"Pivot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... though you are none of these, yet you are backed by all of them. Theirs is the external power which sustains your moral authority; you are the incarnate mind of the political body of the nation. In the complex institutions of our country you are the pivot point upon which the rights and liberties of all, government and people alike, turn; or, rather, you are the central light of constitutional wisdom around which they perpetually revolve. Long may this court retain ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... persuade them to obey Queen Victoria, or anything else. Effectual arguments to convince the people who need convincing are wanting. Just so, an immense system of credit, founded on the Bank of England as its pivot and its basis, now exists. The English people, and foreigners too, trust it implicitly. Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone: but what we have requires no proof. The whole rests on an instinctive ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... pivot on which a system turns. Its place is not essentially different from that which it held in the systems of Kant and Schiller. As the objective possibility for the bridge between sense and reason, as the vindication of freedom in the phenomenal world, and as vindication of the possible ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... an event that cast a glow of colour over the life of Paulina and the whole foreign colony. This event was none other than the marriage of Anka Kusmuk and Jacob Wassyl, Paulina's most popular lodger. A wedding is a great human event. To the principals the event becomes the pivot of existence; to the relatives and friends it is at once the consummation of a series of happenings that have absorbed their anxious and amused attention, and the point of departure for a new phase of existence offering infinite possibilities in the way of speculation. ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... finish all the lower portions in this way. Of course the directions for using a cement chuck on the upper part of a staff are equally applicable to the lower. Before going further I think it advisable to consider the requirements of a pivot, but will reserve this ...
— A Treatise on Staff Making and Pivoting • Eugene E. Hall
... statue of Nepomeck down into the earth, the seventh step was movable and turned on a pivot; if you stood on one end of this, the statue above raised itself, but if you stood on the other end, it sank gently down, The builders of this subterranean passage had chosen well the guardian of their secret. The place where stood the statue honored by all, was protected from ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... the block to the saw consists of a strong frame, E, mounted upon four wheels. This frame is provided with a pivot and a circular track for the reception of the cast iron platform, E', which rests thereon through the intermedium of rollers. Between the rails, e, and parallel with them, are fixed two strong screws, e', held by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... animal and stoned it. Thereupon the woodchuck dropped down on John and seized him by the leg of his trousers. John was both enraged and scared by this dastardly attack; the teeth of the enemy went through the cloth and met; and there he hung. John then made a pivot of one leg and whirled himself around, swinging the woodchuck in the air, until he shook him off; but in his departure the woodchuck carried away a large piece of John's summer trousers-leg. The boy never forgot it. And whenever he had a holiday, he used to expend an ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sir, to the Bois de Cambre," said Picton, "and pivot the troops on the road to Mont St. Jean. You will then wait for my ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... ananaso. pink : rozkolora; dianto. pioneer : pioniro. pipe : tubo, pipo; (mus.) sxalmo. pistol : pistol'o, -eto. piston : pisxto. pit : kavo, fosajxo, (well) puto; (theatre) partero. pitch : pecxo, bitumo; tono. pitcher : krucxo. pity : kompati. ("a-"), domagxo. pivot : pivoto, akso. placard : afisxo, place : loko; meti. plague : turmenti, inciteti; pesto. plait : plekti, har'ligo, -plektajxo, plan : plano, projekto, skizo. plane : rabot'i, -ilo; ("—tree") platano. planet : planedo. plank ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... lying between the levels of high and low tide was cleared, banked along the river front and on the sides, elaborately ditched for drainage, and equipped with "trunks" or sluices piercing the front embankment. On a frame above either end of each trunk a door was hung on a horizontal pivot and provided with a ratchet. When the outer door was raised above the mouth of the trunk and the inner door was lowered, the water in the stream at high tide would sluice through and flood the field, whereas ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... General Sir Hubert de la P. Gough, K. C. B., to whom I accordingly allotted the two northern corps of Sir Henry Rawlinson's army. My instructions to Sir Hubert Gough were that his army was to maintain a steady pressure on the front from La Boisselle to the Serre road and to act as a pivot on which our line could swing as our attacks on his right made ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... cow's foreleg was caught over her own head, and so she held herself from rising. The sand was rolled and grooved into a wheel by her circlings; her body heaved and fell with breathing, and the sand was wet where her pivot nostrils had ground it. While Genesmere untangled her and gave her tongue the last of his canteen the calf walked round and round. He placed the cow upon her feet, and as soon as he moved away to his horse the calf came to its mother, ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... metallic plates. Where the crown only of a tooth or those of several teeth were lost, the restoration was effected by engrafting upon the prepared root a suitable crown by means of a wooden or metallic pivot. When possible, the new crown was that of a corresponding sound tooth taken from the mouth of another individual; otherwise an artificial crown carved from bone or ivory, or sometimes from the tooth of an ox, was used. To replace entire dentures a base-plate ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... use of her conversations with the Tano Indian to direct the attention of the Tehuas toward Tyope. She described him as the leading warrior and the most influential man on the Rito, as the pivot around which everything revolved and on whose life much would depend. But she was artful enough not to depict Tyope as a bad man, lest the Tehuas might infer her real purpose. She spoke of him as a man dangerous through ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... which was once called Poverty Point; the corner where Leather Lane crashes into Clerkenwell Road, and where, of a summer night, gather the splendid sons of Italy to discuss, to grin, to fight, and to invent new oaths. On this corner, moreover, they pivot in times of danger, and, once they can make the mazy circle of which it is the edge, safety from the pursuer is theirs. The place was alive with evening gladness. In the half-darkness, indolent groups lounged or strolled, ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... the Sheikh ed Din, rushed down the Kerreri slopes and threatened to overwhelm the brigade. Again there was seen a proof of the ascendancy of mind over brute force. At once Macdonald ordered the left part of his line to wheel round, keeping the right as pivot, so that the whole speedily formed two fronts resembling a capital letter V, pointing outwards to the two hostile forces. Those who saw the movement wondered alike at the masterly resolve, the steadiness of execution, and the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... and from time to time a priest sitting in a stall and wearing a biretta, got up, muttered something, and sat down again, while the three singers continued, with their eyes fixed on the big book of plain song lying open before them on the outstretched wings of an eagle, mounted on a pivot. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... keel; her steel prow, cast in the workshop of R. Hawthorn, of Newcastle, shone in the sun and gave a peculiar look to the brig, though otherwise she had nothing particularly warlike about her. However, a 16-pounder cannon was installed on the forecastle; it was mounted on a pivot, so that it might easily be turned in any direction; but neither the cannon nor the stern, steel-clad as they were, succeeded ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... by Drowne, are still on duty; and one, the Indian chief, which for so many years decked the Province House, is now the property of the Massachusetts Historical Society, in one of the rooms of which it is to be seen, still swinging on its original pivot. From the sole of his foot to the top of his plume, it is four feet, six inches; and from his elbow to tip of arrow, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... consciously, anticipating events. In other words, we shall take advantage of such measure of detachment as we do possess, to take the lead in a saner organization of western civilization; we shall become the pivot and centre of ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... bore, weighing 22 lbs., and sighted most accurately to 400 yards. Such a weapon could be used by a powerful man from the shoulder at the close range of fifty yards, or it could be fired at long ranges upon a pivot rest, which would enable the elephant-hunter to kill at a great distance by the shoulder shot when the animals were in deep marshes or on the opposite side of a river. I have frequently seen elephants in ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... body meanwhile from the bullet of the young rancher. Instead of doing so, however, he described a complete circle about Warren, coming back to his starting point, while Jack continued to move around, as if on a pivot, keeping his ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... struggle, open or secret," between Authority and Liberty; though his judgment that neither "can ever absolutely prevail," shows us rather that we are on the threshold of laissez-faire than that Hume really understood the problem of freedom. He realized that the House of Commons had become the pivot of the State; though he looked with dread upon the onset of popular government. He saw the inevitability of parties, as also their tendency to persist in terms of men instead of principles. He was convinced of the necessity of liberty to ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... corps and the IV. (Prussian Saxony) corps. He was succeeded in command of the XII. corps by his brother Prince George, who had served under him in Bohemia. He took a leading part in the operations which preceded the battle of Sedan, the 4th army being the pivot on which the whole army wheeled round in pursuit of Macmahon; and the actions of Buzancy and Beaumont on the 29th and 30th of August were fought under his direction; in the battle of Sedan itself, with the troops under his orders, he carried out the envelopment of the French on the east and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... man, and the first boats were doubtless the trunks of such trees roughly squared and then hollowed out with the help of fire. Later experience led to the addition of a prow which would more easily cleave the water, and a stern which would serve as a pivot. These canoes, if such a name may be already given to them, were at first guided by branches stripped of their leaves, or with long poles. Then oars or paddles were introduced, which are better for beating the water, and in later barks traces have been made out ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... childhood—and a kind of strange, happy terror. I struggle to wonder my way out. Thousands of railways—after this—bind Johnstown to me; miles of high, narrow, steel-built streets—the whole world lifting itself mightily up, rolling itself along, turning itself over on a great steel pivot, down in Pennsylvania—for its days and nights. I am whirled away from it as from a vision. I am as one who has seen men lifting their souls up in a great flame and laying down floors on a star. I have stood and watched, in the melting-down place, the making and the ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... was going through a low mass, with a small congregation of delayed worshipers, and we took our place back of these. The priest raced through the service at the highest possible speed. His motions were like those of an automaton: he kept turning quickly to and fro as if on a pivot; clasping his hands before his breast as if by machinery; bowing his head as if it moved by a spring in his neck; mumbling and rattling like wind in a chimney; the choir-boy who served the mass with him jingling his bell as irreverently ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... Jebel el-Maru. Here, however, they are hardly to be distinguished from the chloritic spines and natural sandbanks that stud the bed. The only antiquities found in the "Muttali"' were a stone cut into parallel bands, and the fragment of a basalt door with its pivot acting as hinge in the upper part: it reminded me of the Graco-Roman townlets in the Hauran, where the credulous discovered "giant Cities" and similar ineptitudes. Our search for Midianite money was in vain; Mr. Clarke, however, picked up, near the sea, a silver "Taymur," ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... swings like they was on a pivot, and piles in after him. There wasn't anything to do then but stop under the gate, seein' as the club-house was a hundred yards or so off. I snaked Woodie out, though, and made him help me range the youngsters under the middle ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... highly amused, emerged, followed by Mr. Pettitt, the only enlightened landlord on whom Mrs. Duncombe had been able to produce the slightest impression. He had owned a few small tenements in Water Lane, which he was about to rebuild, and which were evidently the pivot ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vision of the grail. His mother looked at him, and her lips quivered. Artificial and frivolous though she was, her only son was dear to her heart. Since the hour of his birth he had been to her as a pivot round which the world revolved. Her son—the last of the Grevilles who had owned the Manor since the days of the Tudors. To be alienated from him would be the bitterest grief ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... wall to wall, when you turn to the left around, you should turn on the right heel, which thus acts as a pivot and keeps you in "your place"; like this—left oblique, left, left oblique back, back, right oblique back, right, right oblique, and front. In going around to the right turn on the left heel. Fix these directions firmly ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... enters, dressed but carrying garments and towels. LOIS is a year older than JULIE and is nearly her double in face and voice, but in her clothes and expression are the marks of the conservative. Yes, you've guessed it. Mistaken identity is the old rusty pivot ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... its broadside was set nearer to the rock, which was now within fifty feet of them. The fore-chains were past the point, though little hope remained of clearing it abaft. A ship turns on her centre of gravity as on a pivot, the two ends inclining in opposite directions; and Captain Truck hoped that as the bows were past the danger, it might be possible to throw the after-part of the vessel up to the wind, by keeping away, and ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... hitherto the better you can afford to go on being right. What is it that we all live upon but self-esteem? When we want praise it is only because praise enables us to think well of ourselves. Every one to himself is the centre and pivot of all ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... with a firm and bold hand, the greater part of the antique and venerable scaffolding with which the illusions of the senses and the pride of successive generations had filled the universe. The earth ceased to be the centre, the pivot of the celestial movements; it henceforward modestly ranged itself among the planets; its material importance, amid the totality of the bodies of which