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






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mercury" Quotes from Famous Books



... Virtues of Cold Tar. Kant's Ancient Humbugs. 10 vols. Bowwowdom. A Poem. The Quarrelly Review. 4 vols. The Gunpowder Magazine. 4 vols. Steele. By the Author of "Ion." The Art of Cutting the Teeth. Matthew's Nursery Songs. 2 vols. Paxton's Bloomers. 5 vols. On the Use of Mercury by the Ancient Poets. Drowsy's Recollections of Nothing. 3 vols. Heavyside's Conversations with Nobody. 3 vols. Commonplace Book of the Oldest Inhabitant. 2 vols. Growler's Gruffiology, with Appendix. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... seemed to writhe, now, with self-doubt and truculence; his eyes were on the photos of the heroes, beginning way back; Goddard. Von Braun. Clifford, who had first landed on the far side of the Moon. LaCrosse, who had reached Mercury, closest to the sun. Vasiliev, who had just come back from the frozen moons of Jupiter, scoring a triumph for the Tovies—somebody had started calling them that, a few years ago—up in high Eurasia, the other side of an ideological rift that ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... Lee, a General of the New English (New England) troops came to town; as also the "Mercury," a man of war, with General Clinton. The men of war here took a merchant ship coming in, &c.; all which made many commotions in ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

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

... McQuinch has fairly established her claim to be considered the greatest novelist of the age." Middlingtown Mercury. ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... will be here!" she exclaimed despairingly. "When there is any duty within a thousand miles she stays to perform it. Mrs. Beckett has poisoned herself with mercury and Laura thinks she ought to go and nurse her for a day or two—as if Mrs. Beckett hadn't six maids and twenty thousand a year to spend in nurses! Laura can't bear Tom, his incurable levity gets on her nerves, and why she wants to martyr herself by staying ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... was obtained from a dynamo bolted on to the step of a twenty-horse-power car, and driven by a belt from the flywheel of the engine. The car stood out in the courtyard and snorted away, whilst we worked in the storeroom alongside. The coil and mercury break were combined in one piece, and the whole apparatus was skilfully contrived with a view to portability. Madame Curie was an indefatigable worker, and in a very short time had taken radiographs of all the cases which we could place at her disposal, ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar

... Press Association, therefore, reporters crowded upon us. Representatives, not only of the metropolitan press, but those of the local newspapers, the "Richmond and Twickenham Times," the "Independent," over at Brentford, the "Middlesex Chronicle" at Hounslow, and the "Middlesex Mercury," of Isleworth, all vied with each other in obtaining ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... smooth, viz.,—215 to 220 by the thermometer. When the mercury registers these figures the sugars may then be used for crystalizing creams, ...
— The Candy Maker's Guide - A Collection of Choice Recipes for Sugar Boiling • Fletcher Manufacturing Company

... trying to strangers who are not accustomed to them. You will often hear people who have traveled all over the world say that they never suffered so much from the cold as in India, and it is safe to believe them. The same degree of cold seems colder there than elsewhere, because the mercury falls so rapidly after the sun goes down. However, India is so vast, and the climate and the elevations are so varied, that you can spend the entire year there without discomfort if you migrate with the birds and follow the barometer. There ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... bowels; nay, sometimes produces dysenteries. In all appearance it is impregnated with nitre, if not with something more mischievous: we know that mundic, or pyrites, very often contains a proportion of arsenic, mixed with sulphur, vitriol, and mercury. Perhaps it partakes of the acid of some coal mine; for there are coal works in this district. There is a well of purging water within a quarter of a mile of the Upper Town, to which the inhabitants resort in the morning, as the people of London go to the Dog-and-duck, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... sat down. She looked deliciously cool, though the mercury was in the nineties, and the dusty canyonlike streets were like ovens. "I was on the point of going," she admitted, "but I don't know where to go. I came for some information ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... prevalent among the natives during this period: nor are our people exempt from them. In October the falling of the leaves and occasional frost announce the beginning of winter. The lakes and parts of the rivers are frozen in November. The snow seldoms exceeds twenty-four inches in depth. The mercury in Fahrenheit's thermometer falls in January to 15 degrees below zero; but this does not continue many days. In general, I may say, the climate is neither unhealthy nor unpleasant; and if the natives used common prudence, they would undoubtedly live to an ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne

... confusion follow'd, Earth must have been in chaos swallow'd. Jove stood amazed; but looking round, With much ado the cheat he found; 'Twas plain he could no longer hold The world in any chain but gold; And to the god of wealth, his brother, Sent Mercury to get another. Prometheus on a rock is laid, Tied with the chain himself had made, On icy Caucasus to shiver, While vultures eat ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... with a delicate frost tracery. Still the barometer continued to fall steadily, though not so rapidly as at first, indicating that the ship was still soaring upward; and with every inch fall of the mercury the professor became an increasingly interesting study of mingled delight and anxiety. At length the mercury, still falling, registered a height of eleven inches only, and the professor gave vent to a great sigh of relief. ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... The grizzled lieutenant, commissioned because of his long experience and responsibilities, gave Valier a clean bill of health. Each engine of the booster stage had been fired separately, before dawn. A cubic foot of mercury seemed to roll from Mac's shoulders as he saw Logan and Ruiz lounging at the bottom of the lift; there wasn't anything to worry about. He recalled feeling the tension before the other three flights, then chided himself. ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing

... their one tooth, which they shifted about," observed Primrose, "there was nothing so very wonderful in that. I suppose it was a false tooth. But think of your turning Mercury into Quicksilver, and talking about his sister! You are ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... says that Isis made the discovery of barley at the moment when she was sacrificing to the common ancestors of her husband and herself, all of whom had been kings, and that she showed the newly discovered ears of barley to Osiris and his councillor Thoth or Mercury, as Roman writers called him. That is why, adds Augustine, they identify Isis with Ceres. Further, at harvest-time, when the Egyptian reapers had cut the first stalks, they laid them down and beat their breasts, wailing ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... expression of ideas. They are, generally, abbreviated, compounded, and so disguised that their origin and formation are not generally known. Horne Tooke calls them "the wheels of language, the wings of Mercury." He says "tho we might be dragged along without them, it would be with much difficulty, very heavily and tediously." But when he undertakes to show that they were constructed for this object, he mistakes their true character; for they were not invented for that purpose, but were originally ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... the ground, the sides of the water chatty grow dark and moist and cool themselves in the hot air, and through the dripping interstices of the khuskhus tattie a chilly fragrance creeps into the room, causing the mercury in the thermometer to retreat from its proud place. Nay, the seraph finds his way to your very bath-room, and discharging a cataract into the great tub, leaves it heaving like the ocean after a storm. When you follow him there, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... leg was like a lump of lead. I was stretched once more for some months on a sick-bed, and this weakened me the more since very heroic measures were used in the treatment of the complaint, a violent attack of phlebitis. The leg was rubbed every day from the sole of the foot to the hip with mercury ointment, which could not be without its effect ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... dressed. She put on a pale blue linen gown which Jack admired, and a blue straw hat trimmed with grey wings which Jack said made her look like Mercury. ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... Nevada, furnish examples of mineral veins in process of formation. The steaming water rises through fissures in volcanic rocks and is now depositing in the rifts a vein stone of quartz, with metallic ores of iron, mercury, lead, ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... pay their court to it. The Under-Secretary of State reflected light upon the Minister, and the Minister reflected admiration upon the Under-Secretary of State. The Minister had desired his presence at this interview, not comprehending that this little Mercury of his planetary system, having resolved in his youth to free himself from the supernatural, which hampered the most spontaneous movements of his selfish nature, had come to hate the supernatural with much the same hatred which the sick conceive for the man who, they know, has gloomily ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... the signs of the evil spirit. Certainly it was no good spirit who had inspired them with the art of music; or else (as Cary said) Apollo and Mercury (if they ever visited America) had played their forefathers a shabby trick, and put them off with very poor instruments, and still poorer taste. For on either side of the landing-place were arranged four or five stout fellows, each with a tall drum, or long earthen trumpet, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... white monotony of the rolling land and level lake remained unbroken. The reindeer did not come. The days became shorter, dimmer, darker. The mercury kept ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... but when wheat-fields supplied abundance of food they multiplied very fast, although oftentimes sore pressed during hard winters when the snow reached a depth of two or three feet, covering their food, while the mercury fell to twenty or thirty degrees below zero. Occasionally, although shy on account of being persistently hunted, under pressure of extreme hunger in the very coldest weather when the snow was deepest they ventured into barnyards and even approached the doorsteps ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... was a heavy burden on the scanty resources of poor Keefe, but he made her cordially welcome like the hearty soldier that he was. She was the only unmarried white woman within a hundred miles, and the mercury ranged from zero to -20 degrees all winter. In the spring, she and Farnham were married; he seemed to have lost the sense of there being any other women in the world, and he took her, as one instinctively takes to dinner the last lady remaining in a drawing-room, without ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... kerosene, put a thermometer into a cup partially filled with cold water, and add boiling water until the mercury stands at 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Then take out the thermometer and pour two teaspoonfuls of kerosene into the cup and pass over it the flame of a candle. If the oil ignites, it ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... have on my finger is forwardly by most men supposed to have a real essence, whereby it is gold; and from whence those qualities flow which I find in it, viz. its peculiar colour, weight, hardness, fusibility, fixedness, and change of colour upon a slight touch of mercury, &c. This essence, from which all these properties flow, when I inquire into it and search after it, I plainly perceive I cannot discover: the furthest I can go is, only to presume that, it being nothing but body, its real essence or internal constitution, on which these qualities depend, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... my friends that I was rather too modest, so I will not determine this dispute for myself, but refer it to Mercury, the god of wit, who fortunately happens to be coming this way with a soul he has ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... will express surprise at these terms, but I assure them that not only these articles but tumbrils, guillotines, and conciergeries were in active use among the Federals. If substantiation be required, I refer to the Charleston "Mercury," the only reliable organ, next to the New York "Daily News," published in the country. At the Bastile I made the acquaintance of the accomplished and elegant author of "Guy Livingstone," [Footnote: The recent conduct ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... it be moderately dry, even with the thermometer at 95 in the shade, is really not so enervating or oppressive as I have found it in the stagnating atmosphere on the sunny side of Pall Mall, with the mercury barely at 75. A cargo of ice had a little before this arrived at Kingston, and at first all the inhabitants who could afford it iced every thing, wine, water, cold meats, fruits, and the Lord knows what all, tea, I believe, amongst other things; (by the way, I have tried ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... out of certain drugs. Gum opium and nitre "found by Congress" was included in the chest for the Pennsylvania 4th Battalion, and by May 11 the Marshalls were out of Peruvian bark, ipecac, cream of tartar, gum camphor, and red precipitate of mercury. The chests outfitted after June 1 also failed to include Epsom salts, and the last chest lacked jalap as well. Thus the majority of the battalions traveling north were already without some of ...
— Drug Supplies in the American Revolution • George B. Griffenhagen

