"Vapour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will be seen through a denser and whiter atmosphere, which will weaken its true colour as seen through that medium, and there the sky will look whiter than it is above you, where the line of sight travels through a smaller space of air charged with heavy vapour. And if you turn to the East, the atmosphere will appear darker as you look lower down because the luminous rays pass less ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... vapour, now seized upon his brain: a thousand suspicions, blacker than ink, took possession of his imagination, and were continually increasing; for, whilst the brother played upon the guitar to the duke, the sister ogled and accompanied him with her eyes, as ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... herd among the deer, and skulk in woods? Here shame dissuades him, there his fear prevails, And each by turns his aching heart assails. As he thus ponders, he behind him spies His opening hounds, and now he hears their cries: A generous pack, or to maintain the chase, Or snuff the vapour from the scented grass. He bounded off with fear, and swiftly ran O'er craggy mountains, and the flowery plain; 80 Through brakes and thickets forced his way, and flew Through many a ring, where once ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... unknown God, A Promethan conqueror came; Like a triumphal path he trod The thorns of death and shame. A mortal shape to him Was like the vapour dim Which the orient planet animates with light. Hell, Sin, and Slavery came, Like bloodhounds mild and tame, Nor preyed until their Lord had taken flight. The moon of Mahomet Arose, and it shall set: While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon The ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... to offer resistance to the remorseless forces that were sucking him down. Now the mist had closed over his head, and he could no longer see the moonlight. He turned again, shaking with terror, and drove forward headlong through the clinging vapour. A sensation of choking rose in his throat; he was tired out, ready to drop with exhaustion. The wings of the following creature were now so close that he thought every minute he would be seized from behind and plunged into the abyss to ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... so calm, and clear, and warm as this one was. Shaded by a high mountain, fresh with the foliage of fir, birch, and filbert trees, the morning sun reached not our encampment. The balmy air, the dew and early vapour upon the grass, the humming sound of the bee, the low of cattle, the lusty salutation of peasants as they met each other, proceeding to their labour, and, above all, the murmuring river, were sounds and things as pleasant to hear and ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... that great thunder-crash there burst upon us so mighty a flood of rain that it seemed as though the lightning had riven solid walls asunder within the thick black mass of overhanging vapour, and so had let loose upon us the waters of a lake. In a moment the whole pit of the amphitheatre was awash, knee-deep, and before those who were standing there could flounder to the steps leading upward they were buried to their waists—and this although the water ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees; Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... kept up through the pit, a draught which swept away the dangerous gas, there were places which its purifying influence did not reach, places such as this new gallery in the four-foot seam, where the vapour had been steadily increasing for hours and collecting round ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... blood is exposed to the influence of air and undergoes a remarkable change, being converted into arterial blood. The obvious chemical alteration of the air is sufficiently simple in this process: a certain quantity of carbon only is added to it, and it receives an addition of heat or vapour; the volumes of elastic fluid inspired and expired (making allowance for change of temperature) are the same, and if ponderable agents only were to be regarded it would appear as if the only use of respiration were to free the blood from a certain quantity of carbonaceous matter. But it ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... vanished, leaving the memory of a tortured gesture from some sea-thing. And as the yellow deepened to gold, the Skipper set the church bells ringing. Sir Graham opened the parlour window wide and listened, leaning out towards the graves. Uniacke was behind him in the room. Vapour streamed up from the buffeted earth, which seemed panting for a repose it had no strength to gain. Ding dong! Ding dong! The wild and far-away light grew to flame and faded to darkness. In the darkness the bells seemed clearer, for light deafens ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... grasped the nature of a phenomenon which, from the first, had been vaguely troubling him. The reason why he had been able to perceive no real rim to the world was that the earth was all a-steam from the recent heavy rains; all the more remote distances were veiled with rising vapour. And now they were approaching the coast, to which, it seemed, the mists clung closest; for all the world before them slept beneath a blanket of ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... endeavour to gain an interview. But, as we proceeded over the rocks, the smoke appeared gradually to retire, always keeping about the same distance from us: and we at last ascertained that what had appeared to us to be smoke was nothing but the rising vapour occasioned by the cold rain falling on sandstone rocks, which had during the whole day been exposed to the burning rays of a ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... to the solid materials thrown out by volcanoes, there are sometimes poured forth torrents of boiling water and liquid mud. More frequently, however, the water issues in the form of vast columns of steam and sulphurous vapour. These ascend to great heights in the air, and becoming gradually chilled, they form immense masses of dark heavy clouds, similar to those we observe before a thunderstorm. Nor is this resemblance apparent only. For the clouds that overhang an active volcano ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... up a ghostly beacon to stream into the soft air? was an evil spirit about to bewilder and mislead a fated ship to meet its doom on the jagged rocks beneath the dead calm of that glassy sea? So dense was the vapour that suddenly gathered over Earlscraig, till like an electric flash, a jet of flame sprang from a high casement and lit up the gathering obscurity. No horn blew, no bugle sounded, no tramp of horse or hurrying feet broke the silence; the house lay in profound rest, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... through a pretty extensive tract of young beeches. I was soon in shadow myself, but the afternoon sun still coloured the upmost boughs of the wood, and made a fire over my head in the autumnal foliage. A little faint vapour lay among the slim tree-stems in the bottom of the hollow; and from farther up I heard from time to time an outburst of gross laughter, as though clowns were making merry in the bush. There was something about the atmosphere that ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... probably below freezing-point even at the equator. Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace has gone further than this, and suggests that the temperature must be eighty degrees Centigrade below freezing-point; that there is no water or water vapour on the planet; and that it is quite impossible for ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... a faint autumn mist. Traces of an early frost lay in the brown hedgerows inland; the sea was like a sheet of polished glass. Gone the smoke-stained rows of shapeless houses, the atmosphere polluted by a thousand chimneys belching smuts and black vapour, the clanging of electric cars, the rattle of all manner of vehicles over the cobbled streets. Gone the hoarse excitement of the shouting mobs, the poisonous atmosphere of close rooms, all the turmoil and racket and anxiety of those fighting days. He was back again in Bonestre. Below in the courtyard ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... vapour or mist, suspended in the atmosphere, becomes visible exactly as dust does in the air of a room. In the shadows, you not only cannot see the dust itself, because unillumined, but you can see other objects through the dust, without obscurity; the air being ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... variety of Colours in Prismes, and the Authors severe Judgment concerning those, that hold them to be meerly Phantastical, pag. 15, 16, 17. Where he also delivers an Experiment, by him counted wonderful, exhibiting all sorts of Colours by the means of Mercury, coagulated by the vapour of Lead, and put in a Brass spoon upon ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... small—that he is actually lighter than water. He is the lightest, in comparison with his size, of any of the planets. Therefore he cannot be made largely of solid land, as our earth is, but must be to a great extent, composed of air and gaseous vapour, like his mighty neighbour. He approaches at times as near to Jupiter as Jupiter does to us, and on these occasions he must present a splendid spectacle to Jupiter. He takes no less than twenty-nine and a half of our years to complete his stately march around the sun, and his axis is a little ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... the filthy puddle, and light vapour, leaving heavy mud behind, rises to the sun, melts, and dissolves in the ether. With your sunbeam you touched my dust-laden soul and it aspired to you, Unknown One, whose name is mystery! I sought for you, because you are Truth; I strove to attain to you, because you ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... red tape. The room was gloomy and cheerless, and had a mouldy disagreeable atmosphere. A fire burned in the coal stove, which, however, seemed only to warm, but did not dry the apartment; and the windows were covered with a thin coating of vapour. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... means, and the heir of Tilgate, about whom Gwendoline was always moaning and groaning, poor girl, and wouldn't be comforted—there was Granville Kelmscott gone out to Africa, and, hi, presto, disappeared into space without a vapour or a trace, like a conjurer's shilling. It was all very queer; but, then, queer things are the ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... a day of brisk airs. The wind was at work brushing great inky clouds out of the sky. They came sailing up, those great rounded masses of dark vapour, like huge galleons driving to the West, spilling their freight as they came. The air would be suddenly full of tall twisted rain-streaks, and then would come a bright burst of ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and deepening till my very soul was stung by the triumph of the intensity of its molten silver. There was no sun upon me. But there were breaks in the clouds over the sea, through which, the air being filled with vapour, I could see the long lines of the sun-rays descending on the waters like rain—so like a rain of light that the water seemed to plash up in light under their fall. I questioned the past no more; the present seized upon me, and I knew ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... unmannerly, hating men even in daily life for their opinions. And though I was never convinced that the anatomies of last year's leaves are a living forest, or thought a continual apologetic could do other than make the soul a vapour and the body a stone; or believed that literature can be made by anything but by what is still blind and dumb within ourselves, I have had to learn how hard in one who lives where forms of expression and habits of ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... sound! the thunder of falling ceilings; the red light within some familiar windows; the gray sky reflected in others, till, after a few uncertain flickers, the glow awoke in them also. Then arose the whiter gusts of vapour, when water, hissing and boiling, contended ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... soggy, slippery mud toward the marsh running out to the open sea. A curlew, motionless on his long legs, calls cheerfully from the point of sand: "Curli—Curli!" Strong, cheerful old bird. The rifts of white mist are lifting from the bay, thinned into rose vapour now, as the sun ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... the islands lay, their hills a soft red purple in the light of a clear November evening. In the blue sky above there were layers of vapour like thin gray gossamers, on which the rosy light shone. The waters of the bay were calmer than the sea outside, yet they were still broken by foam; across the foam the boats went sweeping, until in the shadow of the isles and the fast-descending ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... closest attention to economy of fuel, and the small pipkin, in which was preparing the dinner of the old woman and her maid-of-all-work, a girl of twelve years old, intimated, by its thin and watery vapour, that Ailie had not mended her cheer with her ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... praise.... Everyone will talk of Mr. Robertson, and no one of Mr. Brooke, because Mr. Brooke has thought much of his subject, nothing of himself, and hence the figure which he wished to present comes out quite clear and keen, without any interposing haze of literary vapour." ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... individual from the surf, and upon lofty mountains they exercise a marked influence upon the rainfall. Should the summits be naked, the rocks become heated to a high degree, and should clouds pass overhead, the vapour would not condense, but, on the contrary, it might disperse upon contact with the heated surface. If the summits were clothed with forests, the rocks and soil, being shaded from the sun, would remain cool, and the low temperature of earth and foliage would condense ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... mist winding nearly to its top (for very soon after you pass the chapel, as you may have noticed, the sough that runs from the marshes joins a beck which follows the bend of the glen). Wuthering Heights rose above this silvery vapour; but our old house was invisible; it rather dips down on the other side. Both the room and its occupants, and the scene they gazed on, looked wondrously peaceful. I shrank reluctantly from performing my ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... more especially for the present, is the secret of extracting or discharging electricity from the atmosphere by mechanical means—by the thrust of a spear, or of a sword, into the bosom of the low-hanging cloud, or lurid vapour, and so dislodging the imaginary spirit of evil by which they were supposed to be tenanted. Only the very best, and bravest, and wisest could prevail in such conflict with nature; but they did prevail, according to Ossian; and the weapons of their warfare, and the mode of their assault, were ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... A pale, milky vapour over the ground began to succeed the black night, while in the upper sky rosy tints appeared. On earth, one would have said that day was breaking. The brightness went on imperceptibly increasing ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... observed this, he ordered fire to be thrown into the fence opposed to him; and it so happened that a very strong wind was turned towards the enemy. He therefore not only opened a passage by the fire, but the flames being directed against the camp, by the vapour also and the smoke, and by the crackling of the green timber as it burned, he so confounded the enemy that the Romans had less difficulty in passing the rampart into the camp of the Volscians, than they had experienced in climbing over the fence ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... a cloud that's dragonish, A vapour sometime, like a bear or lion, A towered citadel, a pendant rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon't, that nod unto the world And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs, They are black ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... of the crowd beheld, with ineffable dismay, a vast vapour shooting from the summit of Vesuvius, in the form of a gigantic pine-tree; the trunk, blackness; the branches, fire, that shifted and wavered in its hues with every moment: now fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... continued, at