our solar system is composed, found itself reduced almost to that of ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... Greek lyric devoted to what we should designate love, with perhaps something like an exception in Alcman. In fact, while moderns rarely make a tragedy or comedy, a poem or novel, without some love-concern which is the pivot of the whole, all the great poems and dramas of the ancients revolve on entirely different passions. Love, such as we speak of, was of rather rare occurrence. Women were in such a low position, that it was a condescension to notice them,—there was no chivalrous feeling in regard to them; they were ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Unity of God taught in the Kabalah, 625-l. Unity of Nature blended with a dim perception of Spiritual Essence, 687-m. Unity of the Universe represented by the symbolic egg, 415-u. Unity: the links that bind all created things together are the links of a single, 765-m. Unity, the pivot, source, center, the august Idea of Pythagoras, 626-u. Universal agent adored in the rites of the Sabbat or the Temple, 734-m. Universal agent adored under figure of Baphomet or goat of Mendes, 734-m. Universal agent is a force which if controlled would be infinite in power, 734-m. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... way across the upper part of the yard to the big dog-kennel, which could be turned on a pivot according to the direction of the wind. He seated himself upon the angle of the roof, and made a merry-go-round of it by pushing off with his foot every time he passed the fence. Suddenly it occurred to him that he himself was everybody's dog, and had better hide himself; so ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... on swimmingly, my dear Sir John! I do not remember to have been employed, for some years, in a more interesting litigation. Now this cause, which, no doubt, you think is drawing to a close, has just reached its pivot, or turning-point; and I see every prospect of extricating our client with great credit ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... above enumerated. These might be designated as the noisy sort—loud-talking, wise-looking men, self-constituted oracles and advice-givers, with a better opinion of their own wisdom than any one else was willing to endorse. Such men became "file-leaders," or "pivot-men," because the taciturn people of the west, though inclined to undervalue a mere talker, were simple-minded enough to accept a man's valuation of his own powers: or easy-tempered enough to spare themselves the trouble of investigating ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... the rascals a caution, they won't neglect soon, I'll warrant them. Bring me the hammer and nails; that's a man; now get uncle the high chair; so, that's it; now I'll fix this shelf up over the top of the door, on a pivot—bore this hole through here—put the string through that way, here, umph; oh, now we'll have a trap for the scoundrels. I'll learn them how to come pulling people's bells, clean out by the very roots, making us drop all, to come wait ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... this, that he certainly cares much more for a quarrel than for a play. And this quarrel about the censorship is one on which he feels so strongly that in a book embodying any sort of sympathy it would be much better to leave out Mrs. Warren than to leave out Mr. Redford. The veto was the pivot of so very personal a movement by the dramatist, of so very positive an assertion of his own attitude towards things, that it is only just and necessary to state what were the two essential parties to the dispute; the play and the official ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... of this great good as "the Kingdom of God." Even a superficial reading of the first three Gospels shows that this was the pivot of his teaching. Yet he nowhere defines the phrase. He took an understanding of it for granted with his hearers, and simply announced that it was now close at hand, and they must act accordingly. What did the words mean to them? The idea covered by the phrase was an historic product of the Jewish ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... days were somewhat rude contrivances. The mill proper consisted of two cogged wooden cylinders about fourteen inches in diameter and perhaps twenty-six inches in length, placed in an upright position in a frame. The pivot of one of these extended upward about six feet, and at its top was secured the long shaft to which the horse was attached, and as it was driven round and round, the mill crunched the apples, with many a creak and groan, and shot them out on the opposite ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... water-power, but the work is often done by hand. The powder is then dried, and stored on boards or in flat boxes. This dough does not go through the process of fermentation. The shaping is almost exclusively done on the potter's wheel, which is set on a pivot working in a porcelain eye. As a rule, the wheel is turned by the potter himself, but in Hizen it is kept in motion by means of a band connected with its pivot and another wheel turned by a boy. In making dishes of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... psalm of the republic. Here the theme is creative, and has vista. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation, the great poet never stagnates. Obedience does not master him, he masters it. High up out of reach he stands, turning a concentrated light—he turns the pivot with his finger—he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands, and easily overtakes and envelopes them. The time straying toward infidelity and confections and persiflage he withholds by steady faith. Faith is the antiseptic of the soul—it pervades the common ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... put his powerful shoulder to the long six-pounder that worked on a pivot, and together, with joint exertions, they trained the gun upon the stern windows of the corvette. Dick Stone had just beforehand lighted his pipe when standing at the helm, and as the long gun bore upon its object he suddenly pushed Paul upon one side, and emptied his fiery ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... cobbler's awl, slightly bent; and a packing-needle with a large eye, to push thongs and twine through holes in leather. Between the tortoise-shell part of the handle and the metal frame of the knife, should be a space to contain three flat thin pieces of steel, turning on the same pivot. The ends of these are to be ground to form turnscrews of brass instruments: when this excellent contrivance is used, it must be opened out like the letter T, the foot of which represents the turnscrew in use and the horizontal part represents the other two turnscrews, which serve ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... one can scarcely believe what unworthy, base, execrable and abominable things the holy Apostolical See, which is the pivot upon which the whole Catholic Church revolves, was forced to endure, when princes of the age, though Christians, arrogated to themselves the election of the Roman Pontiffs. Alas, the shame! alas, the grief! What monsters, horrible to behold, were then intruded on the Holy ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe. Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin. But after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to grow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as if, when the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... ball around the corners, do not stand still and pivot. Go after it, again with a series of short steps with your racquet head up and cocked, and your body in proper position so that you are ready to make a quick ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... crowded with paper-weights, paper-knives, pens, and inkstands of "artistic" pat terns. He was seated at the table, with his back to the fire, his arm lifted, and a hairpin between his finger and thumb—the pivot round which his paper twist was spinning briskly. Across the table stood his daughter, leaning forward with her chin on her hands and her white teeth showing as she laughed for laughing's sake, to give play to her young spirits and gladden her old father's ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... Krantz was captured all six batteries were to move across No. 3 bridge and take up positions on the hill, whence they could prepare and support the further advance of Clery's Division, which, having crossed, was to move past Vaal Krantz, pivot to the left on it, and attack the Brakfontein position from its left flank. The 1st Cavalry Brigade under Burn-Murdoch (Royals, 13th and 14th Hussars, and A Battery R.H.A.) would also cross and run the gauntlet of Doornkloof and ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... the Italian commander, General Cadorna, launched a great offensive while the British were active in Flanders and by August 23 had broken through the whole Austrian line, capturing the town of Selo, which was the pivot of the Austrian defense, and considered impregnable, and inflicting upon the enemy, in this eleventh battle of the Isonzo, the greatest losses he had sustained since the capture of Goritz. More than 13,000 Austro-Hungarian prisoners were ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... whereupon the whole of society reposes; that fundamental institution is Slavery.... Our European ancestry, those men from whom we are descended and whose blood runs with little admixture in our veins, took slavery for granted, made of it the economic pivot upon which the production of wealth should turn, and never doubted but that it was ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... adventures of Tonty and the rovings of Hennepin, we have lost sight of La Salle, the pivot of the enterprise. Returning from the desolation and horror in the valley of the Illinois, he had spent the winter at Fort Miami, on the St. Joseph, by the borders of Lake Michigan. Here he might have brooded on the redoubled ruin that had befallen him: the desponding friends, the exulting ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... (I speak now from my own observation) stand, as it were, upon a pivot. The touch of a feather would turn them any way. They have looked down the Mississippi, until the Spaniards, very impolitically, I think for themselves, threw difficulties in their way; and they looked that way for no other reason, than because they could glide gently down the stream, without considering, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... cannot do justice from one side to even a 14-in. wall. When the wall can be approached from one side only, the work is said to be executed "overhand." In work circular on plan, besides the level and plumb-rule, a gauge mould or template, or a ranging trammel—a rod working on a pivot at the centre of the curve, and in length equalling the radius—must be used for every course, as it is evident that the line and pins cannot be applied to this in the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... tumult from the ways. The red-coats below, he saw, had now almost gained the central passage. Their countless faces turned towards him, and they shouted. The white facade opposite was densely stippled with red. All these wonderful things concerned him, turned upon him as a pivot. These were the guards of the Council ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... with his sextant revolving on a fixed pivot, looks up to the vault of the heavens and beholds their zodiac; prescient of what else with optic glass the Tuscan artist viewed, at evening, from the ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... is fairly common is having the axes of the hinges out of alignment. Especially is this the case when three hinges are used to hang a wardrobe or other large door. It is absolutely necessary in all cases that the exact centres of the pivot-pins of the hinges should ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... operation. Her own house was plenteously furnished from the kitchens to the attics, but still she would have loved to keep that metallic set of painted trumpery. She knew that the table would not screw on; she knew that the pivot of the music stool was bent; she knew that there was no place in the house in which they could stand; she must have known that in no possible way could they be of use to her or hers,—and yet she could not part with them without an agony. Her husband ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... the contests between us of resistance and defiance. But my feeling died or slumbered when I was beyond the limits of his personal influence. When in his presence I was so pervaded by it that whether I went contrary to the dictates of his will or not I moved as if under a pivot; when away my natural elasticity prevailed, and I held the same relation to others that I should have held if I had not known him. This continued till the secret was divined, and then ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... mobile burghers into this obvious pen would have been to show one's hand too clearly. In vain is the net laid in sight of the bird. The drive was therefore made away from this point, with the confident expectation that the guerilla chief would break back through the columns, and that they might then pivot round upon him and hustle him so rapidly into the desired position that he would not realise his danger until it was too late. Byng's column was left behind the driving line to be ready for the expected backward break. All came off exactly as expected. De Wet doubled back through ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mile in length, through which I was enabled to make signals by sounding a bell, (Fig. 7.) The mechanical arrangement for effecting this object was simply a steel bar, permanently magnetized, of about ten inches in length, supported on a pivot, and placed with its north end between the two arms of a horseshoe magnet. When the latter was excited by the current, the end of the bar thus placed was attracted by one arm of the horseshoe, and repelled by the other, and was thus caused to move in a horizontal plane ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... the poor human element in their relations became once again, and more than ever before, the pivot on which their lives turned. Louise aimed deliberately at bringing this about. Further, she did what she had never yet done: she brought to bear on their intercourse all her own hardwon knowledge, and all her arts. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... line had been completed, and the arrangements of his associate, Vail, were substituted. Professor Joseph Henry had, in 1832, constructed an electromagnetic telegraph whose signals were made by sound, as all signals now are in the so-called Morse system. He hung a bar-magnet on a pivot in its center as a compass-needle is hung. He wound a U-shaped piece of soft iron with insulated wire, and made it an electro-magnet, and placed the north end of the magnetized bar between the two legs ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... myself, in a premonition of things to come, that I should always remember Captain Riggs and the Rev. Luther Meeker and Trego and Rajah, and the very pattern of the parti-coloured cloth on the table, the creak of the pivot-chairs and the picture of the Japanese girl in the mineral-water calendar which swayed on the bulkhead opposite ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... the main ganglia of the great A. and P. and the junction point of two other railroads. At Cincinnati it is a commercial centre of considerable importance, almost a rival. While Torso to Torso is the coming pivot of ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... nothing less than that the Confederates would leave the earthworks they had so laboriously constructed, and deliberately risk the perils of an attack. He seems to have had little idea that in the hands of a skilful general intrenchments may form a "pivot of operations,"* (* The meaning of this term is clearly defined in Lee's report. "It was therefore determined to construct defensive lines, so as to enable a part of the army to defend the city, and leave the other part free to operate on the north ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... may be done by setting the centres of the slots true to the lines passing through the axis) and set the pivots as follows: Place the pencil-point G so that it coincides with one