... may judge by line 51, and if Greek musical tradition be correct, the date of the Hymn cannot be earlier than the fortieth Olympiad. About that period Terpander is said to have given the lyre seven strings (as Mercury does in the poem), in place of the previous four strings. The date of Terpander is dubious, but probably the seven-stringed lyre had long been in common use before the poet attributed the invention to Hermes. The same argument applies to the antiquity of writing, ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... first, and proceed to Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. Parties connected with the government of the District of Columbia and with the former city government of New York, who may desire to inspect the rings, will be allowed time and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... no victuals for the road, rain and thunder. 'But I am almost pleased at this, I see the track of Christian poverty.' A chance to make some money he does not see; he will be obliged to spend everything he can wrest from his Maecenases—he, born under a wrathful Mercury. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... this conqueror; and whenever they came to any battle, was so swift in bearing his commands to the general, and in returning to him in which line soever he was, that Poniatosky gave him the name of the Mercury to their Jove; nor did he less signalize his valour; he fought by the side of the king like one who valued not life, in competition with the praises of his master. In an engagement where they took the baggage of Augustus, he did extraordinary ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... sort of colony of which the Earth is a member. These bodies are called planets, or wanderers. There are eight of them, including the Earth, and they all circle round the sun. Their names, in the order of their distance from the sun, are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and of these Mercury, the nearest to the sun, is rarely seen by the naked eye. Uranus is practically invisible, and Neptune quite so. These eight planets, ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... him with kettles, and horns and hand-bells, and every species of "rough music," by which name the ceremony was designated. Perhaps the riding mentioned by Pepys was a punishment somewhat similar. Malcolm ("Manners of London") quotes from the "Protestant Mercury," that a porter's lady, who resided near Strand Lane, beat her husband with so much violence and perseverance, that the poor man was compelled to leap out of the window to escape her fury. Exasperated ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... mensogeco. Mendicant almozulo. Menial servulo. Menses monatajxo. Mental spirita. Mention citi, nomi. Menu mangxokarto. Mercantile komerca. Mercenary dungato. Mercenary subacxetebla. Merchandise komercajxo. Merchant negocisto. Merciful kompata—ema. Mercury hidrargo. Mercy kompato—eco. Mere nura. Merely nure. Meridian meridiano. Merino merinolano. [Error in book: merinoslano] Merit merito. Merit meriti. Mermaid sireno. Merriment gajeco. Merry ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... back to the Endeavour half crazed with excitement at his narrow escape from a New Zealand oven. The odd name of the very fertile district of Poverty Bay reminds us that Cook failed to get there the supplies he obtained at the Bay of Plenty. At Goose Cove he turned five geese ashore; at Mercury Bay he did astronomical work. On the other hand, Capes North, South, East, and West, and Capes Brett, Saunders, Stephens, and Jackson, Rock's Point, and Black Head are neither quaint nor romantic names. Cascade Point and the Bay of Islands justify themselves, and Banks' Peninsula may be accepted ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... grams of cyanide of potassium in 50 grams of distilled water; the two liquids are mixed in a decanter, and stirred for 10 minutes; it is then filtered. Finally, 100 grams of sifted whiting are mixed with 10 grams of pulverised supertartrate of potass and one gram of mercury. This powder and dissolving liquid are used in the same manner as in the above method of gold plating. These excellent methods of silvering and gilding were discovered in June 1860, by the great French chemist Baldooshong of Paris France. It is far superior to any other method ever ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young

... often several words to express the same or nearly the same meaning. Want of space prevents these being all included; the most important or most commonly used word has therefore been chosen; for instance, "mercury", "tranquil", "diaphanous", "suffocate", "salve", "renown", "fiddle", are not to be found, but "quicksilver", "calm", "translucent", "smother", "ointment", "fame", ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... few inches is continually frozen, appears to me exceedingly remarkable—and from a general point of view the occurrence of insects in a land which is exposed to a winter cold below the freezing-point of mercury, and where the animal cannot seek protection from it by creeping down to a stratum of earth which never freezes, presupposes that either the insect itself, its egg, larva, or pupa, may be frozen stiff without being killed. Only very few species of these small animals, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... touched him in his courtships. I conclude him in his lance; {49} he was sent Governor by the Queen to the revolted States of Holland, where we read not of his wonders, for they say he had more of Mercury than he had of Mars, and that his device might have been, without prejudice to the great Caesar, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... two and one-half miles to meeting, sitting through the long service with the mercury at zero. Only we did not know how cold it was, not having a thermometer. My father purchased one about 1838. I think there was ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... wrap the bulb of one with a piece of black or dark colored cloth and the bulb of the other with a piece of white cloth, then place them where the sun will shine on the cloth covered bulbs. The mercury in both thermometers will be seen to rise, but in the thermometer with the dark cloth about the bulb it will rise faster and higher than in the other. This shows that the dark cloth absorbs heat faster than ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... before nine o'clock in the morning the mercury stood at ninety degrees in the shade. The cook overslept herself, and breakfast was so late that William Henry missed the train into the city, which didn't make it pleasanter for any of us. I had ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... to Swedenborg that these bodies are not made to wander through space puts all human science out of sight beneath the grandeur of a divine logic. According to the Seer, the inhabitants of Jupiter will not cultivate the sciences, which they call darkness; those of Mercury abhor the expression of ideas by speech, which seems to them too material,—their language is ocular; those of Saturn are continually tempted by evil spirits; those of the Moon are as small as six-year-old children, their voices issue ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... Back, shepherds, back! Enough your play Till next sun-shine holiday. Here be, without duck or nod, Other trippings to be trod Of lighter toes, and such court guise As Mercury did first devise With the mincing Dryades On the lawns and ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton

... transgressed a negative command. He who vowed in its name, and performed the vow in its name, transgressed a negative command. "He exposed himself to Baal peor?" "That is positive service." "He cast a stone to Mercury?" "That is positive service." ...
— Hebrew Literature

... "I think you're kind of off your bat to-night, Sheila Arundel," she said, chewing noisily. "First you run out at night with the mercury at 4 below and come dashing back scared to death, banging at the door, and then you tell me you like Dickie and ask me not to mention the finest ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... therein you would find yourselves jostled and hustled and trodden upon by the curious from other lands, with Argus eyes taking in five hundred pictures a minute, and traversing those halls at a rate of speed at which Mercury himself would stand aghast." ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs

... relate, but have not now time to set them down. But to proceed, there are other bodies that consist of particles more Gross, and of a more apt figure for cohesion, and this requires somewhat greater agitation; such, I suppose [Mercury], fermented vinous Spirits, several Chymical Oils, which are much of kin to those Spirits, &c. Others yet require a greater, as water, and so others much greater, for almost infinite degrees: For, I suppose there are very few bodies in the world that ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... Eteocles. Jupiter, in a council of the gods, declares his resolution of punishing the Thebans, and Argives also, by means of a marriage betwixt Polynices and one of the daughters of Adrastus, King of Argos. Juno opposes, but to no effect; and Mercury is sent on a message to the shades, to the ghost of Laius, who is to appear to Eteocles, and provoke him to break the agreement. Polynices, in the meantime, departs from Thebes by night, is overtaken by a storm, and arrives at Argos, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... of ten days or two weeks, if the acute painful condition has entirely subsided, vesication is indicated. The ordinary mercury and cantharides combination does very well. Depending upon the course taken in any given case, one is guided in the treatment employed. If prompt resolution comes to pass, the subject may be given free run at pasture after three or four weeks confinement in a box stall. If, however, ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... is, that the medical profession composes the most generous and liberal body of men amongst us; taken generally, by much the most enlightened; but professionally, the most timid. Want of boldness in the administration of opium, &c., though they can be bold enough with mercury, is their besetting infirmity. And from this infirmity females suffer most. One instance I need hardly mention, the fatal case of an august lady, mourned by nations, with respect to whom it was, and is, the belief of multitudes to this hour (well able to judge), that she would have been saved ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... saucepan from its last cleansing. It froze as it fell upon the soil. He looked at the night, and shook himself to throw off an oppressive sensation of being clasped in the icy ribs of the air, for the mercury had descended below the familiar region of crisp and crackly cold and marked a temperature at which the numb atmosphere seemed on the point of congealing into black solidity. Nothing ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... they silted in imperceptibly from twenty streets. As fast as the crowd grew, regiments appeared, and taking up positions, lay at ease. There was something terrible about the quiet way in which both crowd and troops increased. The mercury was not high, but it promised to be a hot morning in New York. All the car lines took off their cars. Trucks disappeared from the streets. The exchanges and the banks closed their doors, and many hundred shops followed their example. New ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... this taking place, the other rivers repair to her father Peneus, either to congratulate or to console him; but Inachus is not there, as he is grieving for his daughter Io, whom Jupiter, having first ravished her, has changed into a cow. She is entrusted by Juno to the care of Argus; Mercury having first related to him the transformation of the Nymph Syrinx into reeds, slays him, on which his eyes are placed by Juno in the tail of the peacock. Io, having recovered human shape, becomes the mother ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... a more apparently veracious statement! All the doings of Martin Guerre seemed to be most faithfully described, and surely only himself could thus narrate his own actions. As the historian remarks, alluding to the story of Amphitryon, Mercury himself could not better reproduce all Sosia's actions, gestures, and words, than did the false Martin Guerre those of the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... an instance of a person's acquiring at an age equally early, the reputation, which attended the first publication of Grotius. It was an edition, with notes, of the work of "Martianus Mineus Felix Capella, on the Marriage of Mercury and Philology, in two books; and of the same writer's Seven Treatises on the Liberal Arts." They had been often printed; but all the editions were faulty: a manuscript of them having been put into the hands of Grotius by his father, he communicated it to Scaliger, and by his advice undertook ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler

... into the hands of irregular practitioners, and was as often used injuriously as beneficially, and more frequently without any effect. The absurd pretensions of galvanic baths for the extraction of mercury from the system will be remembered by most of our citizens, and the shocking practice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... snapped old Corn Husk, "Keepin' the mercury runnin' up and down the tube like that, fust thing ye know the durn thing'll be worn out, and long'll go twenty-five cents ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... the play; but we shall add no more criticisms: 'the words of Mercury are harsh after the ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... dressing-table there were the busts of Fox and Nelson. At our return home we saw the good Francois Delessert and another man, who was the man who took Robespierre prisoner, and who has since made a clock which is wound up by the action of the air on mercury, like that which Mr. Edgeworth invented for the King of Spain. He told us many things that made us stare, and many that made us shiver, and many more that made us wish never to see ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... thing. If they tried to pick it up, it would slip out of their fingers. When thoroughly shaken, it became a fine powder. They boasted that it had the faculty of swallowing any other metal, while powerful heat caused it to disappear entirely. It is now known among metals as mercury. Can you tell me, Fred, some of ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various

... About ten of the elements are gases at ordinary temperatures. Two—mercury and bromine—are liquids. The others are all solids, though their melting points vary through wide limits, from caesium which melts at 26 deg. to elements which do not melt save in the intense heat of ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson

... gratification which the gods have to give. To subdue the audience and blend mind with mind affords an intoxication beyond the ambrosia of Elysium. When Sophocles pictured the god Mercury seizing upon the fairest daughter of Earth and carrying her away through the realms of space, he had in mind the power of the orator, which through love lifts up humanity and sways men by a burst of feeling that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