another the liquor was drawn off too soon; now the pulp was not duly granulated, and now it was worked too much. To these inconveniences, for which practice would doubtless have found a remedy, were added others of a much greater magnitude—the mortality of the negroes, from the vapour of fermented liquor (an alarming circumstance, that, I am informed, both by the French and English planters, constantly attends the process), the failure of the seasons, and the ravages of the worm. These, or some of these evils, drove them at length to other pursuits, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... nether hours advance; storm supervenes In heaviness unparalleled, that screens With water-woven gauzes, vapour-bred, The creeping clumps of half-obliterate red— Severely harassed past each round and ridge By the inimical lance. They gain the bridge And village of Genappe, in equal fence With weather and the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... of Henry's success. He directed the storm of a revolution which was doomed to come, which was certain to break those who refused to bend, and which may be explained by natural causes, but cannot be judged by moral considerations. The storm cleared the air and dissipated many a pestilent vapour, but it left a trail of wreck and ruin over the land. The nation purchased political salvation at the price of moral debasement; the individual was sacrificed on the altar of the State; and popular subservience proved the impossibility of saving a people from itself. Constitutional ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... the dreary so-called garden, with its gaunt leafless trees that dripped and oozed. Opposite was the long facade of characterless houses, like to that in which she lived; the steps, the door-columns, the tall narrow windows; above them, murky vapour. ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... have resembled the latter country in the configuration of its land and water. The resemblance was occasionally shown strikingly when a level fog-bank covered, as with a mantle, all the lower parts of the country: the white vapour curling into the ravines, beautifully represented little coves and bays; and here and there a solitary hillock peeping up showed that it had formerly stood there as an islet. The contrast of these flat valleys and basins with the irregular mountains gave the scenery ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... oft the craggy cliff he loved to climb, When all in mist the world below was lost. What dreadful pleasure! there to stand sublime, Like shipwrecked mariner on desert coast, And view the enormous waste of vapour, tost In billows, lengthening to the horizon round, Now scooped in gulfs, with mountains now embossed! And hear the voice of mirth and song rebound, Flocks, herds, and waterfalls, along the ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... sir: and then comes reeking home of vapour and sweat, with going a foot, and lies in a month of a new face, all oil and birdlime; and rises in asses' milk, and is cleansed with a new fucus: God be wi' you, sir. One thing more, which I had almost forgot. This too, ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... mist and fade away in it. The boys were disappointed. They were Western men, accustomed to the hard light of high altitudes, and they wanted to see the city clearly; they couldn't make anything of these uneven towers that rose dimly through the vapour. Everybody was asking questions. Which of those pale giants was the Singer Building? Which the Woolworth? What was the gold dome, dully glinting through the fog? Nobody knew. They agreed it was a shame they could not have ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... some of the soldiers were left behind, who, seeing a piece of ground of a black appearance, from the snow having disappeared there, conjectured that it must have melted; and it had in fact melted in the spot from the effect of a fountain, which was sending up vapour in a woody hollow close at hand. Turning aside thither, they sat down and refused to proceed farther. 16. Xenophon, who was with the rear-guard, as soon as he heard this, tried to prevail on them by every art and means not to ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... half-past three, and they had passed over London Bridge. They had heard the rush of the tide against obstacles; and looked down, awed, through the dark vapour on the river; had seen little spots of lighted water where the bridge lamps were reflected, shining like demon eyes, with a terrible fascination in them for guilt and misery. They had shrunk past homeless people, lying coiled up in nooks. They had run from drunkards. They had started from ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... looked ahead, and in the still streak of very bright pale orange light I saw the land profiled flatly as if cut out of black paper and seeming to float on the water as light as cork. But the rising sun turned it into mere dark vapour, a doubtful, massive shadow ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... so called Through sad incompetence of human speech, That awful Power rose from the mind's abyss Like an unfathered vapour that enwraps, 595 At once, some lonely traveller. I was lost; Halted without an effort to break through; But to my conscious soul I now can say— "I recognise thy glory:" in such strength Of usurpation, when the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... with straw, but rather preferre woode, and of woode still to chuse the greenest, yet I am of a contrary opinion, for I know by experience that the smoake which proceedeth from woode, (especially if it be greene woode) being a strong and sharpe vapour, doth so taint and infect the Hoppes that when those Hoppes come to be brewed with, they giue the drinke a smoakie taste, euen as if the Malt it selfe had beene woode-dryed: the vnpleasantnesse whereof I leaue to the iudgement of them that haue trauelled ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... rivers—down, down, rejoicing, to the mighty lungs of the world, that is the sea, where it is tossed in storms and cyclones, heaved up in billows, twisted in waterspouts, dashed to mist upon rocks, beaten by millions of tails, and breathed by millions of gills, whence at last, melted into vapour by the sun, it is lifted up pure into the air, and borne by the servant winds back to the mountaintops and the snow, the solid ice, ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... the foundations and remains of very august Roman baths and sudatories, constructed upon their elegant plans, with floors suspended upon square-brick pillars, and surrounded with tubulated bricks, for the equal conveyance of heat and vapour. Their dimensions are very large, but not yet fully laid open, and some curious parts of their structure are not ...
— The Excavations of Roman Baths at Bath • Charles E. Davis
... stranger at last consented, and informed him, that one grain was sufficient; but that it was necessary to envelope it in a ball of wax before throwing it on the molten metal; otherwise its extreme volatility would cause it to go off in vapour. They tried the experiment, and succeeded to their heart's content. Helvetius repeated the experiment alone, and converted six ounces of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... she has castles, and the resonant steam-eagles Follow far on the directing of her floating dove-like hand— With a thund'rous vapour trailing, underneath the starry vigils, So to mark upon the blasted heaven, the measure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... back with our friends to Mrs. Lobjoit's through the sweet night-air a considerate little shower of rain, that came down while they were sympathetically engaged, had just washed clean. Vapour-drifts that were wavering between earth and sky, and sacrificing their birthright of either cloudship or foghood, were accompanying a warm sea-wind towards the north. Out beyond, and quite clear of all responsibility for them and theirs, was a flawless ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... which lay a multitude of victims of divine wrath, additionally tortured by an ever-descending storm of fiery flakes—he was led by Virgil out of this burning wilderness along a narrow causeway. This path was protected, he said, against the showers of flame, by the lines of vapour which rose eternally from a boiling brook. Even by such shadowy bulwarks, added the poet, do the Flemings between Kadzand and Bruges protect their land ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... heart; but time fails, time. He knoweth also 't were a piteous thing Not to be sure of my love's welfare—not To see her happy and good in that new home. Most piteous. I could all forego but this. O let me see her, Lord. What, also I! White ashes and a waft of vapour—I To flutter on before the winds. No, no. And yet for ever ay—my flesh shall hiss And I shall hear 't. Dreadful, unbearable! Is it to-morrow? Ay, indeed, indeed, To-morrow. But my moods are as great waves That rise and break and thunder down on me, And then fall'n back sink ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... is sap to the roots. He can hear in their changes a sound as the conscience of consonant spheres; He can see through the years flowing round him the law lying under the years. Who are ye that would bind him with curses and blind him with vapour of prayer? Your might is as night that disperses when light is alive in the air. The bow of your godhead is broken, the arm of your conquest is stayed; Though ye call down God to bear token, for fear of you none is afraid. Will ye turn back times, and the courses ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the kitchen he perceived the cause of the uproar, although he could see nothing else, for the dense suffocating vapour with which the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... boatman, sat in the bow of his tiny craft, looking with dream-misted eyes upon the oily, yellow flood of the Yangtze River. Far across on the opposite shore, blurred by the mist that the alchemy of the setting sun transmuted from miasmic vapour to a veil of gold, rose the purple-shadowed, stone-tumbled ruins of Hang Gow, ruins that had been a proud, walled city in the ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... boughs, the girl remaining secluded from the camp but apparently not being again buried. At the end of the symptoms she stands over hot stones and water is poured over her, till, trickling from her body on the stones, it is converted into steam and envelops her in a cloud of vapour. Then she is painted with red and white stripes and returns to the camp. If her future husband has already been chosen, she goes to him and they eat some food together, which the girl has previously brought from the bush.[105] ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... "I do wish you all the happiness in the world. You can't fail to have it. You have a real husband as I have a real wife. Let us thank heaven we have escaped from the moon vapour of the Ideal, in which we poor humans are apt to lose our way and stray God knows whither. I am sending you a real ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... of the World give answer! They are whimpering to and fro— And what should they know of England who only England know?— The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag, They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... one. "A morbid product, anyhow, I am afraid," said the Bacteriologist to himself. "How he gloated on those cultivations of disease-germs!" A disturbing thought struck him. He turned to the bench by the vapour-bath, and then very quickly to his writing-table. Then he felt hastily in his pockets, and then rushed to the door. "I may have put it down on the ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... steady and prodigal provision that has been made for his support and delight on this green ball which floats him through the heavens. All the parts incessantly work into each other's hands for the profit of man. The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapour to the field; the ice on the other side of the planet condenses the rain on this; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endless circulations of the divine ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... so on the day of which I speak. The deep bay of the locomotive came up on the still autumn air, and a cloud of dazzling white vapour rose like a balloon above the trees and drifted slowly into thin curls and feathers against the blue sky. It was, even in this trifling detail, a homelike landscape, for Bill had told us how, from the square hall window of High Wigborough, you could see the white puffs of invisible ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... end of Fame? 't is but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper: Some liken it to climbing up a hill, Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour; For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill, And bards burn what they call their 'midnight taper,' To have, when the original is dust, A name, a wretched ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... a vale in Ida, lovelier [1] Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen, Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... if some lethal vapour of highly preservative properties—such as formaldehyde, for instance—could be shed into the atmosphere of this apartment, the entire and complete collection of books and bookworms would be well worth preserving, for the enlightenment ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... corroborate the Stomach, cut Phlegm, and profit the Asthmatical: But eaten in excess, are said to offend the Head and Eyes, unless Edulcorated with a gentle maceration. In the mean time, as to their being noxious to the Sight, is imputable only to the Vapour rising from the raw Onion, when peeled, which some commend for its purging and quickning that Sense. How they are us'd in Pottage, boil'd in Milk, stew'd, &c. concerns the Kitchin. In our cold Sallet we supply them with the Porrum Sectile, Tops of Leeks, and Eschalots ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... catastrophe it was which had caused that the fountains of the abyss should be broken up, and the solid Earth submerged, I am not concerned to explain:—nor how it had come to pass that from a world of seas and continents, it had become a watery ball, wrapped about with superincumbent vapour:—nor how the blessed sunlight had suffered dire eclipse;—so that the Earth revolved in a horror of great darkness. My faith however is not troubled,—nor even perplexed,—by the strangeness of these things. Shall I think it a mere matter of course that one little flaw in a pipe shall, in ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... whole bank of mist was breaking up and bearing down on them in enormous billows of vapour. Presently, these were rolling over them, so darkening the heavy air that, though the pair were within four feet of each other, they could scarcely see one another's faces. As yet they felt no wind. The dense weight of mist ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... forthcoming we walked to the edge of the swamp, and looked over it. It was apparently boundless, and vast flocks of every sort of waterfowl flew from its recesses, till it was sometimes difficult to see the sky. Now that the sun was getting high it drew thin sickly looking clouds of poisonous vapour from the surface of the marsh and from the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Nor, lulled to sleep, lose all thy sense of loss. Let thy soul (to another) feel the pain of just reproach: The wise of heart find that their goad and spur. And thou (to a third) breathe on him with thy blood-flecked breath, And with thy vapour, thy maw's fire, consume him; Chase him, and wither with a ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... for the purpose, but in breaking indiscriminately the bottles in the shop, they had inadvertently smashed some containing a quantity of very powerful acids. These, escaping and mixing with other drugs, caused such a suffocating vapour that the miscreants were driven from the shop half choked. Other tradesmen whose places were badly damaged were Mr. Arthur Dakin, grocer; Mr. Savage, cheesemonger; Mrs. Brinton, pork butcher; Mr. Allen, baker; Mr. Heath, cheesemonger; Mr. Scudamore, druggist; and Mr. Horton, ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... the first Creation, which was performed of nothing, three things arose; to wit, a Soulish, Spiritual, Invisible Essence, which represented a Mercurial Water, a Sulphurous Vapour, and a Terrene Salt; these three gave a compleat and perfect, a tangible and formal Body to all things wherein especially all the four Elements are contained, as I have already mentioned in my Writing where I treat ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... symbolism; showing, first, that the Greek conception of an aetherial element pervading space is justified by the closest reasoning of modern physicists; and, secondly, that the blue of the sky, hitherto thought to be caused by watery vapour, is, indeed, reflected from the divided air itself; so that the bright blue of the eyes of Athena, and the deep blue of her aegis, prove to be accurate mythic expressions of natural phenomena which it is an uttermost triumph of ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... if you please, Dan." She tied on her flattened bonnet, and with her foot on the threshold, stood looking across the wet fields, where each spear of grass pieced a string of shining rain drops. Over the mountains the clouds tossed in broken masses, and loose streamers of vapour drifted down into the lower foldings of the hills. The cool smell of the moist road came to her ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... bulls be united in a common roar, the noise would not have equalled that of the hollow sound which issued from a sea as it went into some cavern of the rocks. Then, the spray filled the air like driving rain, and there were minutes when the cape, though so frightfully near, was hid from view by the vapour. ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... thy love in the shade," added quickly the gay girl. "Methought love kept his own dial, and was independent of sun or moon. What if a rebel vapour cometh over the queen of heaven that night thou art to make me free? My hope of liberty, I fancy, would be clouded; and I would be remitted again to the care of Captain Wallace, who keepeth the town and the Mayor's daughter from the spoiling arms ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... held one end to the coals that lay upon the brazero, and ignited the paper. Then, taking the other end between her thin, purlish lips, she breathed forth a blue cloud of aromatic vapour. ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... said Ilmarinen, "Annikki, my little sister, I will forge you now a shuttle. Pretty rings to deck your fingers, Golden earrings, two or three pairs, Five or six linked girdles make you. Warm for me the pleasant bathroom, Fill the room with fragrant vapour, Let the logs you burn be small ones, And the fire with chips be kindled, 280 And prepare me too some ashes, And some soap in haste provide me, That I wash my head and cleanse it, And I may make white my body From the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... slip. Jokes and chuckling flew about among the men, as usual, and everybody began to feel as happy as success could make us, when the dark veil lifted at the south-west; the sun was seen struggling through the clouds, the vapour dispersed, and gradually the whole curtain which had concealed the ocean throughout that morning arose, extending the view around the ship, little by little, until nothing limited ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... wire basket, and place the saucepan over the fire or gas, and after a few minutes watch it carefully to see when it begins to boil. This will be notified by the oil becoming quite still, and emitting a thin blue vapour. Directly this is observed, drop the articles to be fried gently into the basket, taking care not to overcrowd them, or their shape will be quite spoiled. When they have become a golden brown, lift out the basket, suspend it for one moment over the ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... since leaving Brumer Islands, has usually been gloomy, with frequent rain, occasionally very heavy, and a close muggy feeling in the atmosphere as if one were living in a vapour bath; the temperature on board ship ranged between 72 and 83 degrees. During our five days' stay off Dufaure Island we were daily employed in catching rainwater for ship's use, being on reduced allowance of that ...
— 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
... enemy had just passed on, swallowed up in the dense vapour of the smoke-bombs, and as the two cousins flung themselves on their faces they heard the Lee-Enfields opening ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... source of historical inquiry; and the writer who disdains to follow these glimmerings of truth will often find himself in the dark, with nothing but his own opinions—the smouldering vapour of his own imagination—to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... these bare hills and bowers so built in vain, And lips and hearts that will not move again— Pathetic Autumn and the writhled leaf; Dropping away in tears with warning brief: The wind reiterates a wailful strain, And on the skylight beats the restless rain, And vapour drowns the mountain, base and brow. I watch the wet black roofs through mist defined, I watch the raindrops strung along the blind, And my heart bleeds, and all my senses bow In grief; as one mild face, with suffering lined, Comes up in thought: oh, wildly, rain and ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... changed, swollen, distorted, that it is difficult to distinguish the true from the false; becoming vaguer and vaguer too as the mists of time and sentiment gather more and more thickly around them, until at last we seem to be swimming dimly in a "moony vapour," which allows no dull peaks of reality to pierce through it at all. "There were giants in those days," is a continually recurring assertion, characteristic of all ancient annals, and ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... Percy's[932] came in. Johnson attacked the Americans with intemperate vehemence of abuse. I said something in their favour; and added, that I was always sorry when he talked on that subject. This, it seems, exasperated him; though he said nothing at the time. The cloud was charged with sulphureous vapour, which was afterwards to burst in thunder.—We talked of a gentleman[933] who was running out his fortune in London; and I said, 'We must get him out of it. All his friends must quarrel with him, and that will soon drive him away.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir; we'll send you ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... and the soles of boots fall off, guns and rifles have to be oiled carefully every day and cigars are completely spoilt in a few hours unless kept in tin boxes. Can one wonder therefore that the human system soon breaks down in this vapour bath and that sickness is very common in this part. There is not much game to be seen from the river but occasionally a covey of partridges rises from the grass and comes within ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... from this man—to his house, to his acquaintances, to the world in general. An irony filled the room, and so intense was it that it seemed to have a colour, a kind of green and yellow vapour. It emanated from the centre of his face. I think the point that animated me especially was that he was in the habit of talking to young men. He had no children of his own. I changed the subject and opened the door—not to ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... first. From the boats, your eye wanders to the spot where the whale was last seen to blow. For some time you can discern nothing, and fancy he must be gone off to sea again. At last a thin white column of vapour is perceptible; the animal is carelessly sporting about, unconscious of danger. The first boat draws rapidly down upon him; it approaches nearer and nearer. The fish has disappeared, but his enemies seem to know the direction in which ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... learning in which the art of a new age and race first spoke, and many an old foolish, childish, borrowed notion went off like vapour in it at its first word, without any one's ever so much as stopping to observe it, any one whose place was within. It is the school of a criticism much more severe than the criticism which calls its freedom in question. It is a school in which the taking of names in vain ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... bed, and he took it out and breathed on it to warm it, and then put it in his bosom. The sound of a child's voice laughing and singing came to him from within the house, muffled by the walls and the door. Across the white vapour cast outward from the fanlight he could see nothing but the crystal snowflakes ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... fishing village. Faint threads of ascending vapour indicated chimneys. "Two miles at least," muttered Jim Airth. "I could not run it and get back with a boat, under ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... the dim twilight fluttered Moth-wings of vapour and flame: The lights danced over the mountains, Star after star ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... had the best of it, for his steam would be applied to the greatest advantage on the instant, while the engine had to wait until the rotation of the wheels set the blower to work. The horse was perhaps a quarter of a mile ahead when the safety valve of the engine lifted, and the thin blue vapour issuing from it showed an excess of steam. The blower whistled, the steam blew off in vapoury clouds, the pace increased, the passengers shouted, the engine gained on the horse, soon it lapped him—the silk was plied—the race was neck ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... stretched an immense colourless waste, and excepting the planks of their ship, all seemed transparent, ethereal, and fairy-like. The eye could not distinguish what the scene might be: first it appeared as a quivering mirror that had no objects to reflect; and in the distance it became a desert of vapour; and beyond that a void, having neither horizon ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... narrow channel of only a few yards wide, falls tumultuously down in a beautiful cascade into a deep chasm of marble rocks. This fall of their sacred stream the people call the 'Dhuandhar', or 'the smoky fall', from the thick vapour which is always seen rising from it in the morning. From below, the river glides quietly and imperceptibly for a mile and a half along a deep, and, according to popular belief, a fathomless channel of from ten to fifty yards wide, with snow-white marble rocks ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the day I passed there) going up into the clouds, which, though high, yet made a roof for the valley. From the great mountains on the left the noble rock jutted out alone and dominated the little plain; on the right the buttresses of the main Alps all stood in a row, and between them went whorls of vapour high, high up—just above the places where snow still clung to the slopes. These whorls made the utmost steeps more and more misty, till at last they were lost in a kind of great darkness, in which the last and highest banks of ice seemed to be swallowed up. I often stopped to gaze straight ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... is an apparition of the air, beaming with splendour; there she unfolds herself in glittering mist. On the unbounded plain, you behold her in the form of an enchanted city—a paradise of leafy loveliness, or it may be simply as a fantastic Erl-King, a giddy dazzling vapour. Let her appear, however, where and how she will, she is ever seductive, mysterious, and beautiful, and attended with the awe of a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... a curtain of fog, in which the oak-trees along the walk lugubriously extended their dark arms, like a row of spectres guarding the vast mass of vapour spreading out behind them. The fields had sunk, and were covered with great sheets of water, at the edge of which hung the remnants of dirty snow. The loud roar of the Durance was ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... the picker-up of learning's crumbs, The not-incurious in God's handiwork (This man's-flesh he hath admirably made, Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste, To coop up and keep down on earth a space That puff of vapour from his mouth, man's soul) —To Abib, all-sagacious in our art, Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast; Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain, Whereby the wily vapour fain would slip Back and rejoin ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... countenance, which grew radiant as some fleecy vapour suddenly smitten with a blaze of sunlight, and clearer and sweeter than chiming bells her voice ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... a very poignant regret, because a certain vague regret is indubitably caused by realizing that one is handicapped by a mental inefficiency which might, without too much difficulty, be cured. That vague regret exudes like a vapour from the more cultivated section of the public. It is to be detected everywhere, and especially among people who are near the half-way house of life. They perceive the existence of immense quantities of knowledge, not the smallest particle of which will they ever make ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... beamed like a huge diamond; and if now and then a little cloud appeared, it was no bigger than a white dove flitting across the blue expanse. The days were hot, a bath in the lukewarm sea scarcely cooled me, and at night a soft dreamy sort of vapour spread itself over the earth. I only remember one single moment when the peculiarities of a northern climate made themselves obvious. It was in the evening, and I was returning with my friend Holst from the delightful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... gathering fresh droves of vapour from the huddled masses on the horizon was now, in truth, herding them fiercely across the spaces it had cleared a few moments before. Confused shouts, strange clamour seemed to ring out across the waves to the listeners: or it might have ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... not too deeply buried in the earth. Bodies corrupted in their graves have risen, particularly the murdered; for murderers are apt to bury their victims in a slight and hasty manner. Their salts, exhaled in vapour by means of their fermentation, have arranged themselves on the surface of the earth, and formed those phantoms, which at night have often terrified the passing spectator, as authentic history witnesses. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... extremity. It was not until we had walked to the hut (G) that we became sensible of the awful grandeur of the scene below; from this point we looked perpendicularly down on the blackened mass, and felt our insignificance. The path leads between many fissures in the ground, from which sulphurous vapour and steam issue; the latter, condensing on the surrounding bushes, and falling into holes in the compact lava, affords a supply of most excellent water. As evening set in, the active volcano assumed from the house the appearance of a city in flames; long intersecting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... day that familiar objects take on vague and fantastic shapes; to effect that, mists and a rain-veiled sky are wanted. Then distances are blotted out, and the values of nearer objects are transformed under the swirling drifts of vapour, and a new dream-world is created under one's very eyes. This is, perhaps, merely the point of ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... house, backed up against the cemetery wall, which was still awake, and awake to evil purpose, in that snoring district. There was not much to betray it from without; only a stream of warm vapour from the chimney-top, a patch where the snow melted on the roof, and a few half-obliterated footprints at the door. But within, behind the shuttered windows, Master Francis Villon, the poet, and some of the thievish crew with whom he consorted, were keeping ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... first impression, indeed, the mind is apt to receive, is that of a sense of painful weariness. Hundreds of chimneys—we speak literally—are vomiting forth that white, peculiar-looking, and unmistakable vapour called copper-smoke. Enormous masses of that ugly, black, silicious refuse, known in the smelting vocabulary as 'slag,' is piled above and around in such quantity as to change even the physical appearance of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... blood of dark cattle shall the holy Sibyl lead thee. Then shalt thou learn of all thy line, and what city is given thee. And now farewell; dank Night wheels her mid-career, and even now I feel the stern breath of the panting horses of the East.' He ended, and retreated like a vapour into thin air. 'Ah, whither hurriest thou?' cries Aeneas; 'whither so fast away? From whom fliest thou? or who withholds thee from our embrace?' So speaking, he kindles the sleeping embers of the fire, and with holy ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... evening in early July 1901. To George's right was an open door leading to the principals' room, and to his left another open door leading to more rooms and to the staircase. The lofty chambers were full of lassitude; but round about George, who was working late, there floated the tonic vapour of conscious virtue. Haim, the factotum, could be seen and heard moving in his cubicle which guarded the offices from the stairs. In the rooms shortly to be deserted and locked up, and in the decline of the day, the three men ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... could explain himself succinctly and precisely in technical terms, and he did so—with much skill and a sort of unconsidered persuasiveness, realising in his rough commonsense that there was no need to drive ideas into Mr. Prohack's head with a steam-hammer, or to intoxicate him with a heady vapour ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... Supream Foe in time may much remit 210 His anger, and perhaps thus farr remov'd Not mind us not offending, satisfi'd With what is punish't; whence these raging fires Will slack'n, if his breath stir not thir flames. Our purer essence then will overcome Thir noxious vapour, or enur'd not feel, Or chang'd at length, and to the place conformd In temper and in nature, will receive Familiar the fierce heat, and void of pain; This horror will grow milde, this darkness light, 220 Besides what hope ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... account as well as on thine, day by day. The time has appeared long to me, that I have been required to lay under the rod, but when we measure time as did the Apostle of old, and think of it as a vapour that quickly passeth away, or as a shadow that abideth not, we see that it is but for a little moment that our chastening can endure. I cannot forbear beholding my day as far spent; but I do rejoice to see heaven as a place of rest ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... for a few moments, during which there was a furious yelling, and then, just as the thin bluish vapour was clearing off, there was another puff, and an echoing volley dying off in the distance, for Jack Penny had ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... save the King," And still believes his Tory paper,— You hate the anaemic fool? I thought You loved the weak! Was that all vapour? ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... upon the granite balustrade, her pink sunshade aslant over her shoulder, her flimsy lace shawl festooned from the crook of either arm and floating behind her, a wisp of cloudy vapour, Samoval permitted himself ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... portages, when we were obliged to drag the sledges ourselves. We found a few of the rapids entirely frozen. Those that were not had holes and large spaces about them, from whence issued a thick vapour, and in passing this we found it particularly cold; but what appeared most curious was the number of small fountains which rose through the ice, and often rendered it doubtful which way we should take. I was much disappointed at finding several falls (which I had intended to sketch) ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... sort of promise to me of beauty and life above and beyond this earth; yes, and of its substantial existence now, even when we do not see it. They were a little hint of what we do not see. I do not exactly know what was the language of the wreaths of vapour that robed and shrouded and then revealed the mountain, with the exquisite shiftings and changings of their gracefulness; I believe it was like, to me, the floating veil that hides God's purposes ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... leave my heart upon his shrine. My dearest Ferdinand, I would my sighes Or sad lamenting teares might have the power Like Balme to quicken thy benummed joynts: Then would I drowne this marble e're I went And heat it hote with vapour ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... stove will get well heated, and when you put in the charcoal, there will be no danger of its not burning.' And Tina suggested that that should not be done till just before Adelaide went to bed, lest she should perceive the effects of the vapour whilst she was undressing. ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... water, it is elsewhere suggested, may have been in Thales' mind, such as its readiness to take various shapes, its convertibility from water into vapour or ice, its ready mixture with other substances, and so forth. What we have chiefly to note is, that the more unscientific this theory about the universe may strike us as being, the more completely out of accord with ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... you all this distress." The superintendent said, "Yes last night we went to a party in the house of Serjeant Bahman, and there was roasted pillau, of which I ate somewhat more than usual, and the vapour of it has occasioned me all ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... foul diseases than e'er yet the hot Sun bred thro' his burnings, while the dog Pursues the raging lion, throwing the fog And deadly vapour from his angry breath, Filling the lower world ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the ground fell down steeply, and the torn sides of the crater formed a funnel-shaped cavity, a dark, yawning depth. There were jagged rocks, fantastic, wild ridges, crevices, fearful depths, from which issued steam and smoke. Poisonous vapour poured out of the rocks in white and brownish clouds that waved to and fro, slowly rising, until a breeze caught and carried them away. The sight alone would suffice to inspire terror, without the oppressive smoke and the uncanny ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... the next day. How true it is, that "Man's life is but a jest, a dream, a shadow, bubble, air, a vapour at the best!" ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and the stench! The East was a vapour bath. What a climate for a white man to make war in! And yet everywhere in this city of Alexander and Athanasius, British and Australian soldiers sauntered on foot or drove government waggons through ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... is, that the air expanding with the heat, while the lungs remain of the same capacity, they must take in a smaller quantity by weight, though the same by measure, of oxygen, the supporter of life; but if, in addition to the air being rarefied, it be also still further distended by the vapour of water being mixed with it, it is evident that a certain number of cubic inches by measure, or the lungs full, will contain a less weight of oxygen than ever; so little, indeed, that life can barely be supported; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... like sixty days, no doth it?" was the rejoinder. "Thou and I, Lettice, by reason of strength have come to fourscore years; yet is our life but a vapour that vanisheth away. I marvel, at times, how our Anstace hath passed her sixty years in ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... wounds and bruises caused by falls on the rocks and ice were bathed and bandaged, then he was placed in a small chamber and water was poured on to heated stones until it was filled with hot steam, and Malchus began to think that he was going to be boiled alive. After being kept for an hour in this vapour bath, he was annointed with oil, and was rubbed until every limb was supple, he was then placed on a couch and covered with soft skins, and in a few more minutes ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... the subject of the demon of Socrates, went to the cave of Trophonius, to learn of the oracle about it. There, having for a short time inhaled the mephitic vapour, he felt as if he had received a sudden blow on the head, and sank down insensible. Then his head appeared to him to open and to give issue to his soul into the other world; and an imaginary being seemed to inform ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... sensibly perceived from the infrequency of clear starlight nights. This may proceed from the greater rarefaction of the air occasioning the clouds to descend lower and become more opaque, or merely from the stronger heat exhaling from the land and sea a thicker and more plentiful vapour. The fog, called kabut by the natives, which is observed to rise every morning among the distant hills, is dense to a surprising degree; the extremities of it, even when near at hand, being perfectly defined; and it seldom is observed ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... nearly half-way upon their journey already. As the dawn approached the dark storm-clouds gathered away to the northern horizon and lay in a great shadow over the coast. On all other points the sky was clear, save that here and there a single puff of white vapour sailed along like the feather of some gigantic bird floating in the ocean of air. These isolated clouds, which had been pearly grey in the dim light of early day, gradually took a lilac tint, which deepened into pink, and then blushed suddenly to a fiery scarlet as the red rim of ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Poetic mount 10 A stream there is, which rolls in lazy flow Its coal-black waters from Oblivion's fount: The vapour-poison'd Birds, that fly too low, Fall with dead swoop, and to the bottom go. Escaped that heavy stream on pinion fleet 15 Beneath the Mountain's lofty-frowning brow, Ere aught of perilous ascent you meet, A mead of mildest charm ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... arose; the vapour tost (The sport of winds) in air was lost; The glorious orb the day refines. Thus ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... Undaunted he hies him O'er ice-covered wild, Where leaf never budded, Nor Spring ever smiled; And beneath him an ocean of mist, where his eye No longer the dwellings of man can espy; Through the parting clouds only The earth can be seen, Far down 'neath the vapour ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... night seemed to be indulging in strange vagaries, now dimly visible behind a mist of thin grey vapour, now wholly obscured behind jagged masses of black cloud, and occasionally shining brilliantly from a little patch of clear sky. Tallente waited for one of the latter moments before he finally tested the rope which was wound around the strongest ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mute. And close to the border trees are the quiet, milk-white sheep, in congregation, escaping from noon heat. Here, above fields and dwellings, above the ceaseless network of men's doings, and the vapour of their talk, the traveller feels solemnity. All seems conveying divinity—the great white clouds moving their wings above him, the faint longing murmur of the boughs, and in far distance, the sea.... And for a space his restlessness and fear know ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... It may be of yourself,[252] for Jealousy 70 Is as a shadow of the Sun. The Orb Is mighty—as you mortals deem—and to Your little Universe seems universal; But, great as He appears, and is to you, The smallest cloud—the slightest vapour of Your humid earth enables you to look Upon a Sky which you revile as dull; Though your eyes dare not gaze on it when cloudless. Nothing can blind a mortal like to light. Now Love in you is as the Sun—a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... will. Janet shall give me those pieces though; they shall be laid out in some way for God's service, and I will keep them separate in my strong chest, till I can fall upon a fitting employment for them. No contagious vapour shall breathe on Janet—she shall remain pure as a blessed spirit, were it but to pray God for her father. I need her prayers, for I am at a hard pass. Strange reports are abroad concerning my way of life. The congregation look cold on me, and when Master Holdforth spoke of hypocrites ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... rain; incessant, pitiless, beating rain; until we stopped to lunch at a little inn at Pimprez, where the canal ran very near the river. We were so sadly drenched that the landlady lit a few sticks in the chimney for our comfort; there we sat in a steam of vapour, lamenting our concerns. The husband donned a game-bag and strode out to shoot; the wife sat in a far corner watching us. I think we were worth looking at. We grumbled over the misfortune of La Fere; we forecast other La Feres in the future;—although ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... poor they are positively mischievous, because they cannot be used without shutting out the wholesome atmospheric air, and substituting for it a factitious gas, which for aught we know, or can know of the nature of the contagious vapour, whether acid, alkaline, or anything else, may actually be adding to its deleterious principle instead of neutralising it: but in thus striking away a prop from the confidence of the poor, I thank ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... which covered one-half of the moor was drifting closer and closer to the house. Already the first thin wisps of it were curling across the golden square of the lighted window. The farther wall of the orchard was already invisible, and the trees were standing out of a swirl of white vapour. As we watched it the fog-wreaths came crawling round both corners of the house and rolled slowly into one dense bank on which the upper floor and the roof floated like a strange ship upon a shadowy sea. Holmes struck his ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... VAPOUR(S) (n. and v.), used affectedly, like "humour," in many senses, often very vaguely and freely ridiculed by Jonson; humour, disposition, whims, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... that hate us, and the inability of us to resist. The power that is set against us none can crush, and break, but God: for it is the power of devils, of sin, of death, and hell. But we for our parts are crushed before the moth: being a shadow, a vapour, and a wind that passes away (Job 4:19). Oh! how should we, and how would we, were but our eyes awake, stand and wonder at the preservations, the deliverances, the salvations and benefits with which we are surrounded daily: while so many mighty evils seek ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... looked out of the window without seeing. Lines of sparks like living fire passed by the grimy window-pane, and balls of vapour and smoke, resembling large tufts of wool, were dashed to pieces and hurried to the ground by the wind. The smoke curled round the small shrubs growing close to the ground, moistened by the rain in the valley. The dusk of the autumn day spread a dim light over the landscape, and produced ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... village street, where the night air drove the wine vapour from his head. And then he remembered that he and Yvonne had quarrelled that day, and that he had resolved to leave his home that night to seek fame and honour in the great ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... a student of theories, dogmas, laws, and writings of men is to be involved in endless controversy; and we may study books till we are sick, and embrace nothing but vapour for all our pains. To be a pupil and possessor we must first establish the personal relationship between ourselves and Jesus. To do this we must realise more fully than we now do that He still lives. The mind is ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... which any one may attest by walking up, in the cloudy and dark day, the Cairn-a-Mount, a lofty knoll, across which a road leads to Deeside, to the north of the poet's birthplace, and watching the sea of vapour boiling, shifting, sinking, rising, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... down by the transparent lake which so prettily reflects its diadem of arbours. A young willow drooped in gentle sadness over the face of the water; and white ducks glided past me in the evening mist. The waning blue light mingled with the pale vapour that rises over Paris at nightfall; and all this made a mauve sky behind the dark trees. It was soft and melancholy, but not grave; and I lingered on, amid the beauty of the scene, rapt in some woman's reverie. Then a lamp was lighted behind ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc |
