"Pendulum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The pendulum of life moves heavily, and in its slow beat the whole creature seems to be absorbed. The rest is no more than dreams, snatches of dreams, formless and swarming, and dust of atoms dancing aimlessly, a dizzy whirl passing, and bringing laughter or horror. Outcry, moving ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... doom came the necessity to know. He was hit in the head. It was only a vague surmise at first. But in the swinging of the pendulum of pain, swinging ever nearer and nearer, to touch him into an agony of consciousness and a consciousness of agony, gradually the knowledge emerged—he must be hit in the head—hit on the left brow; if so, there would be blood—was there blood?—could he feel blood in his left ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... Church of England, wherein insistence had been laid upon the principles of a covenanted church, of its voluntary support, and of the unrighteousness of churches possessing either lands or revenue. The pendulum had swung from the broad democracy and large liberty of Brownism through Barrowism, past the Cambridge Platform (almost the centre of its arc), and on through the Half-Way Covenant to the beginning ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... the falling part, or recovery, the restoration to equilibrium. The mechanical model (fig. 62) will help us to visualise many complex response phenomena. The molecular model consists of a torsional pendulum—a wire with a dependent sphere. By the stimulus of a blow there is produced a torsional vibration—a response followed by recovery. The writing lever attached to the pendulum records the response-curves. The form of these curves, stimulus ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... The poet is not lord Of the next syllable may come With the returning pendulum; And what he plans to-day in song, To-morrow sings it in another tongue. Where the last leaf fell from his bough, He knows not if a leaf shall grow, Where he sows he doth not reap, He reapeth where he did not sow; He sleeps, and dreams forsake his sleep To meet him on his waking way. ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... and Profaneness of the English Stage' by Jeremy Collier, which carried the more weight because the author was not a Puritan but a High-Church bishop and partisan of the Stuarts. Partly as a result of such attacks and partly by the natural course of events the pendulum, by the end of the period, was swinging back, and not long thereafter Restoration comedy died and the stage was left free for more decent, though, as it proved, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... monuments, and an inscription, signifying that William Hopkins, yeoman, Richard Hawkes, and Robert Carter, caused the chimes of this church to be made and set up, at their equal and proper cost and charges, A. D. 1635. The clock, which is represented to be a remarkable good one, has a pendulum upon an unusual construction, the rod being fourteen yards in length, and the ball of it ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... often purchased a pennyworth of exquisite pleasure by enriching some sad-eyed urchin. Hannah (whose own scanty surplus was fortunately augmented by an anonymous West-End Reform Jew, who employed her as his agent) had no prepossessions to correct, no pendulum-oscillations to distract her, no sentimental illusions to sustain her. She knew the Ghetto as it was; neither expected gratitude from the poor, nor feared she might "pauperize them," knowing that the poor Jew never exchanges ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... thus was not without effect upon a mind by nature reasonable above the average. Tryon's race impulse and social prejudice had carried him too far, and the swing of the mental pendulum brought his thoughts rapidly back in the opposite direction. Tossing uneasily on the bed, where he had thrown himself down without undressing, the air of the room oppressed him, and he threw open the window. The cool night air calmed his throbbing ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... to the traitor's death!" shouted the Sovereign Pontiff. The chest was loosed, and swung like a pendulum lengthwise of the room, down almost to the floor and up nearly to the ceiling. The profanity now turned into a yell of terror. The Martyrs slapped one another's backs and grew blue in the face with laughter. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... idiot went forth, and his irregular clumsy footsteps sounded on the pebble-paved yard. When the noise of them ceased in the soft roadway, Froyle jumped off the table again. Gradually his body, like a stopping pendulum, came to rest under the hook, and hung twitching, with strange disconnected movements. The horse in the stable, hearing unaccustomed noises, rattled his chain and stamped about in the straw ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... clock, and then when the clock struck one, down I had to come. But I ran down so fast that I tripped over the pendulum. The clock reached down its hands and tried to catch me, but it had no eyes in its face to see me, so I slipped, anyhow, and I hurt ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... act like a heavy weight in a clock movin' half the time, or he would be jest swept to and frow like a pendulum. It ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... in vain. We cannot expand the moments to hours, nor compress the hours to moments. Leaden or winged, the hours are hours. The cold- blooded pendulum ticks on, equable and unaltered, and after sixty minutes, no sooner and no later, the hour strikes. 'There is a time ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... influence of Poe's work are indisputable. One might hazard the assertion that in all Latin countries he is the best known of American authors. Certainly no American writer has been as widely accepted in France. Nothing better of its kind has ever been done than "The Pit and the Pendulum," or than "The Fall of the House of Usher," which Mr. Stoddard has compared recently with Browning's "Childe Rolande to the Dark Tower came" for its power of suggesting intellectual desolation. Nothing better of its kind has ever been done than "The Gold-Bug," or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... of the pendulum of a clock the Negro is swinging from an extreme religious fanaticism to an extreme rationalism. But he will finally take his position upon a solid religious basis; and to his "faith" will add virtue, knowledge, and good works. Everywhere under good influences ...
— 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
... second time, and this time in earnest, until steadily all the energy of his splendid body was applied, and quite imperceptibly, without jerk or strain, the bulky nine hundred pounds rose from the door and swung back and forth, pendulum like, between his legs. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... is a mind as well as a temperament. Experience is a swing of the pendulum between the momentary ecstasy of immediate contact and the subsequent reaction upon the moment, which is consciousness of it. In order to make his vision actual, the artist rises out of the domain of feeling into that of thought. The landscape has compelled him; it is now he who must ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... clock, which appeared to be in a mind to strike. To the hissing sound there succeeded a wheezing one, until, putting forth its best efforts, the thing struck two with as much clatter as though some one had been hitting an iron pot with a cudgel. That done, the pendulum returned to its right-left, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... outside San Francisco Bay being chosen for the locale. A pirate ship crew was to board a merchant ship, and a big battle to follow on the latter's deck. A heavy storm came up just as the two ships came together, and Mr. Fildew, 120 feet up in the air, holding to a mast that swayed like a pendulum, was compelled to go through with what was a most difficult and dangerous piece of work, which, however, resulted in some exceptionally fine scenes. In these instances, of course, it was a matter of the director's planning almost everything just as he wanted to take it; ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... away a colored print of a bull-dog in an overcoat, Mr. Bixby hung a fine engraving of the Madonna, and on the mantel itself he had placed his clock. It was a small French clock under a crystal, so that its rapidly-swinging pendulum could be easily seen. All bachelors, however negligent of their surroundings, have some one hobby among articles of furniture. It may be an easy-chair, or a book-case, or a chandelier—there is one thing that ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... off." They ceased, and all together turned their faces to the door. Singleton stepped in, advanced two paces, and stood swaying slightly. The sea hissed, flowed roaring past the bows, and the forecastle trembled, full of deep murmurs; the lamp flared, swinging like a pendulum. He looked with a dreamy and puzzled stare, as though he could not distinguish the still men from their restless shadows. There were awestruck exclamations:—"Hallo, hallo"... "How does it look outside now, Singleton?" Those who sat on the hatch lifted their eyes in silence, ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... down and rebuilt the upper part of the spire of the cathedral, and fixed therein a pendulum stage to counteract the effects of the south and the south-westerly gales of wind, which act with some considerable power against it, and had ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... was a being with probably a very wide range of possibilities, a machine with a pendulum that most likely had an unusual ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... room. The fire crackled in the stove, the pendulum of the clock swung backward and forward monotonously. "Ever so! ever so!" it seemed to say. Those pictures of her parents had been looking calmly down upon her, their last child, for many years. Her ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... to be the natural posture of this remarkable woman, Victoria thought—a posture of vigilance, of defiance. A clock of one of the Austen grandfathers stood obscurely at the back of the hall, and the measured swing of its pendulum was all that broke the silence. This was Austen's home. It seemed impossible for her to realize that he could be the product of this environment—until a portrait on the opposite wall, above the stairs, came out of the gloom and caught her eye like the glow of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... let it go it twanged in the air like a strong, wire sharply struck. Satisfied by his scrutiny, my light limbed companion swung himself nimbly upon it, and twisting his legs round it in sailor fashion, slipped down eight or ten feet, where his weight gave it a motion not un-like that of a pendulum. He could not venture to descend any further; so holding on with one hand, he with the other shook one by one all the slender roots around him, and at last, finding one which he thought trustworthy, shifted him self to it and continued ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... the runner's favor. The stages of the game must be taken into consideration, and what may be a perfectly commendable play in one situation may be altogether reckless and foolhardy in another. Therefore, the most important faculty of all, the pendulum which regulates, and the rudder which guides, is judgment. An illustration may make my meaning clear. In the ninth inning, with a runner on first base and the score a tie, it may be a good play for the runner to attempt to steal second, because from there a single hit may send him ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... various methods of reaching the desired result, the chief aim of which is that at the end of each swing of the pendulum the escape teeth shall be made to stop until the pendulum starts to swing back again. This can be achieved by beveling both tooth and pallet until the teeth, instead of recoiling by the downward motion of the pallet, shall ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... you can hear," observed Joachim murmuringly; "but when he sings, you have no idea what horrible faces he makes. Nay, it's true, indeed, he turns up his eyes, shuts them, distorts his mouth, and swings about on the stool like the pendulum ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... to think that the censer did not sway so regularly, so like a measured pendulum as it had done, but was moving somewhat erratically, and borne upon the gale came a low, ominous murmur, which first mingled itself with the voice of the preacher, and then threatened to dominate it. Still the refrain of the symphony rang in my ears, and I was soothed to rest by ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... had believed that the good works of a Government which had wrought so much for the public benefit would have been appreciated by the great mass of the electors, and they were unfeignedly astonished at the verdict returned by the country. They had not taken into account that swing of the pendulum which has so large an influence in popular constituencies. Nor had they noted the extent to which the unity of the Liberal party, and its consequent strength, had been impaired by the action of advanced sections, who were so passionately bent upon carrying the ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... assailed in unknightly fashion below the knee: there, to his unspeakable delight, was Abdiel, clinging to him with his fore-legs, and wagging his tail as if, like the lizards for terror, he would shake it off for gladness! What a blessed little pendulum was Abdiel's tail! It went by that weight of the clock of the universe called devotion. It was the escapement of that delight which is of the essence of existence, and which, when God has set right "our disordered clocks," will be its ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... TARIFF.—Our tariff history is full of inconsistencies. The pendulum has swung first to low duties and then to severely high duties. No tariff has satisfied all the interests involved; indeed, no other issue, with the possible exception of slavery, has provoked as much political strife as the tariff. Every tariff is essentially a compromise, for ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... which cover a space of not less than two million, five hundred thousand square miles. It would advance the science of hydrography, and help to solve some of the difficult problems connected with Equatorial and Polar currents. It would enable us, it is said, by a series of pendulum observations at or near the Pole, to render essential service to the science of geology, to form a mathematical theory of the physical condition of the earth, and to ascertain its exact conformation. It would probably throw light on the wonderful phenomena ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... integration, are parts of one undulatory process. Cut the wave where you will its curve claims to be finished in both directions and suggests a before as well as an after. If, in the very nature of things, the pendulum sways between confusion and order, chaos and cosmos, each extreme intrinsically demands the other, not only as its consequent, but as its antecedent; and the first chaos, no less than any succeeding one, will seem ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... "See the pendulum swing from useful penury to useless opulence. Why does it not halt midway, you inquire? Because the race is so young. Ach! a mere two hundred and forty million years from our grandfather-grandmother amoeba in the ancestral morass! What can one ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... Castilian mules with them. These thousand tiny bells quivered for some time with the vibration of the rope, then gradually died away, and finally became silent when the manikin had been brought into a state of immobility by that law of the pendulum which has dethroned the water clock and the hour-glass. Then Clopin, pointing out to Gringoire a rickety old stool placed beneath ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... and nothing can be finer than the large, firm way in which, from their point of vantage, they throw themselves over their tremendous oar. It has the boldness of a plunging bird and the regularity of a pendulum. Sometimes, as you see this movement in profile, in a gondola that passes you—see, as you recline on your own low cushions, the arching body of the gondolier lifted up against the sky—it has a kind of nobleness which suggests an image on a Greek frieze. The gondolier ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Von Kempelen and his Discovery Mesmeric Revelation The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar The Black Cat The Fall of the House of Usher Silence—a Fable The Masque of the Red Death The Cask of Amontillado The Imp of the Perverse The Island of the Fay The Assignation The Pit and the Pendulum The Premature Burial The Domain of Arnheim Landor's Cottage William Wilson The ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... utilitarian, notwithstanding the blood of the troubadours. There is even a bed in the salle a manger. A piece of furniture, however, from which my eye takes more pleasure is one of those old clocks which reach from the ceiling to the floor, and conceal all the mystery and solemnity of pendulum and weights from the vulgar gaze. It has a very loud and self-asserting tick, and a still more arrogant strike, for such an old clock; but, then, everybody here has a voice that is much stronger than is needed, and it is the habit to scream ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the cordials, but sat sipping the coffee out of the tiny Dresden cup, while she listened to the wearisome platitudes of Mrs. Graham and her guests. From time to time her eye was caught by the flashing of the jewelled pendulum of the clock on the mantel, in the drawing-room across the hall, and her mind dwelt ironically on some ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... or else we want peace, but vacillation gives us neither. In spite of its irksomeness, we seem sometimes almost powerless to end it, because as soon as we have about decided on the one alternative, what we shall miss by not choosing the other comes vividly to mind, and swings the pendulum its way. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... conditions of a metaphysical teleology are undoubtedly present on the one hand, and the formal conditions of a speculative atheism are as undoubtedly present on the other, there is thus in both cases a logical vacuum supplied wherein the pendulum of thought is free to swing in whichever direction it may be made to swing by the ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... was turned down, the cat was winking and yawning at the fire, and the doctor sat in a chair in front of the fading glow and listened to the measured breathing of the boy behind him. It dropped at length, like a pendulum that is about to stop, into the noiseless beat of innocent sleep, and then the good man got up and looked down at the little head ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... capture. He, therefore, began the famous march across the French front, by which he hoped to gain touch with the army on his left, and as he turned, the British and French fell upon him simultaneously, as in a vice. For a day the line wavered irresolutely, then Von Kluck realised that the pendulum of success was beginning to swing the other way. He had to retire ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... had been conducted in silence, I had a curious sensation, caused by my intense sympathy with Maxine's suffering. I felt as if my heart were the pendulum of a clock which had been jarred until it was uncertain whether to go on or stop. Once, when the gendarmes were peering under the sofa, or behind the sofa cushions, a grey shadow round Maxine's eyes made her beautiful ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... care he laid the key softly on the mantelpiece and listened intently. The clock was now aggressively audible, so that he opened the case again, and putting his finger against the pendulum, stopped it. Then he drew his revolver and cocked it, and, with his set face turned towards the door, and his ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... severe, the first of the extraordinary forms of torture, was so called when the sufferer, having hung suspended by the wrists, for sometimes a whole hour, was swung about by the executioner, either like the pendulum of a clock, or by elevating him with the windlass and dropping him to within a foot or two of the ground. If he stood this torture, a thing almost unheard of, seeing that it cut the flesh of the wrist to the bone and dislocated the limbs, weights were attached to the feet, thus doubling ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... excused herself to ascertain the cause of the delay. Evelyn and her suitor were left alone. She was standing by a window looking out, and he was standing by the fireplace watching the swing of the figure on the pendulum of the tall mantelpiece clock. He was the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... systems have for their underlying principle the fact that a pendulum or elastic reed, so supported as to be capable of vibrating freely, will have one particular rate of vibration which it may easily be made to assume. This pendulum or reed is placed under the influence ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... universe,—a grave mystery which seemed to envelop all visible things with a sudden shadow of premonitory fear. The silence prevailing was painful—almost terrible. A great ormolu clock in the room, one of the Holy Father's "Jubilee" gifts, ticked the minutes slowly away with a jewel-studded pendulum, which in its regular movements to and fro sounded insolently obtrusive in such a stillness. Gherardi abstractedly raised his eyes to a great ivory crucifix which was displayed upon the wall against a background ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... rush, for Bulger's musket was at the far end of its pendulum swing, but the old seaman saw his danger in time. With a movement of extraordinary agility in a man of his bulk, he swung on his heel, presenting his side to the rapier that flashed in Diggle's hand. Parrying the thrust with his hook, he shortened his stump and ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... but his eyes took on so terrible a fixity, and he cast upon the two great princes who were watching him a glance so penetrating, that the duke and cardinal were forced to drop their eyes. Philippe le Bel met with the same resistance when the torture of the pendulum was applied in his presence to the Templars. That punishment consisted in striking the victim on the breast with one arm of the balance pole with which money is coined, its end being covered with a pad of leather. One of the knights thus tortured, looked so intently at the king that Philippe could ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... vaulted roof, which had been left swinging by one of the vergers. The habitual meditation of genius combined with an ordinary accident a new idea of science, and hence conceived the invention of measuring time by the medium of a pendulum. Who but a genius of this order, sitting in his orchard, and observing the descent of an apple, could have discovered a new quality in matter, and have ascertained the laws of attraction, by perceiving that the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... new chapter in answer to miscellaneous objections, and shall give up the greater part to answer Mivart's cases of difficulty of incipient structures being of no use: and I find it can be done easily. He never states his case fairly, and makes wonderful blunders...The pendulum is now swinging against our side, but I feel positive it will soon swing the other way; and no mortal man will do half as much as you in giving it a start in the right direction, as you did at the first commencement. God forgive me for writing so long and egotistical a letter; but it is ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... ballistics by B. Robins, Count Rumford and Charles Hutton, the velocity of a projectile was found by means of the ballistic pendulum, in which the principle of momentum is applied in finding the velocity of a projectile (Principles of Gunnery, by Benjamin Robins, edited by Hutton, 1805, p. 84). It consisted of a pendulum of considerable weight, which was displaced from its position of rest by the impact ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... half mile above, and was plunging downward with inconceivable momentum. Striking some obstruction, it rebounded like a rubber ball against the opposite side of the gorge, then recoiled, still diving downward, oscillating like a pendulum from wall to wall, whirling with increasing speed until it crashed to the bottom of the gorge with a shock so terrific that ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... pointed into the open door of the house, and showed the tinman a large wooden clock put up without a case between two windows, the pendulum and the weights being "exposed and bare." This clock he had bought for ten dollars of a travelling Yankee, who had set out to supply the country with machines. It had only kept tolerable time for about two months, and had ever since been getting faster and faster, though it was still faithfully wound ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... when its first freshness has gone and its complexion becomes darker. A very pretty and uncommon object to copy is that of an old-fashioned clock, a veritable "my grandfather's clock," an upright tall eight-day clock that has a long chain and a heavy pendulum concealed within its tall case, and that shows a big square face with large figures printed on it. I will give you a few details about my cork clock, and I think you will make one and set it upon a bracket to be admired by all beholders. This miniature ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... hereafter.[605] Suffice it now to observe that he proved himself a famous disciplinarian, and that he was a great favourite with Fonseca, to whom he seems to have owed his appointment. He went out in February, 1502, with a fleet of thirty ships carrying 2,500 persons, for the pendulum of public opinion had taken another swing, and faith in the Indies was renewed. Some great discoveries, to be related in the next chapter, had been made since 1498; and, moreover, the gold mines of Hispaniola were beginning to ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... understand his own horrid creation) was a wreck, a shell, that had been burned hollow, and cancered by the fierce furnace of life. His clockwork was gone, or carious; only some miserable fragment of a pendulum continued to oscillate paralytically from mere incapacity of any thing so abrupt, and therefore so vigorous, as a decided HALT! However, the use of this dreadful word may be reasonably extended to the young who happen to have become essentially old in misery. Intensity of a suffering ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the vast republic of art and letters he had imbibed the philosophy that was to threaten the very existence of his own clan. The spread of the revolution had not dismayed him, for he believed that in time the pendulum would swing back and bring a constitutional government to Russia. But in the weeks of struggle, privation, and passion a new Peter Nicholaevitch ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... from our own specially-raised American correspondent:—A gentleman who fancied himself a pendulum always went upon tick, and never discovered his delusion until he was carefully wound up in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... of gravitation is gravity. The action of the earth on the unit of mass placed in one point, and the intensity of gravity, is measured, as we know, by the aid of a pendulum. The methods of measurement, whether by absolute or by relative determinations, so greatly improved by Borda and Bessel, have been still further improved by various geodesians, among whom should be mentioned M. von Sterneek ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... observation, and in turn jealously guarded by him until passed on to some younger brother in the profession. Every garden operation was made to seem a wonderful and difficult undertaking. Now, all that has changed. In fact the pendulum has swung, as it usually does, to the other extreme. Often, if you are a beginner, you have been flatteringly told in print that you could from the beginning do just as well as ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... where you look for it,' said Miss Kennedy, biting her nut. 'Are you playing pendulum still, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... point, however, each of which wounded, consciousness fought itself free again. Such violent extremes of emotion were, in truth, contrary to his nature. They made him unsure. And, as the pendulum swung back, something ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... from outside regarding his past, and it was only when he himself talked that any light was thrown upon his former years. He seemed, in consequence, to be enviably free and ready for anything. Unfettered by tradition or association, he was a pendulum, balanced to swing potently in either direction. And what darkened Belding's horizon was the thought that Clark, at any moment, might ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... is a manifestation of this negative suggestibility. My contention is that you are definitely suggestible. Let us see what happens to you in trying the following classical experiment. It is called the Chevreul's Pendulum test. ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... contact between the screw, h, and the column, n, which sends a current into the electro, E, so that the armature of the latter is attracted. In its position of rest this armature holds a series of parts, S, A, L, which have the effect of stopping the pendulum of a clock placed upon the same apparatus. At the moment, then, that the armature is attracted the pendulum is set free and the clockwork is started. As the current, at the same time, sets a bell ringing, the observer comes and arranges the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... through with hers he was back on the gallery. His paper was cast aside and he was watching. The original buzzard—or, anyhow, he judged it was the first one he had seen—was swinging back and forth in great pendulum swings, but closer down toward the swamp—closer and closer—until it looked from that distance as though the buzzard flew almost at the level of the tallest snags there. And on beyond this first buzzard, coursing above him, were other buzzards. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... time and, because he had no other means, he timed its motion by the beating of his pulse. That was one time when a boy went to church and did well to forget the service. He soon began to wonder whether he could not make a pendulum which, swinging like the chandeliers, would do useful business for men. He soon began to discover, in what he had seen that day, new light on the laws of planetary motion. That was one of the turning points ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... nature, while hers is like crystal. He is extremely fond of sympathy from women, and her urgent tone makes him seem a sort of hero to himself. If he must endeavor earnestly, there is something to be overcome, and that is his love for her. The pendulum vibrates back to it. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... not see why he should refuse. There was no longer a reason. He was standing out alone for nothing, any one else would say. He smoked on as if Rogers were not there, and Rogers remained before the fire as patient as the clock ticking behind his head on the mantel, and showing the gleam of its pendulum beyond his face on either side. But at last he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... under the leadership of Martin Luther, had broken loose from the Church of Rome, the ball which he had set rolling being kept in motion by other hands. The ideas of many of those who followed him were full of the spirit of fanaticism. The pendulum of religious thought, set in free swing, vibrated from the one extreme of authority to the opposite extreme of license, going as far beyond Luther as he had gone beyond Rome. There arose a sect to which was given the name of Anabaptists, from its rejection of infant ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... verified the law, and the isochronism of the pendulum was discovered. An immensely important practical discovery this, for upon it all modern clocks are based; and Huyghens soon applied it to the astronomical clock, which up to that time had been a crude and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... Bostock, reaching up to the lamp, which was slowly subsiding from its pendulum-like motion. "I hate being in the dark, even if it's only a fog. You never ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... the entertainment; had found his address, and had followed him here! He dressed himself with feverish haste, not, however, without a certain care of his appearance and some selection of apparel, and quickly forecast the forthcoming interview in his mind. For the pendulum had swung back; Mr. James Smith was once more the self-satisfied, self-complacent, and discreetly cautious husband that he had been at the beginning of his quest, perhaps with a certain sense of grievance superadded. ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... like that of a swinging pendulum. I raised my head and listened attentively. There was no clock either in my room or in the neighboring ones—but I could still hear the sound. At the same moment my lamp began to flicker. The oil was apparently exhausted. I was about to rise to fill it again, when my eyes ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... and admiration for her mother as to be willing to do all that she wished, and to believe her the ablest and most clear-sighted of human beings; but whenever Mary was not actually talking to her, there was a curious swaying back of the pendulum in her mind to the conviction that what Master Richard and Mistress Susan believed must be the right thing, that led to trustworthy goodness. She had an enthusiastic love for the Queen, but her faith and trust were in them and in Humfrey, and she could ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lift the whole pailful of water at once he fetched a milk jug and ladled quarts of water into the pail by degrees. The pail got fuller and fuller, and swung like a pendulum. Occasionally a drop splashed over; but still Tommy Brock snored regularly and never moved,—except in ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... chamber clock designed for domestic use and to the smaller portable clocks and still smaller and more portable pocket watches. In mechanical refinement a similar continuity may be noted, so that one sees the cumulative effect of the introduction of the spring drive (ca. 1475), pendulum control (ca. 1650), and the anchor escapement (ca. 1680). The transition from de Dondi to the modern chronometer is indeed basically continuous, and though much research needs to be done on special topics, it has an historical unity and seems to conform for ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... upon the situation, were cancelled during the night and before the Battalion had acted on them. The fact is, I expressly remained in the forward position until at least rations had been delivered to the men, and by the time that had been done the staff pendulum had swung again. The salient of Baquerolle Farm, which it had cost valuable ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... we know them, was not at all the outcome of the struggle toward an affected naivete such as we have heard so much about, but was, on another hand, a real phase of their originality, the other swing of the pendulum, so to call it. It was the "accent" of their minds and tempers, it was a true part of their personal gesture, and was something they could not, and need not, do anything about, as if it were the normal tendency in them ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... music seat before the spinet, and mounted upon it, thinking rightly that the infuriated major would follow him, and that he might the better execute a certain manoeuvre from the vantage of height. Colden indeed rushed after him, and thrust at him, Peyton sweeping the thrusts aside with pendulum-like swings of his own short weapon. His thought was to send the point that menaced him so astray that he might leap forward and cleave his enemy with a downward stroke before the Tory could recover his guard. But Colden pressed him so ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... coated with verdigris as thick as a diachylon plaister, was rubbed till the figures emerged into day; while, inside the case of the same chronometer, the cobwebs that formed triangular hammocks, which the pendulum could hardly wade through, were cleared away at ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... or betwixt, is used in reference to two things or parties; among, or amongst, amid, or amidst, in reference to a greater number, or to something by which an other may be surrounded: as, "Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear."—Byron. "The host between the mountain and the shore."—Id. "To meditate amongst decay, and stand a ruin amidst ruins."—Id. In the following examples, the import of these prepositions is not very accurately regarded; "The Greeks wrote in capitals, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Like the pendulum of an observatory clock, the bob-point of which touches at each vibration the mercury which transmits intelligence of its movements to distant points, Carleton now swung himself to Cincinnati. In Louisville he gave an account, from reports, of the battle of Perryville. It was written ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... tick of the old clock on the mantel seemed to Kenny's distracted ears a perpetuity of measured taps upon a death-drum. He thought of Poe and the pit and the pendulum. He thought of Joan and told himself fiercely that he did it all for her; for her he was winding around himself a chain foredoomed to clank. And he wondered why on earth the old man did ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... which he could not satisfactorily master. Many different methods were tried. Some experimenters placed the center of gravity far below the wings, in the belief that the weight would naturally seek to remain at the lowest point. It is true, that, like the pendulum, it tended to seek the lowest point; but also, like the pendulum, it tended to oscillate in a manner destructive of all stability. A more satisfactory system, especially for lateral balance, was that of arranging ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... fix upon the pound if you otherwise approve of it. I shall be happy to have your opinion of it as soon as convenient, and to concert with you the means of making it universal.... I have some hopes that the foot may be fixed by the pendulum and a measure of water, and a pound derived from that; but in the interim let us at least assume a proper division, which from the nature of it must be intelligible as long as decimal arithmetic ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... of a tower-clock on this side of the Atlantic, and, as an accurate time-keeper, competent judges pronounce it to be unsurpassed in the world. The main wheels are thirty inches in diameter, the escapement is jewelled, and the pendulum, which is in itself a curiosity, is over fourteen feet in length. It is a curious fact that the pendulum bob weighs over three hundred pounds; but so finely finished is every wheel, pinion, and pivot in the clock, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... of the earth. Density, quantity of heat, electro-magnetic tension, and terrestrial light — p. 154-202 and note. Knowledge of the compression and curvature of the earth's surface acquired by measurements of degrees, pendulum oscillations, and certain inequalities in the moon's orbit. Mean density of the earth. The earth's crust, and the depth to which we are able to penetrate — p. 159, 160, note. Threefold movement of the heat of the earth; its thermic condition. Law of the increase of ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... prosperity and happiness in the life of a man or of a nation is almost invariably followed by calamities, small or great; but, fortunately for individuals and for nations, the converse is also true. The creeping pendulum of fate, pausing for an instant at its highest point, dips down again to gather impetus for a ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... National system by certificated infant school mistresses. They are semi-theatrical, very pretty, and serve at once as music, discipline, and amusement. Such as "The Clock," in which they beat the hours, swing for the pendulum, etc. There are certain actions in these songs which express listening.... I am very fond of the National system for teaching children, and it has struck me that this song is a little of that type.... ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... foremast-head; and with my shoulders leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed in what seemed an enchanted air. No resolution could withstand it; in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of my body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum will, long after the power which first ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... may very appropriately be introduced into a conception of repose, its contrast heightening this emotion; the creeping baby, the frolicking kitten, the swinging pendulum, the distant toilers observed by ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... the diapason-interval, or an eighth; and the same was effected from two strings of similar length and size, the one having four times the tension of the other. Belonging to the same cycle of invention-anecdotes are Galileo's discovery of the pendulum by the lustre of the Pisan Duomo; and the kettle-lid, the falling apple and the copper hook which inspired Watt, Newton ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the pendulum swung as far to the other extreme. My hypocrisy made me sick of living in my own body with myself. I threw off the transient cloak of assumed belief. Once more I attacked the stupidity of belief in a six-day God, inventor of an impossible ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... sacrifices. Everybody knows how largely systems of punishment have had to be resorted to by educational systems which neglect present possibilities in behalf of preparation for a future. Then, in disgust with the harshness and impotency of this method, the pendulum swings to the opposite extreme, and the dose of information required against some later day is sugar-coated, so that pupils may be fooled into taking something which ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... Hero's breast, Who thus with modest mien the Seer addrest: Say, friend of man, in this unbounded range, Where error vagrates and illusions change, What hopes to see his baleful blunders cease, And earth commence that promised age of peace? Like a loose pendulum his mind is hung, From wrong to wrong by ponderous passion swung, It vibrates wide, and with unceasing flight Sweeps all extremes and scorns the mean of right. Tho in the times you trace he seems to gain A steadier movement and a path more plain, And tho experience ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... leaders were apparently acquainted at Leyden with the astronomer Galileo, co-resident with them there, and through this acquaintance some of the wealthier and more scholarly may have come to know, and even to own, one of the earliest Dutch clocks made with the pendulum invented by Galileo, though hardly probable as early as 1620. Pocket ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... folded his arms, with his elbows on his knees, drew a long breath, and blinked at the clay floor for a while; then he twisted the stool round on one leg, until he faced the old-fashioned spired wooden clock (the brass disc of the pendulum moving ghost-like through a scarred and scratched marine scene—Margate in England—on the glass that covered the lower half) that stood alone on the slab shelf over the fireplace. The hands indicated half-past two, and Johnny, who had studied that clock and could "hit the time nigh enough by ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... interesting about Brassin's looks, but his figure gave one the impression of having been very carelessly put together; when he walked his head went back on his shoulders, and his hat went back on his head; his long arms dangled, pendulum-like, by his sides, while his lanky legs, dragging along anyhow, were ever lagging behind one another. But when he opened the piano and put hands and feet to keys and pedal, he was not the same individual. He would turn on nerve and muscle-power, and would hurl avalanches of music and torrents ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... the Copernican theory is proved by Kepler's laws of planetary movement, and Galileo's telescopical observations; the scientific theory of motion is created by Galileo's laws of projectiles, falling bodies, and the pendulum; astronomy and mechanics form the entrance to exact physics—Descartes ventures an attempt at a comprehensive mechanical explanation of nature. And thus an entirely new movement is at hand. Forerunners, it is true, had not been lacking. Roger Bacon (1214-94) had already sought to obtain an ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... decade was largely one of the settlement of new territory, and by its close the pendulum seemed to have swung decidedly backward. In 1799, however, after much effort and debating, New York at last declared for gradual abolition, and New Jersey did likewise in 1804. In general, gradual emancipation was the result of the work of people who were humane but also conservative ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... the landing lock. But the platform at the manhole entrance jutted diagonally below him, fifteen feet down and twelve along the bellying curve. Darl measured the angle with a glance as he hung outstretched, then his body became a human pendulum over the sheer void. Back and forth, back and forth he swung, then, suddenly, his grasp loosened and a white arc ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat
... But the compensating effect may be well illustrated by what is done by the makers of clocks for the most delicate measurements of time, such as are used for astronomical calculations. The accuracy of the clock depends upon the length of the pendulum and the weight which the pendulum supports. If the disk at the end of the pendulum be humg by a wire of a single metal, that metal expands and shrinks in length under changing atmospheric influences, and affects ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... us and you will quickly find out," snapped Indigo, swaying her head from side to side on its long, swan-like neck like the pendulum of a clock. ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... conclusions and opinions of upwards of forty working biologists, many of whom were brought up, so to speak, in the Darwinian faith, to show that the pendulum of evolutionary thought is swinging away from the narrow and restricted conception of natural selection, pure and simple, as the sole or most important factor, and returning in the direction ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... feet long, 106 feet wide, and the nave 109 feet high. The great bronze lamp which gave Galileo the hint of the pendulum, still hangs ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... doors are of bronze finely sculptured. In the nave the guide will call our attention to a large bronze hanging-lamp, the oscillations of which are said to have suggested to Galileo the theory of the pendulum. The Baptistery, or Church of St. John, is situated nearly opposite the Cathedral, a most beautifully shaped church, which is ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... generation people have perceived more or less clearly the fallacies of "Old School" medicine and surgery. They have grown more and more suspicious of orthodox theories and practices. From allopathic "overdoing" the pendulum has swung to the other extreme of metaphysical nihilism, to the "underdoing" of mental and metaphysical systems of ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... diagrams, it seemed to me likely that a fourth group exists, coming on the paramagnetic side, directly under iron, cobalt, nickel, just one complete swing of the pendulum after rhodium, ruthenium, palladium. This would make four interperiodic groups, and they would come also ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... for an Agnostic," he admitted to himself, "but I'm right glad to see a Christian sign." And as he knocked at the door of the big two-story log-house on the left he defended himself. "It's the swing-back of the pendulum after a big dose of Pymeut and heathen tricks. I welcome it as a mark of the white man." He looked over his shoulder a little defiantly at the Holy Cross. Recognition of what the high white apparition was had given him a queer jolt, stirring unsuspected things in imagination ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... the crazy watchmaker was standing on the edge of his high steps, swinging a weight; it was attached to the end of a long cord, and he followed the swinging of the pendulum with his fingers, as though he were timing the beats. This was very interesting, and Pelle feared it would escape ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... time the sound of walking over-head never ceased for one moment. The heavy tread was unabated: there was not the least interval of repose, nor could a pendulum have been more regular in its motions. Had there been any relaxation, any pause, any increase or any diminution of rapidity in the footsteps, they would have been endurable; but there was no such thing; the same deadening monotonous, stupifying sound continued, like clock-work, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... and she felt ashamed that the thought had not struck her before. She almost, but not quite, decided to insert such an advertisement at once; but, as she pondered, she questioned the wisdom of such an action. Her mind swung, like a pendulum, from one side to the other, and at last she fell asleep, still undecided, but ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... Many conscientious men oppose the doctrine for two hundred years longer. Then the French astronomers make their measurements of degrees in equatorial and polar regions, and add to their proofs that of the lengthened pendulum. When this was done, when the deductions of science were seen to be established by the simple test of measurement, beautifully and perfectly, and when a long line of trustworthy explorers, including devoted missionaries, had sent home accounts of the antipodes, then, and then only, this ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... They said he looked like Napoleon, but it was not true; he was a good-looking fat fellow, short and thick, and pale with fatigue, and not at all lively, quite the contrary. During the service he did nothing but yawn and rock back and forth like a pendulum. I am telling you what I saw myself, and that shows how blind people are, they want to find ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... "We have a system of levers to do our walking with, and they act precisely as do all levers. One leg is a lever to pry the body over the other leg, and the latter becomes a pendulum and swings back by force of gravity. When you walk three miles and feel as if you could walk ten, you are walking that way. When you are tired out, you are taking irregular steps and walking on ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... rarity at the surface, the flattening would be no more than 1/578; while, were the surface more dense than the interior, or did a cavity exist within, the oblateness must be greater than 1/234. Actual measurements of portions of the surface, the variation in the length of the pendulum which beats seconds in different latitudes, and the effect of the earth's figure on the lunar motions, show us that the earth cannot be flattened more than 1/289, nor less than 1/312, or may, at a mean, be considered as a spheroid, whose polar and equatorial ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Ellan: some of it sad enough, God knows (about the downfall of my father's financial schemes); some of it deliciously wicked, such as it would have required an angel not to rejoice in (about the bad odour in which Alma and my husband were now held, making the pendulum of popular feeling swing back in my direction); and some of it utterly heart-breaking in its assurances of the love still felt for ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... and quite valuable books which he had acquired since his venture in trade, upon entomology, especially books upon butterflies. Since his retreat from the law he had developed suddenly, perhaps by the force of contrast, or the opposite swing of the pendulum, an overwhelming taste for those airy flowers of animated life. The two walls of the office not occupied with books were hung with framed specimens. He had also under the riverward window a little ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... history of Jewish and Christian ethics the pendulum has swung between irrational extremes, without ever stopping at that point of equilibrium at which alone rest is possible. Yet this point was sometimes traversed and included in the gyrations of our tormented ancestral conscience. It was passed, for example, at the moment when the prophets saw ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... of an old glove just about ready to breathe out and flatten from the print of a recent hand. Fifteen years of debit and credit and days which swung with pendulum fidelity within the arc of routine had creased ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... to-day he had forgotten. Getting up, she opened the glass door, and stood trying to estimate the hour: it must be, she thought, about six. She set the hands, took the key from the nail above the shelf, wound up the weight, and started the pendulum. And the sound of familiar ticking was a relief, releasing at last her inhibited powers ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to him. "I'd like to see something of these Bird boys. They have a future before them, I believe. And if I'm any judge of up-to-date things I even suspect they've gone and applied that latest device the Wrights patented, where a little pendulum under the machine warps the planes automatically, at the slightest motion of the body, keeping the aeroplane ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... energy has been transferred. In the case of a body falling, as the potential energy diminishes, the kinetic energy increases, but the total amount of the two combined always remains the same. This is well illustrated in the case of a swinging pendulum. When a pendulum is at the highest point of its swing, its velocity or kinetic energy is zero, but at that point its potential energy is greatest. As it descends, the potential energy decreases, but the kinetic energy increases. When the pendulum is at the lowest point its energy is ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... was the first to drive a clock with electricity instead of weights, by employing a pendulum having an iron bob, which was attracted to one side and the other by an electromagnet, but as its rate depends on the constancy of the current, which is not easy to maintain, the invention has not come into general use. The "butterfly clock" of Lemoine, ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... did when I found myself in the bedroom I do not know. When I saw that everything was as I had arranged my mind began swinging like a pendulum towards my revenge, and I struggled to lead the search towards the staircase. But I was unable to move. I was like a man in a dream, encompassed by invisible obstacles. Then the wheel in my head suddenly relaxed, ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... rack of pegs suggests to the deductive observer that the men of the house are all away, as there are no hats or coats on them. On the other side of the window the clock hangs on a nail, with its white wooden dial, black iron weights, and brass pendulum. Between the clock and the corner, a big cupboard, locked, stands on a dwarf dresser ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... was idle to put the brakes on now. He was internally committed and must go wherever it might lead. And the thought rejoiced him. He had climbed upon a pendulum that swung into an immense past; but its return swing would bring him safely back. It was rushing now into that nameless place of freedom that the primitive portion of his being had hitherto sought in vain, and a fundamental, starved craving of his life would know ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... of four Tuscan columns, surrounded by a pediment. A broad flight of stone steps leads to this colonnade; and through the entrance door beneath it to the main central hall, 28 feet square, in which are placed (in niches) the very beautiful electric clock and pendulum presented by Erastus Corning, Esq. The center of this hall is occupied by a massive pier of stone, 10 feet square, passing from the basement into the dome above, and intended for the support of the great heliometer. Directly opposite the entrance door is a large niche, in which it is proposed to ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... the boast that he never worried; that he never took his business to bed with him. When his head touched the pillow there was oblivion until he awoke refreshed to greet the problems left over from yesterday. Such a mind must be a reliably co-ordinated piece of machinery, with a pendulum in place of a heart. It is overawing to average mortals who have not the temerity to say "Nonsense!" to great egos. Yet the best adjusted clocks may have a lapse in a powerful magnetic storm, and in ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all to take a pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt the ringing of the bell, and the rap at the door;—and, after finding it to be no more than two minutes, thirteen seconds, and three-fifths,—should take upon him to insult over me for such a breach ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... dial-plates. The shadows coming and going on them are the hour-hands; when a flower fades, or a heart ceases to beat, it is only a weight run down. The whole universe is but one immense time-piece, throbbing with innumerable wheels, heavy with weights, and wearing itself away! Desire is a restless pendulum, one end linked to the heart, and the ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... speculations on the same subject since the existence of our Constitution, and with them it has expanded into profound, laborious, and expensive researches into the figure of the earth and the comparative length of the pendulum vibrating seconds in various latitudes from the equator to the pole. These researches have resulted in the composition and publication of several works highly interesting to the cause of science. The experiments ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams |