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

... of mercury, when heated in an open glass tube, is resolved into cyanogen gas and metallic mercury; if this substance is heated in a tube hermetically sealed, the decomposition occurs as before, but the gas, unable to escape, and shut up in a space several hundred times smaller ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig

... immediately after breakfast and was not to return till dinner-time, she also consented to postpone her journey till after lunch, and to join the family at that time. As to the subject of the quarrel not a word was said by any one. The affair of the carriage was arranged by Mr Harding, who acted as Mercury between the two ladies; they, when they met, kissed each other very lovingly, and then sat down each to her crochet work as though nothing was ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... Natural resources: coal, mercury, zinc, potash, marble, barite, asbestos, pumice, fluorospar, feldspar, pyrite (sulfur), natural gas and crude oil ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

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

... servant or two it would be all right," said Amy, coming out of the parlor, where she had been trying to decide whether the bronze Mercury looked best on the whatnot or ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... that we gave to the minister of our corporeal necessities—the butcher's boy—not from a conviction of the superior services or merit of the former, but from an uneasy desire to bribe, if we could, that Mercury ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... health! Plutus would insure me wealth Mercury looks after trade, Hera smiles on youth and maid. All are kind, I own their worth, After Momus, god ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... and puts the soul into disorder. And he said, between jest and earnest, that he believed it was with such meats as those that Circe changed men into swine, and that Ulysses avoided that transformation by the counsel of Mercury, and because he had temperance enough ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon

... of waning glories. On three evenings of the week, it was the pleasure of the king that the whole court should assemble in the vast suite of apartments now known as the Halls of Abundance, of Venus, of Diana, of Mars, of Mercury, and of Apollo. The magnificence of their decorations, pictures of the great Italian masters, sculptures, frescoes, mosaics, tapestries, vases and statues of silver and gold; the vista of light and splendor that opened through the wide portals; the courtly throngs, feasting, ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... jester). Exigua res est ipsa Justitia. Quae non posuistj ne tollas. Dat veniam coruis vexat Censura columbas. Lapsa lingua verum dicit. The toung trippes vpon troth. The evill is best that is lest [best?] knowen. A mercury cannot be made of every wood (bvt priapus may). Princes haue a Cypher. Anger of all passions beareth the age lest [best?]. One hand washeth another. Iron sharpeth ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... party, and your fine weather. When I was at Abbotsford the mercury was down at six or seven in the morning more than once. I am hammering away at a bit of a story from the old affair of the diablerie at Woodstock in the Long Parliament times. I don't like it much. I am obliged to hamper my fanatics greatly ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... of Mercury, who therefore sowed this dissension between the two brothers in revenge for his death by Pelops. See note at ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... it was merely a congestion of the retina—for which no cause could be assigned; and that he would be cured in less than a month. That he was to have a seton let into the back of his neck, dry-cup himself on the chest and thighs night and morning, and take a preparation of mercury three times a day. Also that he must go to the seaside immediately—and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... born of the sea-foam; Hestia, the goddess of the hearth; Demeter, the earth- mother, the goddess of grains and harvests. [Footnote: The Latin names of these divinities are as follows: Zeus Jupiter; Poseidon Neptune; Apollo Apollo; Ares Mars; Hephaestus Vulcan; Hermes Mercury; Hera Juno; Athena Minerva; Artemis Diana; Aphrodite Venus; Hestia ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... department of research. Physicians would have nothing to do with Harvey's discoveries about the circulation of the blood. "Nature is accused of tolerating a vacuum!" exclaimed a priest when Pascal began his experiments on the Puy-de-Dome to show that the column of mercury in a glass tube varied in height with the pressure of ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman

... the earth to be the centre of the universe, the celestial bodies which have a proper movement of their own among the stars were arranged in the order of their apparent periods of revolution—Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the Moon. The Jewish Jehovah was identified by the Graeco-Romans with Saturn, the oldest of the heathen personal gods. The Sabbath was the day supposed to be specially devoted to him. The first day of the week was, therefore, given to Saturn. Passing ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... determinations of size and number, that is of mathematic. For exampkle, I may compute the light of the sun, and say that its quantity is a certain number of times greater than that of the moon. In the same way, heat is measured by the comparison of its different effects on water, &c., and on mercury in ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... the days and months as well; a globe was attached to it which also marked out the rising and the setting of the sun, and the eclipses of that body and the moon could be seen at the same time as they took place in nature. Every change was pointed out by Mercury's wand, and every constellation appeared at the right time. Shortly before the stroke of the clock a figure representing Death emerged from the centre and sounded the full hour, while at the quarter and half hours the statue of Christ came ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland

... not possible that, at the prodigious temperature which would seem to exist at 100 miles below the surface, all the metallic bases may behave as mercury does at a red heat, when it refuses to combine with oxygen; while, nearer the surface, and therefore at a lower temperature, they may enter into combination (as mercury does with oxygen a few degrees below its boiling-point), and so give rise to a heat totally distinct ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... its junction with the former, are several yellow arsenic mines, but the working of these is not encouraged by the present ruler. Gold also, I was told, is to be found in the streams about Chitral; this statement proved correct, as I was able to work up some with the aid of mercury, and on having the ore tested by a goldsmith's firm in India, it was pronounced by them to be 21 carat; but this washing is seldom permitted, the reason assigned by the chief being that if once it ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard

... discovered. At the meeting of the British Association at Southampton, Professor Oersted communicated to the Chemical Section some curious examples of the influence of time in determining chemical change, as shown in the action of mercury upon glass in hermetically sealed vessels. The character of Professor Oersted's mind was essentially searching and minute; thus he observed results which escaped detection in the hands of those who took more general and enlarged views of natural phenomena. To this was due the discovery ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... door, outside of which hung an instrument called a thermometer. I guess you have seen them often enough. A thermometer is a glass tube, fastened to a piece of wood or perhaps tin, and inside is a thin, shiny column. This column is mercury, or quicksilver. Some thermometers have, instead of mercury, alcohol, colored red, so ...
— Daddy Takes Us Skating • Howard R. Garis

... gives him the nudge to fire away. And say, he's all primed! He begins by givin' Bobbie a word picture of the Rankin glass works at night, when the helpers are carryin' the trays from the hot room, where the blowers work three-hour shifts, with the mercury at one hundred and twenty, to the coolin' room, where it's like a cellar. He tells him how many helpers there are, how many hours they work a day, and what they get for it. It didn't make me yearn ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... smiling maliciously. "Ergo, I can scratch the mercury off a looking-glass, put in its place a piece of bibinka, and we shall still have a mirror, eh? ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... out of the common run and marvelous in its way. It stood in a shadowy city over whose dark streets the buildings toppled, until spiders spun their webs across from roof to roof. And to this cobbler the god Mercury himself journeyed to have wings sewed to his flying shoes. High patronage. And Atalanta, too, came and held out her swift foot for the fitting of a running sandal. But perhaps the cobbler's most famous ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... coal, lignite, iron ore, copper, lead, zinc, uranium, tungsten, mercury, pyrites, magnesite, fluorspar, gypsum, sepiolite, kaolin, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... edifice was for a long time a bone of contention among savants, but Colonel Rawlinson's investigations have brought to light the fact that it was a temple dedicated to the seven heavenly spheres, viz. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon, in the order given, starting from the bottom. Access to the various platforms was obtained by stairs, and the whole building was surrounded by a walled enclosure. From remains found at Wurkha we may gather that the walls of the buildings of this period were covered with ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... one series of these, representing the creation, the Almighty is shown as working, day after day, like an artisan, and finally, on the seventh day, as "resting,"—seated in almost the exact attitude of the "weary Mercury" of classic sculpture, with a marked expression of fatigue upon his countenance and in the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... mercury does not lose its power by use, but should when it becomes oxydized, be strained by ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various

... quicksilver, known as the patio process, in 1557. An improvement on his invention came from Peru, in 1783, which was the use of mules instead of men in treading out the crushed ore. From far-away Peru other matters had come, as the quicksilver from the great Huancavelica mines, the mercury necessary for the process. And the beautiful Peruvian pepper trees, which were brought to ornament the plaza of Pachuca by one of the last of the Viceroys from Lima, form another reminiscence of ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... hope to reach the neighbourhood of even this lonely spot itself, this last verge of civilization; the terrific cold of a winter of which I had only heard, a cold so intense that travel ceases, except in the vicinity of the forts of the Hudson Bay Company-a cold which freezes mercury, and of which the spirit registers 80 degrees of frost-this was to be the thought of many nights, the ever-present companion of many days. Between this little camp-fire and the giant mountains to which my steps were turned, there stood in that long ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... Think of Mercury in its wild rush through the solar heat, or Venus gleaming in the western sky, or ruddy Mars with its tantalising problems, or of mighty Jupiter 1,230 times the size of our own planet, or of Saturn with its wondrous rings, or of Uranus and Neptune ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... phosphoric anhydrides and the violet vapors of iodine. Heated in contact with sulphureted hydrogen, it forms sulphides of boron and phosphorus and hydriodic acid, without liberation of iodine. Metallic magnesium when slightly warmed reacts with it with incandescence. When thrown into vapor of mercury, boron phospho-di-iodide instantly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various

... remarkable for masses of blossom. There are giant garlands of white wild cherry above in spring, and equally white anemone below; by and by an acre of primroses growing close together, not large, but wonderfully thick, a golden river of king- cup between banks of dog's mercury, later on whole glades of wild hyacinth, producing a curious effect of blue beneath the budding yellow green of the young birches with silver stems. Sheets of the scarlet sorrel by and by appear, and foxgloves of all sizes troop in the woods, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... it. The place was like an antechamber of the infernal regions proper. I dipped my hand into the water and drew it out almost with a cry; it was nearly boiling. We consulted a little thermometer we had — the mercury stood at 123 degrees. From the surface of the water rose a dense cloud of steam. Alphonse groaned out that we were already in purgatory, which indeed we were, though not in the sense that he meant it. Sir ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... added a throttle valve for the regulation of steam admission, invented the automatic governor and the steam indicator, a mercury steam gauge and a ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... my purse is low my spirits sink, as the mercury does with the cold. You used to say my spirits were ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... eyes left the play to rest unhappily on the silent figure in the purple sweater. Jimsy was playing well; every man on the team was playing well; but they were not gaining. Jimsy King, on whose heels were always the wings of Mercury, could not get up speed in that mud,—a brief flash, no more. She began to bargain with the gods of the gridiron; at first she had been concerned with scoring in the first five minutes of play; then she had remodeled her petition ... to score in the first half. Now, her throat dry, ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... have got the fellows of the West Bromwich to entrust the card to me, and have undertaken to see it duly delivered. I hope you'll approve of my Mercury. Hunter says he doesn't care ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... as Lloyd Morgan remarks, "tells us that a glacier behaves in many respects like a river, and discusses how the crust of the earth behaves under the stresses to which it is subjected. Weatherwise people comment on the behavior of the mercury in the barometer as a storm approaches. When Mary, the nurse maid, returns with the little Miss Smiths from Master Brown's birthday party, she is narrowly questioned as to ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... pressure of the ethereal particles, the motion of which they thereby damp, and so hinder the continuance of the waves of light? That cannot be: for if the particles of the metals are soft, how is it that polished silver and mercury reflect light so strongly? What I find to be most probable herein, is to say that metallic bodies, which are almost the only really opaque ones, have mixed amongst their hard particles some soft ones; so that some serve ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens

... is full of hills, some of which are of a considerable height. The land was covered with snow, except a few spots upon the sea-coast, which still continued low, but less so than farther westward. For the two preceding days, the mean height of the mercury in the thermometer had been very little above the freezing point, and often below it; so that the water in the vessels upon the deck was frequently covered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... is it less valued by his son Giulio, a youth of singular goodness and judgment, a friend to lovers of art and to all men of excellence. In the house of Giovan Battista d'Agnol Doni, a gentleman of Florence, there is a Mercury of metal in the round by the hand of Donato, one braccio and a half in height and clothed in a certain bizarre manner; which work is truly very beautiful, and no less rare than the others that adorn his most beautiful house. Bartolommeo Gondi, of whom we have spoken in the Life of Giotto, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari

... because on that day the Jews took counsel to destroy Christ, and Friday because that was the day of His crucifixion."—Kaye's Tertullian, p. 418. As Wednesday was dedicated to Mercury and Friday to Venus, this fasting, according to Clement, signified to the more advanced disciple, that he was to renounce the love of gain and the love of pleasure. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... consists of a glass tube with small carbon blocks or plugs attached to the ends of the wires and instead of the metal filings there is a globule of mercury between the plugs. When electric waves fall upon this coherer, the mercury coheres to the carbon blocks, and thus forms a bridge for the ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... creatures assume shapes of glory for shining in the firmament. Thou art Chandramas, thou art Surya, thou art the planet Saturn, thou art the descending node (of the moon), thou art the ascending node, thou art Mangala (Mars), and thou art Vrihaspati (Jupiter) and Sukra (Venus), thou art Vudha (Mercury) thou art the worshipper of Atri's wife, thou art he who shot his shaft in wrath at Sacrifice when Sacrifice fled away from him in the form of a deer. Thou art sinless.[99] Thou art possessed of penances that have conferred upon thee the power of creating the universe. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... appears, all that we really know of the Gaulish religion before the Roman conquest is reduced to a few lines in Polybius, in which can be found the name of Perkunas, the Perkun of the Slavs. Caesar identifies the gods of the Gauls with the Roman ones, Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva; and M. Andre Lefevre, in the Revue mensuelle de l'Ecole d'anthropologie, asks, without being able to answer: "How is it possible that such men as Caesar and Tacitus were able to confound with Mercury the supreme ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... "There was red mercury, a powerfully acting body, united with the tincture of antimony, at a gentle heat of the water-bath. Then, being exposed to the heat of open fire in an aludel, (or alembic,) a sublimate filled its heads in succession, which, if it appeared with ...
— Faust • Goethe

... savages, as the following will testify: "Crowland Abbey.—Certain surveyors have lately dug up several foundation stones of the Abbey, and also a great quantity of stone coffins, for the purpose of repairing the parish roads."—Stamford Mercury. ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... soldiers of the youthful Bonaparte had marched and fought in warm days in a sunny country. It was a different thing to conduct a great campaign, when the clouds heavy with snow were hovering around the mountain tops, and the mercury was hunting zero. He shivered and looked apprehensively into the chilly night. His apprehension was not for a human foe, but for the unbroken spirits of darkness and mystery ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... half-suppressed titter that ran through the room attracted their attention, and turning round, Mr. Jorrocks was seen poking his way through the crowd with a number of straws sticking to his feet, giving him the appearance of a feathered Mercury. The fact was, that Agamemnon had cleaned his shoes with the liquid varnish (french polish), and forgetting to dry it properly, the carrying away half the straw from the bottom of the fiacre was the consequence, and Mr. Jorrocks having paid the ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... generated in the earth which were not metals, were again subdivided into two classes—those which liquefy on being heated, as sulphur, nitre, etc., and those which do not. The metals were considered to be composed of sulphur and mercury. These substances are themselves compounds, but they act as elements in the composition of metals. Sulphur represented their combustible aspect, and also that which gave them their solid form; while mercury was that to which their weight and powers ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele

... the corn reapers. Other traditions represented Daphnis as beloved by a nymph, who exacted from him an oath to love no one else. He fell in love with a princess, and was struck blind by the jealous nymph. Mercury, who was his father, raised him to heaven, and made a fountain spring up in the place from which he ascended. At this fountain the Sicilians offered yearly sacrifices. See Servius, Comment, in Vergil. Bucol., ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... had a fancy to put on her "freak" dress. It was of gold tissue with little trousers of the same, tightly drawn in at the ankles, a page's cape slung from the shoulders, little gold shoes, and a gold-winged Mercury helmet; and all over her were tiny gold bells, especially on the helmet; so that if she shook her head she pealed. When she was dressed she felt quite sick because Jon could not see her; it even seemed a pity that the sprightly young man Michael ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... hour of Monday (the natural day beginning at sunrise) being subject to Luna or Diana. The orisons of Palamon were offered two hours earlier, namely, in the twenty-third hour of Sunday, which is similarly subject to Venus, the twenty-fourth or last hour belonging to Mercury, the planet intermediate between Venus and the Moon. It is on this account that Palamon is said to have prayed to Venus in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... before it's crumbled out by the weather and is washed down with gravel and sand to make the placer beds. You dig the placer bed, but you have to use a crow-bar and powder on lodes, and break them to pieces. Then you have to crush the pieces and wash the gold out or unite it with mercury and get it that way. Lode mining takes machinery, if it's done right, and it's expensive; but it lasts longer, if it's any good, because you can follow the lode for miles. Placer ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... Band i. p. 264. He adds that he would prefer to be Mercury, the least of the seven planets that revolve round the sun, than first among the five that revolve ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... down as gently as a dove, alighting upon his legs, and remaining erect upon them, like Mercury upon the top ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid

... engaged in nearly all the cases of importance. His manner to the jury was earnest and spirited; he managed his causes with tact (that great acquirement of the successful lawyer: being, as a distinguished barrister now dead and gone said to Dr. Hosack, the same sheet anchor to the advocate which mercury or bark is to the physician), was ready in attack or defence, and possessed great eloquence of expression. As an advocate he showed a sagacity of perception which no intricacy of detail could blind, no suddenness of attack confuse, and which afterwards so distinguished him as a Judge. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... it came, And every member had his grace, There wanted nothing but a name: By hap was Mercury then in place, That said, 'I pray you all agree, Pandora grant her name ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... Phaenomena in Nature, besides a Multitude of Accidents relating to the humane Body, which will scarcely be clearly & satisfactorily made out by them that confine themselves to deduce things from Salt, Sulphur and Mercury, and the other Notions peculiar to the Chymists, without taking much more Notice than they are wont to do, of the Motions and Figures, of the small Parts of Matter, and the other more Catholick and Fruitful affections of Bodies. Wherefore it will ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... on the Transit of Mercury, which he said would take place in the form of a Bed Precipitate in 1878. It may possibly take place before then, however, as the Faculty of Medicine are said to be rapidly abandoning the use ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various

... therefore, in many places still strongly impregnated with salt which acts as a refrigerant.[19] Again, when the north wind comes down from the snowy summits of Armenia or Kurdistan, it is already cold enough, so that, during the months of December and January, it often happens that the mercury falls below freezing point, even in Babylonia. At daybreak the waters of the marshes are sometimes covered with a thin layer of ice, and the wind increases the effect of the low temperature. Loftus tells us that he has seen the Arabs of his escort fall ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... we were off for Fort Fetterman. To our surprise, the morning was delicious, though the mercury at noon the day before had ranged at over 100 deg. in the shade. Laramie Peak was still in sight, and was so, in fact, for weeks, till upon nearer acquaintance the fine old mountain became a friend for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... chamber of "divine apparition" Ramses offered incense to the gigantic statue of Osiris, and the high priest showed him the columns dedicated to the separate planets: Mercury, Venus, the moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The planets stood around statues of the sun god to the ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... in isolated stanzas, with a pencil at once solid and light; as in the instance of the charming one that tells the story of Mercury and his net; how he watched the Goddess of Flowers as she issued forth at dawn with her lap full of roses and violets, and so threw the net over her "one day," ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... a heavy packing-case was bumped onto my doorstep. From wrappings of sacking there emerged a large model of Eddystone lighthouse; a thermometer was embedded in its chest, minus the mercury, I noted. And Aunt Emily wished me as per ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various

... his axe into a deep pool, besought Mercury to recover it for him. That thoughtless deity immediately plunged into the pool, which became so salivated that the trees about its margin all ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... When his Mercury had speeded on the journey at a faster gait than Red would have given him credit for, the architect strode down to the blacksmith's shop. There was a larger crowd than usual around the forge, as the advent of ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips

... into many speculations as to the origin of this instrument and practice, and very properly scoots the idea that it was derived from the ancient caduceus of Mercury. He supposes that it arose from their habit of using the pipe while ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... following as having been painted by Giorgione:—"The Age of Gold," "Deucalion and Pyrrha," "Jove hurling Thunderbolts at the Giants," "The Python," "Apollo and Daphne," "Io changed into a Cow," "Phaeton, Diana, and Calisto," "Mercury stealing Apollo's Arms," "Jupiter and Pasiphae," "Cadmus sowing the Dragon's Teeth," "Dejanira raped by Nessus," and various episodes ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... stay here. They'll find out too much eventually." He paused, estimating Gordon. "You can go back to Earth, Bruce, but you won't like it now. You're a fighter. And there's hell brewing on Mercury—worse than here. We've got permission to send you there, if you'll go. With a yellow ticket, again—but without any razzle-dazzle this time. The only thing you'll get out of it is a chance to fight for a better chance for ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey

... these salons was changed, in the years when the Sun King occupied them they comprised the Salon of Venus, opening upon the Ambassadors' Staircase, the Salon of Diana, the Salon of Mars, and the Salon of Mercury. These halls formed a magnificent prelude to the still greater magnificence of the Salon of Apollo,—the Throne Room where guests came into the presence of the King himself. The Salon of Venus was most admired for its marble mosaics and its ceiling painting representing Venus ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne

... consideration. Speaking generally, Donatello was neither more nor less restrictive than his Florentine contemporaries, and it was only at a later period that the isolated statue received perfect freedom, such as that in the Cellini Perseus, or the Mercury by Gian Bologna, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... in a star. 3. A certain garden of small yews and box trees was found one morning to have been transplanted bodily into Peckwater Quadrangle, as a matter of mystery and defiance. And there were other like exploits; as the immersion of that leaden Mercury into its own pond; and town and gown rows, wherein I remember to have seen the herculean Lord Hillsborough on one side of High Street, and Peard (afterwards Garibaldi's Englishman) on the other, clear away the crowd ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... fishing-place facing Ipswich Bay, and also Lanesville, where they saw work going on in the Lanesville Granite Company quarries. At Bay View they visited the Cape Ann quarries. Here they saw the model of the Flying Mercury, which, cut in granite, had just been sent on to the new post-office in Baltimore. They also saw some granite balusters being made for the same place. All this reminded Mrs. Gordon of her visit here some fourteen years before, when she ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various



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