of my coat and driven me before him through a kind of tunnel to a second court in which there was a cistern and a pump. He worked that pump and held my head beneath it, cursing the servants for a ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... a cistern of huge stones beneath the floor of the cell of a friar of the order and the same size as his cell. The only aperture was in the floor of the cell above and closed by a heavy grating, the key to which, kept by the head of the order, was never entrusted to ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... old rascal that someone had charged with picking pockets: and they were dragging him off to be duck'd. Now in the heart of Wantage the little stream that runs through the town is widen'd into a cistern about ten feet square, and five in depth, over which hung a ducking stool for scolding wives. And since the townspeople draw their water from this cistern, 'tis to be supposed they do not fear the infection. ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... knowledge, and with such conveniences as I had, and to aid in grafting, I should have been told to make a long narrow box, put a wire screen bottom on it, make a cover for it, fasten a wire at each end, put my scion wood in and let it down deep in a cistern, and let it hang two or three inches over the water for scion keeping. When grafting I should have been told to carry my Merribrooke melter around in an empty pail to keep the wind from blowing it out and to be able to better ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... of God, the vat had been half filled with water in the interim which had elapsed between his first and last visit to the mill, and the prison thus becoming a cistern, he must have come to his end in a few moments after his fatal plunge. It was the one relief which a contemplation of this tragedy brought ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... no reason why farmers should not have fresh meat all the year round. There is certainly no sense in stuffing yourself full of salt meat every morning, and making a well or a cistern of your stomach for the rest of the day. Every farmer should have an ice house. Upon or near every farm is some stream from which plenty of ice can be obtained, and the long summer days made delightful. ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... position to be secure, for it was about this time that he took the house at what was then 57 Lower Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, where he resided for the rest of his life. His name appears first in 1725 among the ratepayers of the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, but not long ago a lead cistern was found in the house, bearing his initials and the date 1721. On what terms he took the house is not known; it is ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent

... others made, far more magnificent and costly, for the temple itself. There was a silver cistern or tank, large enough to hold three thousand gallons of wine. This tank was to be used by the inhabitants of Delphi in their great festivals. There was also a smaller cistern, or immense goblet, ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... Rosebud, for it is kept in open pans, in these fetid rooms, and soon sours—and the cows had not yet come down from the hills. Water, too, was at a premium. There was none to be had, save what had fallen from the clouds, and been stored in a foul cistern, which seemed common property. I drew a pailful of it, not to displease the disheveled group which surrounded me, full of questions; but on the first turning in the lane, emptied the vessel upon the back of a pig, which was darting ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... that her boiler was to be had out in October, and her bath cistern cleaned out, and all ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster

... consequence of that ignorance. In point of fact they knew the law as well as we do. Their earlier aqueducts were conduits almost wholly underground; their later were all on arches. When they wished to carry water to a height within the city, up a watertower to a distributing cistern, or to the top storey of a building, they did so by pipes, just as we should; but when they brought water from forty miles away they preferred to bring it in channels lined with impermeable cement and carried upon arches, which wound across the country according to the levels ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... small nozzle projecting upwards in its centre. The petrol trickles from the tank into the carburettor, and is kept at a constant level by means of a float which acts in a very similar way to the ballcock of a water cistern. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... appearance excluded from their society; and I am instructed by this narration, and others like me may profit by its moral during their remaining lives.—From one indiscreet person in an assembly a host of the prudent may get hurt. If they fill a cistern to the brim with rose-water, and let a dog fall into it, the whole will ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... vat is filled with water. Fermentation soon begins and goes on till in 24 hours the contents of the vat are so hot that the hand cannot be retained in it. This is what Marco ascribes to the sun's heat. The liquor is then drawn off to another cistern and there agitated; the indigo separates in flakes. A quantity of lime-water then is added, and the blue is allowed to subside. The clear water is drawn off; the sediment is drained, pressed, and cut into small ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... brushwood or thicket, we also came upon two pits filled with water, which were discovered quite by accident...since they had only a small hole at top, that would admit a man's arm, but below we found a large cistern or water-tank under the earth; after which with mattocks and sledge-hammers we widened the hole so as to be able to take out the water conveniently. Besides, we found in these islands large numbers of a species ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres

... the whole town worthy of a visit. East of the fortress is the simple quadrangular tomb of Mahomet el Domiats, which bears a Greek inscription. Facing this is a house of refuge for casual passers-by, with a subterranean cistern, still containing water. Upon a small uneven piece of ground, called Ard Sheik el Kashif, is a Kittabia, or children's school, a roughly built house like the rest, where the lively youngsters assemble to be taught ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator

... These mosquitoes are essentially domestic insects, for they are very rarely found except in houses or in their immediate vicinity. Once they enter a room they will scarcely leave it except to lay their eggs in a near-by cistern, water-pot, ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane

... breakfast, sloshed his face at the cistern pump and was ready to eat when the men ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... that the condition of many London streets is appalling; but make a house-to-house visitation, and see how the desolation is caused. Wanton, brutish destructiveness has been at work everywhere. The cistern which should supply a building cannot be fed because the spring, the hinge, and the last few yards of pipe have been chopped away and carried to a marine-store dealer; the landings and the floors are strewn with ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... thoughts: the old hut in the environs of Surat, with its patch of field and the giant gourds, acknowledges you, and a small stream, diverted from one of the channels which you supply, is filling a deep cistern in one of the back streets of Goa. Pardon me if I think that the untutored Indian's thought is better even for us than any which we have framed for ourselves. Imagine yourself as a sportsman, spear in hand, pursuing the wild V.C. through fire and water, or patiently stalking the wary K.C.B., ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... said Aunt Patience, "we had nice cisterns that caught rainwater for family use, and we think now our old cistern-water is enough better than the Croton for washing. There were a good many wells but some were brackish and poor, and people were saying then they were not fit to use. The Tea Water pump was on the corner of Chatham and Pearl, and particular people bought it at a penny a gallon. It was carried ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... set. More and more of God we may receive every day we live, and through the endless ages of eternity; and if we have Him in our hearts, we shall live as long as there is anything more to pass from God to us. Until the fountain has poured its whole fulness into the cistern, the cistern will never be broken. He who becomes partaker of the Divine nature can never die. So as Christ taught us the great argument for immortality is the present relation between God and us, and the fact that He is the God of Abraham ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... The shouts of mirth and revelry borne upon the midnight air, are only the prelude to tears and sighs and mourning. Behind thee is the blackness of despair, before thee the everlasting sunshine. Away, away! tarry not to sip water from the broken cistern, for the living fountain gushes forth, clear as crystal; and the invitation is for all: "Ho, every one that thirsteth" (Isa. 55: 1; ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... the camp was formed, I set about endeavoring to repair my barometer. As I have already said, this was a standard cistern barometer, of Troughton's construction. The glass cistern had been broken about midway; but as the instrument had been kept in a proper position, no air had found its way into the tube, the end of which had always remained covered. I had with me a number of vials of tolerably ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... and a new one put in. The water-cock is something like a tap of a barrel; it is in the hold of a ship on the starboard side, and at that part of the ship called the well. By turning a handle which is inside the ship, the sea-water is let into a cistern in the hold, and it is from that pumped up to wash the decks. In some ships, the water is drawn up the side in buckets, and there is no water-cock. To get out the old water-cock, it was necessary to make the ship heel so much on her larboard side as to raise the outside of this apparatus above ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... and, having dedicated his works to God, dipped a hand-bowl in the earthen jar which served as cistern, and carried it out on to the sand before the threshold. There the rising colour of the dawn bewitched him; he was reminded of a certain trumpet-flower which bloomed at Easter on the Mission walls—a flower with purple petals and the gleam of gold in its heart; and, all on fire ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... course, its thousand novelties. I saw prickly pears in blossom upon a ledge of rock; a great lunar-moth resting drowsily, almost drunkenly, in the parasol shade of a wild-carrot blossom; here was the half of a wagon wheel, the wood rotted away, and there in the tangle an ancient cistern mouth of brick, the cistern filled to the brim with alluring rubbish. My sister sprang with a gurgle of delight to catch a garter snake, which eluded her; and a last year's brier, tough and humorously inclined, seized upon Mary by the skirts ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... a few details to give respecting the tragical death of Kleber. The house of Elfy Bey, which Bonaparte occupied at Cairo, and in which Kleber lived after his departure; had a terrace leading from a salon to an old ruined cistern, from which, down a few steps, there was an entrance into the garden. The terrace commanded a view of the grand square of El Beguyeh, which was to the right on coming out of the salon, while the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... to the hill that rises from the plateau, and found at its base a cistern, the sole token we had seen of the domain of man, except the dogs and cats that had returned to the primitive. It was a basin cut in the solid rock, and doubtless had been the water supply of the tribes that ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... by a great vane, with the arms of Philip and Mary impaled upon it, and supported by a lion and an eagle, gilt and painted. The water was discharged by a great dragon, one of the supporters of the Tudor arms, into the cistern beneath, whence it was conveyed by pipes to every ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... middle position, so that the slides may be out of gear,—the cocks of the oil-vessels and feed-pipes turned off,—and the steam blowing off from the safety-valve at a pressure of 35 lbs. per square inch; if blowing off in any excess, the waste steam may be turned into the Tender-cistern to heat the water, and the door of the smoke-box may be opened to check the fire, but it should be fastened up again 10 or 15 minutes before the time ...
— Practical Rules for the Management of a Locomotive Engine - in the Station, on the Road, and in cases of Accident • Charles Hutton Gregory

... suspended on gimbals, so that they always maintain their perpendicular position, notwithstanding the rolling of the vessel. Each of these lights consists of a copper lamp, placed in front of a saucer-shaped reflector. The lamp is fed by a cistern of oil at the back of the reflector. This being a revolving light, a number of reflectors were fixed to the iron sides of a quadrangular frame, and the whole caused to revolve once every minute by means of clockwork. The reflectors on each side of the revolving frame—eight ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... effort to avoid capture, had now almost reached his goal. Just above him was the nursery landing, with its little wooden gate, and near it, leaning against the wall, was a pair of kitchen steps, with which he had hopes of reaching the roof, or the cistern loft, or some other safe and inaccessible place. Better a night spent on the slates amongst the chimney-pots than a bed in that terrible No. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... beast, and only received the Viaticum when dying, by the chance of a priest passing that way. A fifteenth century statue of her, nearly life-size, is in the National Museum at Munich, removed from the Cathedral of Augsburg as indelicate. S. Antony spent twenty years in a sort of cistern, and only twice a year received loaves, let down from above through the roof. Certainly all that time he was voluntarily excommunicate. If S. Hilarius ever made sacramental communion we are not told, but we do know that he was for ever hiding himself from where were his fellow- men, in wilds and ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... wrote the opening; it was apparently to have been a survey of the countries in connexion with an immemorial oak which stood in a neighbouring chace. But he was forced to say that the mind of man was not a fountain but a cistern, and his was a broken one. He had expended his stock of materials for a long ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith



Words linked to "Cistern" :   pool, sump, rain barrel, tank, cesspool, cesspit, storage tank, reservoir, sink, sac



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