of the points as C, and place the pivot E so that it comes directly at the point of intersection of the two slots, and fasten it there. Then turn the arm so that the pencil-point G coincides with one of the points of the minor axis as D, the arm lying ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... with a great deal of interest. It had been, when we started, one of the most prominent points in our projected tour. It was the pivot upon which, so to speak, we expected to swing around the Provinces. Upon the map it was so attractive, that we once resolved to go no farther than there. It once seemed to us that, if we ever reached it, we should be contented to abide there, in a place so remote, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, a mast-pivot, 15 inches in length and weighing between seven and eight pounds, which had passed obliquely through the body of a sailor. The specimen is accompanied by a colored picture of the sufferer himself in two positions. The name ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... across the firmament. The moonlight turns the lower strata to silver without a stain except where our shadow underruns us. Bristol and Cardiff Double Lights (those statelily inclined beams over Severnmouth) are dead ahead of us; for we keep the Southern Winter Route. Coventry Central, the pivot of the English system, stabs upward once in ten seconds its spear of diamond light to the north; and a point or two off our starboard bow The Leek, the great cloud-breaker of Saint David's Head, swings its ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... the church, and was now placed between the Vicar and the Rector of Middleton. From this gentle elevation the gay company on the green could be fully discerned, the tall May-pole, with its garlands and ribands, forming a pivot, about which the throng ever revolved, while stationary amidst the moving masses, the rush-cart reared on high its broad green back, as if to resist the living waves constantly dashed against it. By-and-by a new kind of movement ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... readers must know, was no other than the long twenty-four pounder, formerly belonging to Gerald's gun-boat, which, now removed to his new command, lay a mid ships, and mounted on a pivot, constituted the whole battery of the schooner. The apron was the leaden covering protecting the touch-hole, which, having unaccountably fallen off, had encountered the heavy foot of Tom Fluke, in his ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... pivot of a magazine. On him everything turns. If his gauge of the public is correct, readers will come: they cannot help coming to the man who has something to say himself, or who presents writers who ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... Myrtlewood, while the two boys were each accommodated with a window; but each moment they were claiming their mother's attention, or rushing across the ladies' feet to each other's window, treating Rachel's knees as a pivot, and vouchsafing not the slightest heed to her attempts at intelligent pointing out of the ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he began to walk round and round the room, while the widow, who stood in the middle, turned as upon a pivot, keeping him always in view. This circus-ring performance lasted some minutes before ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... of doubt, for wisdom to guide him towards the better choice. Then suddenly he rose; stood upright; and, by a sudden strain upon the reins, raising his horse's forefeet from the ground, he slewed him round on the pivot of his hind legs, so as to plant the little equipage in a position nearly at right angles to ours. Thus far his condition was not improved; except as a first step had been taken towards the possibility of a second. If no more were done, nothing ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the heart. He has surrendered to the desire to depict all those fanaticisms, all those superstitions—maladies to which religion is subject at certain epochs; to the longing to "make playthings of all these men," as Hamlet says. To set in array about and below Cromwell, himself the centre and pivot of that court, of that people, of that little world, which attracts all to his cause and inspires all with his vigour, that twofold conspiracy devised by two factions which detest each other, but join hands to overthrow the man who blocks their path, but which unite ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... (since those days we have been deniaises with a vengeance) had actually been inclined to shy at the terms of the fraudulent marriage contract, which is the pivot of the whole story; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... yoke piece 1 also carries two brass posts 3 which, in turn, carry another yoke 4 of brass. In this yoke 4 is pivoted, by means of trunnion screws, the armature 5, this extending on each side of the pivot so that its ends lie opposite the free poles of the electromagnets. From the center of the armature projects the tapper rod carrying the ball or striker which plays ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... Monsieur. "Why, see here;" and with these words he tried to press the upper part of the clasp aside. It stuck at first, but finally yielded, sliding around from the main part on an invisible little pivot, and ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... hearthrug, like an orator on a platform, and Peter, under the influence of his sudden ultimatum, had dropped, rather weakly, into the seat which happened to be nearest and which, as he became conscious it moved on a pivot, he whirled round so as to enable himself to look at his tempter with an eye intended to be cold. What surprised him most was to find Mr. Locket taking exactly the line about the expediency of publication which he would have expected Mr. Locket not to take. "Hush it all ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... to a standstill. It was turning as if on a pivot. It had been caught in one of the numerous eddies at the mouth of a small tributary stream. Vigorously he strove to gain the channel. He hugged the bank, hoping to free himself from the whirlpool, but his outrigger became entangled in some ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... attention upon it or even to sit still. Her hand still burned where M. Raoul's lips had touched it. She recalled Endymion's prophecy that these entertainments would throw the domestic mechanism—always more delicately poised on Sundays than on weekdays—completely oft its pivot. She had pledged herself to prevent this, and had made a private appeal to the maidservants with whose Sunday-out they interfered. ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... speaks draw blood. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation, he never stagnates. Obedience does not master him, he masters it. High up out of reach, he stands turning a concentrated light; he turns the pivot with his finger; he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands, and easily overtakes and envelops them. The time straying toward infidelity and confections and persiflage he withholds by his steady faith; he spreads out his dishes; he offers the ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... waters of the world. The Chinese appear to have discovered that a needle, when rubbed with a lodestone, has the mysterious power of pointing to the north. The Arabs may have introduced this rude form of the compass among Mediterranean sailors. The instrument, improved by being balanced on a pivot so that it would not be affected by choppy seas, seems to have been generally used by Europeans as early as the thirteenth century. It greatly aided sailors by enabling them to find their bearings in murky weather and on starless nights. The compass, though useful, was ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... otherwise, because a school built on a model plan (as a general rule, the more scientifically built the school, the more costly it is), with pivot chains, and globes, and maps, and library, and petty text-books for teachers and scholars and pedagogues, is a sort of thing for which it would be necessary to double the taxes in every village. This science demands. The people need money for their work; ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... we analyse the weather, that pivot of our day-to-day existence. On the weather depends our work and leisure, our comparative risks and comparative safety. Last thing at night, first thing in the morning, and throughout the day we search the sky for a sign. And I cannot ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... the subject of survival after hanging. He wrote an early Reflector essay, "On the Inconveniences of Being Hanged," on the subject, and it is the pivot of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Anderson, Philip was here the pivot of the situation exactly as he had been in Canada. Just as his physical weakness, and the demands he founded upon it had bound the Canadian to their chariot wheels in the Rockies, so now—mutatis mutandis—in London. Mrs. Gaddesden before ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... condition of affairs, so far as naval defence was concerned, was lamentable. The regular C. S. naval fleet consisted of the Louisiana (Captain McIntosh) and carrying the flag of Commodore Mitchell; the steamer McRae (Captain Huger), carrying six light 32-pounders and nine-inch pivot gun; the steamer Jackson (Captain Renshaw), with two pivoted smooth bore 32-pounders; the small ironplated "Ram" Manassas (Captain Warley), carrying one 32-pounder carronade in the bow; and two launches, each carrying a howitzer and a crew of twenty men. There were also present, at ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... defending himself with his antlers; while one of the dogs lay sprawling on the ground and howling with pain. The other still kept up the fight, endeavouring to seize the elk from behind; but the latter spun round, as though his knees were upon a pivot, and always presented his horny spikes in the ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... electricity is that known as magnetism. When a bar of steel or iron is magnetized, it is supposed that the molecules in it turn and arrange themselves with all their north-seeking poles towards the one end of the bar, and their south-seeking poles towards the other. If the bar is balanced freely on a pivot, it comes to rest pointing north and south; for, the earth being a huge magnet, its north pole attracts all the north-seeking poles of the molecules, and its south poles the south-seeking poles. (The north-seeking pole of a magnet is marked N., though it ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... army of soldiers, servants, tools, spies, and even assassins. He who stands in the way of the men who assemble here perishes. He who would oppose them takes his life in his hands. You are, young man, as if I had led you to the center of the earth, and I had placed your hand upon the very pivot, the well-oiled axle, upon which, noiselessly, the whole great globe revolves, and from which the awful forces extend which hold ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... of the charging line met with better success, driving back all in their front, and, wholly disregarding the defeat of the centre, persisted in advancing, each wheeling as on a pivot in the centre, until the enemy's troops were completely enveloped and subjected to a deadly fire on both flanks, as well as from the artillery in front. The flooded stream forbade an advance on our unguarded batteries. The cavalry, in a simultaneous attack, about this ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... suffering. You have spoken of Truth, 'the deathful Truth'; this being, however, nothing but Truth according to the world's opinion, which changes with every passing generation, and therefore is not Truth at all. There is another Truth—the everlasting Truth—the pivot of all life, which never changes; and it is with this alone that my science deals. Were I to set you at liberty as you desire,—were your intelligence too suddenly awakened to the blinding awfulness of your mistaken notions of life, death, and futurity, the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... facility with which folks will turn right round and revolve, I will tell how Josiah seemin'ly forgot mawlstroms, bad air, rumatiz, ages, meetin' housen, principles, etc., and turned right round on the pivot of his inclination. A day or two after he heard down in the office about the dancin' parties they had in the parlor anon or oftener, and he come up into our room enthused with the idee and wanted to branch out and go ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... ligaments is to connect and bind together the bones of the system. By them the small bones of the wrist and foot, as well as the large bones, are as securely fastened as if retained by clasps of steel. Some of them are situated within the joints, like a central cord, or pivot, (3, fig. 26.) Some surround it like a hood, and contain the lubricating synovial fluid, (8, 9, fig. 25,) and some in the form of bands at the side, ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... is always characterized by a restitutive force. Pivot suspension, q. v., on the other hand, ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... search of. He was much fascinated, for instance, by the doctrine of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," and for its sake swallowed for a time, though not without wry faces, the dogmas, that self-interest is the true pivot of all social action, that population has a perpetual tendency to outstrip the means of living, and that to establish a preventive check on population is the duty of all good citizens. And so he lived ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... slightly extended by an amending Act in 1896, consolidates and improves upon no less than four previous measures, two of which had been passed by the Ballance Government. As compared with similar European and American laws, it may fairly claim to be advanced and minute. Under its pivot clause all workshops, where two or more persons are occupied, are declared to be factories, must register, pay an annual fee, and submit to inspection at any hour of the night or day. A master and servant working together count as two hands. Inspectors have absolute power to demand ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... the rest of the mountain and was in motion, turning slowly around and around as if upon a pivot. When first they came to it there was a solid wall before them; but presently it revolved until there was exposed a wide, smooth path across it to the other side. This appeared so unexpectedly that they were unprepared to take ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... consideration, and the importance of which I desire to have deeply impressed upon my own mind. None of those soldiers who were in the habit of reading their Bibles can have failed to notice that faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is therein made the great pivot on which the salvation of man hinges; that the whole human race, without distinction of rank, nation, age, or sex, being justly exposed to the wrath of Almighty God, nothing but the precious blood of Christ, which was shed on the cross, can possibly atone for their sins; and ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... were reduced to twelve, which resumed the whole accusation, and became the pivot of the prosecution. They were never communicated at all to the prisoner. They were based on her visions, her wearing of a man's dress, her attitude towards the Church, which meant, in fact, her obedience to Poitiers and to the Archbishop of Reims, ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... the reasons that led a man who had become the pivot of the financial machine of Limoges to repulse the various propositions of marriage which parents never ceased to make to him. The daughters of his partners, Messrs. Perret and Grossetete, were married ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... incomprehensible overture, perform a drama equally incomprehensible. At the left-hand corner is Daniel in the lion's den, the lion opening his mouth in six-eight time, and an angel with outspread wings, but securely transfixed through the loins by a revolving brass pivot, shutting it again to the same lively movement. To the right of Daniel is the Grand Turk, seated in his divan, and brandishing a dagger over a prostrate slave, who only ventures to rise when the dagger is withdrawn. Next to him is Nebuchadnezzar ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... go up the winding staircase of the great tower, toilsomely, turning and turning, and lowering their heads to avoid the stairs above, or the rough stone pivot around which they twist. Durdles has lighted his lantern, by drawing from the cold, hard wall a spark of that mysterious fire which lurks in everything, and, guided by this speck, they clamber up among the cobwebs and the dust. Their ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... industry without giving her the power to protect the property she may acquire; she must therefore have the legal and political rights, or she has nothing. The ballot-box is the focus of all other rights, it is the pivot upon which all others hang; the legal rights are embraced in it, for if once possessed of the right to the ballot-box, to self-representation, she will see to it that the laws shall be just, and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... worse for me. We had strayed away into a dry, volcanic district of the mountains, where all the snow-rivers run out quite early; and of natural springs there was none forth-coming. All we had to guide us was a little traveler's compass (whose needle stuck fast on the pivot with sand) and the glaring sun, when he came to sight behind the hot, dry, driving clouds. The clouds were very low, and flying almost in our faces, like vultures sweeping down on us. To me they seemed to shriek over our ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... room, he pressed a button and a series of book- freightened shelves swung on a pivot, revealing a tiny spiral stairway of steel, which he descended with care that his spurs might not catch, the bookshelves ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... The blocks m, once formed, by their friction in the channel e, oppose enough resistance to the peat to effect its compression. In order to regulate this resistance according to the varying quality of the peat, the piece of metal g, which hangs on a pivot at o, is depressed or raised, by the screw i, so as to contract or enlarge the channel. At each stroke of the plunger a block is formed, and when the channel e is once filled, the peats fall continuously from its extremity. Their ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... didn't want to be turned, but came round quickly, almost on a pivot, very much disturbing my equilibrium again; but by gripping tightly with my legs I managed to hold on, and looked ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... sat at his table, in the round pivot-chair he always used,—a chair which enabled him to swing round suddenly and face a patient, or to turn away very quietly ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... Its plot, really simple, moves heavily and perplexes attention. It is a piece that lacks pervasive concentration and enthralling point. It might be defined as Othello with a difference—the difference being in favour of Othello. Jealousy is the pivot of both: but in Othello jealousy is treated with profound and searching truth, with terrible intensity of feeling, and with irresistible momentum of action. A spectator will honour and pity Othello, and ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... called the Scavenger's Daughter. Think of a pair of shears with handles, not only where they now are, but at the points as well, and just above the pivot that unites the blades, a circle of iron. In the upper handles the hands would be placed; in the lower, the feet; and through the iron ring, at the centre, the head of the victim would be forced. In this condition, he would be thrown prone upon the earth, and the strain ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... rock and reaching up overhead to feel about till his fingers sank into a crevice, and then, panting heavily, he made one brave effort, holding on tightly and letting his legs glide over, while he stiffly raised himself up, moving as it were upon a pivot, that pivot being the ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... drawing-rooms as Mme. de St. Cyr's are less and less frequent. Yet, though the delightful spell of the last century daily dissipates itself, and we are not now what we were twenty years ago, still Paris is, and will be till the end of time, for a cosmopolitan, the pivot on ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... pillow so as to be felt rather than heard. It is simply the pounding of the ponderous pestle of the kometsuki, the cleaner of rice—a sort of colossal wooden mallet with a handle about fifteen feet long horizontally balanced on a pivot. By treading with all his force on the end of the handle, the naked kometsuki elevates the pestle, which is then allowed to fall back by its own weight into the rice-tub. The measured muffled echoing of its fall seems to me the most pathetic of all sounds of Japanese life; it is the beating, indeed, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... There was a vague, unreal feel about her. And nobody else mattered. There was one place in the world that stood solid and did not melt into unreality: the place where his mother was. Everybody else could grow shadowy, almost non-existent to him, but she could not. It was as if the pivot and pole of his life, from which he could ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... shutting and locking sundry doors behind him, to what appeared to be a very damp wall covered with cobwebs, and situated in a dark corner of a wine-cave. Here he stopped and tapped again in his peculiar fashion, whereon a portion of the wall turned outwards on a pivot, leaving an opening through which ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... cleared the deck with a sword, and allowed the remainder of the crew to come up to his assistance, the natives would probably have obtained possession of the vessel; as it was the survivors retired in confusion, which was further increased by the discharge among them of a swivel gun, mounted on a pivot amidships. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... of the matter, the Dutch—who were inconceivably ignorant—thought their little domain the pivot of the world. Blind to realities, they had no idea of the legitimate relative comparison between the Transvaal and the British Empire, and so grew arrogantly oppressive in their attitude towards British settlers and the powers ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... let us say, and select a well-filled but green pod, mid-way up the stem, those below being ready to shed their seeds at a touch. Then seizing it in its jaws, and fixing its hind legs firmly as a pivot, it contrives to turn round and round, and so to strain the fibres of the fruit-stalk until they snap; it then patiently backs down the stem. Sometimes two ants combine their efforts; one, at the base of the peduncle, gnaws at the point of greatest tension, while the ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... charge was not defiant, for the elephants turned simultaneously as upon a pivot and set the example of making for the nearest points of the jungle; and to the charging men it seemed as if they formed part of some immensely extended human hay-making machine, whose glittering spikes were about to sweep off a living crowd which, excited and yelling wildly, ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... harmonising with this regulation, Mr. Martyn is both sharp and kindly disposed towards himself. He is not of opinion, like one of his predecessors, that he assisted at the creation of the world, and that the endurance of Christianity depends upon his clerical pivot; but he believes that he has a "mission," and that on the whole he is quite as good as the majority of Congregational divines. There is nothing pretentious in his appearance; nothing ecclesiastical in his general framework; and in the street he looks almost as much like anybody else as like a parson. ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... later taste; so much can not honestly be said for its plain speaking, for as Henley says in language which sounds as if it were borrowed from the writer he is describing, "the stinks and nastinesses are done with peculiar gusto." The idea of the story, as usual a pivot around which to revolve a series of adventures, is to narrate how a certain bachelor, country gentleman, Matthew Bramble, a malade imaginaire, yet good-hearted and capable of big laughter—"the most ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... was expressed in his weary look as he gazed out of the window. I knew that the pivot on which all his emotions turned was the anxiety of uncertainty, and that beyond the bounds of conscious thought an unknown loom was weaving for him a shadowy thread of hope. He saw, he heard nothing, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... right half of instrument. Its shaft carries index-hand over dial. H, FIELD-HOLDER: retains sample and standard white in same plane, and isolates them. Is hinged upon lower edge, and secured by pivot clamp. M, MIRROR: permits observation of the isolated halves of the holder, bearing standard white and the color to be measured. Should be clean and free from dust on both sides of central partition. S, DIFFUSING SCREEN, ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... division, the extreme right of the Union line. Immediate success attending this assault, Hardee extended the attack gradually along in front of Davis, hip movement taking the form of a wheel to the right, the pivot being nearly opposite the left of my division. Johnson's division soon gave way, and two of Davis's brigades were forced to fall back with it, though stubbornly resisting ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Massachusetts on Pennsylvania soil. If they had not fought, or if our armies had been annihilated there, the whole North would have been at the mercy of Lee's victorious legions. As Cemetery Hill was the pivot on which turned the fortunes of the battle, so Gettysburg itself was the pivot on which turned the destiny of the nation. Here the power of aggressive treason culminated; and from that memorable Fourth of July when the Rebel invaders, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... genteel tradition has handed down since Socrates; for these systems are egotistical; directly or indirectly they are anthropocentric, and inspired by the conceited notion that man, or human reason, or the human distinction between good and evil, is the centre and pivot of the universe. That is what the mountains and the woods should make you at last ashamed to assert. From what, indeed, does the society of nature liberate you, that you find it so sweet? It is hardly (is it?) that you wish to forget ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... carpet. Berrington turned the carpet back as far as it would go, but nothing suspicious presented itself to his searching eye. As he dropped the carpet back his foot touched the curb of the fireplace, and one end slid along. It seemed a curious thing that one end of the old oak curb should work on a pivot, but so it did, and Berrington pushed it as far as it would go. An instant later and he jumped ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... a comedy of pride, threw up her chin, lifted her arms, and turned as if on a pivot, to show herself off in her elegance. She had on the wine-colored street-dress bordered with black fox; over its white satin waistcoat embroidered with gold hung in a splendid loop her pink corals. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... Mezieres road by the Wurtemburgers. The French have not thought of barricading the railway viaduct; three German battalions have occupied it during the night. Two isolated houses on the Balan road could be made the pivot of a long resistance, but the Germans are there. The wood from Monvilliers to Bazeilles, but the French have been forestalled; they find the Bavarians cutting the underwood with their billhooks. The German ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... side and on the other with a boudoir which opens into the salon. The bath-room is lined with Sevres tiles, painted in monochrome, the floor is mosaic, and the bath marble. An alcove, hidden by a picture painted on copper, which turns on a pivot, contains a couch in gilt wood of the truest Pompadour. The ceiling is lapis-lazuli starred with gold. The tiles are painted from designs by Boucher. Bath, table and love are therefore ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... "The Pivot City is a sobriquet invented by the citizens to symbolize it as the point on which the fortunes of the colony would culminate and revolve. They also invented several other original terms—a phraseology christened by the Melbourne press ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... dice-box, internally an hour-glass, being shaped into two hollow cones with their vertices towards each other, the lower one fitting the conical surface on which it rests, though not with any degree of accuracy. To diminish friction, however, a strong iron pivot was inserted in the top of the solid cone, and a corresponding socket let into the narrow part of the hour-glass. Four holes were cut through the stone parallel to this pivot. The narrow part was ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... England, France, and Spain. At that momentous period—the commencement of the eighteenth century—the memoirs of a bed-chamber lady constitute the history of Europe. The bed-chamber woman soon became the pivot of the political world. The influence of Mrs. Masham first endangered and finally overthrew the power of the great Duke of Marlborough. Some of the characteristics of the reign of Charles the Second reappeared ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... from a 10 inch rifled mortar. It is designed for two 6 inch guns placed parallel. Its internal diameter is 191/2 feet, and the dome is 8 inches in thickness and has a radius of 161/2 feet. It rests upon a pivot, p, around which it revolves through the intermedium of rollers placed in a circle, r. The dome is of relatively small bulk—a bad feature as regards resistance to shock. To obviate this difficulty, the inventor partitions it internally in such a way as to leave ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... castes of readers) the great Mousquetaire trilogy; the hardly less great collection of La Reine Margot and its continuations; the long eighteenth-century set which, in a general way, may be said to be two-centred, having now Richelieu (the Duke, not the Cardinal) and now Cagliostro for pivot; and Monte Cristo—with power to add to their number. In what will be said, attention will chiefly be paid to the books just mentioned, and perhaps a few more, such as La Tulipe Noire; nor is even this list so closed that anybody may ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... team, with a half-naked black slave or two, riding or driving, as occasion suited. The carriage or wagon, if it may be called such, appeared in as wretched a condition as the team and its driver. Sometimes a couple of horses, mules, or cows, &c., would be dragging a hogshead of tobacco, with a pivot, or axle, driven into each end of the hogshead, and something like a shaft attached, by which it was drawn, or rolled along the road. I have seen two oxen and two slaves pretty fully employed in ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... on his big mouth, no twinkle about the corners of his little eyes. He looked at Mrs. Moon as much as to say, "What is to be done? The boy has been going the wrong way: must we disown him?" The moon neither shook her head nor moved her lips, but turned as on a pivot, and stood with her back to her husband, looking very miserable. Not one of the star-children moved from its place. They shone sickly and small. In a little while they faded out; then the moon paled and paled until she too vanished without ever turning her face to her husband; and last the ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... narrowed the circle of his movement, and spurring full speed, compelled the Turk to turn on a pivot so reduced it was almost a halt. The exposure while taking a second shaft from the quiver behind the right shoulder was dangerously increased. "Beware!" the Count cried again, launching his arrow through the face opening ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace |
