Drop

“ A drop is a sample of the ocean from which it has been taken, and the handful which we have been able to gather and the bunch we have been able to pluck represent the wide field out of the unlimited expanse. ”

“ Every drop has visited all the shores of the earth; every one has been frozen in the vast and icy North; every one has fallen in snow, has been whirled by storms around mountain peaks; every one has been kissed to vapor by the sun ”

“ In seeking the answer it will be useful to ask ourselves another question. What should we have expected the drop to do? Well, to this I suppose most people would be inclined, arguing from analogy with a solid, to reply that it would be reasonable to expect the drop to flatten itself, and even very considerably flatten itself, and then, collecting itself together again, to rebound, perhaps as a column such as we have seen, but not to form this regular system of rays and arms and subordinate drops. ”

“ Between the vanishing of the drop and the vanishing of the man, what difference? A difference of words.... But ask yourself what becomes of the dewdrop?
By the great sun its atoms are separated and lifted and scattered. To cloud and earth, to river and sea they go; and out of land and stream and sea again they will be updrawn, only to fall and to scatter anew. They will creep in opalescent mists;—they will whiten in frost and hail and snow;—they will reflect again the forms and the colours of the macrocosm; they will throb to the ruby pulsing of hearts that are yet unborn. ”

“ A drop from the sky falls into the pond, forms a little bubble for a while, then bursts, and mingles with the morass; another falls into the stream and becomes a part of the living billow. Is my existence like that of such a rain-drop? ”

“ The splash of a drop is a transaction which is accomplished in the twinkling of an eye, and it may seem to some that a man who proposes to discourse on the matter for an hour must have lost all sense of proportion. ”

“ The rods that thinly stripe our landscape, long shafts from the clouds, if we had but agility to make the arrowy downward journey with them by the glancing of our eyes, would be infinitely separate, units, an innumerable flight of single things, and the simple movement of intricate points.
The long stroke of the raindrop, which is the drop and its path at once, being our impression of a shower, shows us how certainly our impression is the effect of the lagging, and not of the haste, of our senses. ”

“ As you look down into a glass containing one fluid while drop after drop of another is falling, you perceive fresh currents and curves in every direction. Watching one of these, it has changed places with another, you lose trace of it, each drop is lost in the commingling of the whole. ”

“ A single drop rises on the surface of the stormy ocean of life. It lasts but a second--though men term it threescore years and ten--and then, glowing with the light it receives and imparts, sinks again. ”

“ The barges down in the river flop.
Flop, plop.
Above, beneath.
From the slimy branches the grey drips drop,
As they scraggle black on the thin grey sky,
Where the black cloud rack-hackles drizzle and fly
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop
On the black scrag piles, where the loose cords plop,
As the raw wind whines in the thin tree-top. ”

“ If we keep to the same size of drop and increase the fall to something over a yard, no great change occurs in the nature of the splash, but the emergent column is rather higher and thinner and shows a tendency to split into drops. ”

“ DISTINCTION BETWEEN ATOMS AND MOLECULES.
See! I have dipped my pencil into the goblet, and brought up a drop of water. What force binds together the pencil and the drop? What holds the drop to other drops? Why is not this ice instead of water? If I shake the pencil in what direction does the drop fall? If the drop were larger than the world, which way would the world go? ”

“ Drop out, to disappear from one's place; Drop serene, an old medical name for amaurosis, literally translated from L. gutta serena.—A dropping fire, a continuous irregular discharge of small-arms.—Prince Rupert's drops, drops of glass which have fallen in a melted state into cold water, and have assumed a tadpole-like shape, the whole falling to dust with a loud report if the point of the tail be nipped off. ”

“ These drops, which on falling glisten like points of gold and sound like the notes of a musical instrument, unite on the turf and murmuring, murmuring with a sound like that of bees humming about the flowers, glide on through the gravel, and form a rill and contend with the obstacles in their way, and gather volume and leap and flee and run, sometimes with a laugh, sometimes with sighs, until they fall into a lake. ”

“ A second drop must be let fall in the same way, and be illumined by the spark not at the first moment of contact, but a shade later, say 1100 second later, when the drop will have spread itself out slightly on the plate; and similarly we must illuminate a third drop a shade later than the second, and so on. The observer can, after a little practice, draw from memory on each occasion the drop in the form in which he has seen it. ”

“ Now we are in for it: the drops thicken; in a minute we shall be as wet as water. But Nature only means to give us a fright. The rain does not increase—the drops stop—the wind howls less loudly. Soon, through a rent in the clouds is seen a star, and then another. ”

“ During its descent, the drop of rain is steadily increased by the water-particles of the air through which it passes. Thus it happens, that rain often arrives at the earth in the form of large drops of water, while when yet in the air and beginning to fall, it consisted of tiny drops. ”

“ It will be necessary to let a drop, say of mercury, fall on a plate in comparative darkness, and to produce a strong spark at the instant the bottom of the drop comes in contact with the plate, and so illumine it ”

“ There is something very wonderful in the rapidity and perfection with which these natural prisms, the falling drops of rain, produce these effects. In the inconceivably short space of time occupied by a drop falling through those parts of the sky which form the proper angles with the sun’s rays and the eye of the observer, the light enters the surface of the drop, undergoes within it one or two reflexions, two refractions and decompositions, and has reached the eye ”

“ Specimens of such patterns, obtained by letting drops of mercury, alcohol, and water fall on to smoked glass, are thrown on the screen, and the main characteristics are easily recognized. Such a pattern corresponds to the footprints of the dance that has been performed on the surface, and though the drop may be lying unbroken on the plate, it has evidently been taking violent exercise, and were our vision acute enough we might observe that it was still palpitating after its exertions. ”

“ In a drop of several hundred feet a mass of water is likely to expand to several times its width at the brink. This expansion varies with the volume of water, the height of the drop, and the direction and speed of resisting wind-currents. ”

“ Each droplet forms a gathering place for more condensing water vapor, and therefore grows. When the droplets of water in a cloud are very close together, some may be jostled against one another by the wind. And when they touch each other, they stick together, forming a larger drop. ”

“ The drops that have been to the sky to be purified are coming down in countless flakes—cold, separate and pure—to try another course of duty on this defiling earth, mingle again, and wait for another evaporation. ”

“ But although the drop has fallen from a greater height than in the previous splash, the energy of the impact, instead of being expended in raising the same amount of liquid to a greater height, is now spent in lifting a much thicker adherent column to about the same height as in the last splash. There was sometimes noticed, as seen in Fig. 9, a tendency in the water to flow up past the milk, which, still comparatively unmixed with water, rides triumphant on the top of the emergent column. ”

“ The deeper the water in which it falls the greater the possibility of its drifting farther still, since in sinking, it would fall, not vertically, but rather as the drops of rain in a shower when being driven before a gale of wind. ”

“ But when we are watching the splash made by the fall of a liquid drop, instead of a solid sphere, there is a new and more serious source of difficulty. For the drop as it lies on the smoked glass cup is not perfectly spherical, but is flattened by its own weight, as shown in Fig. ”

“ By continual dropping, I clean the rocks: for continual dropping can dissolve even a mountain.—27. Habit even over nature, becomes master: it trains and leads even lions, as beasts of burden.—28. Habit, repose, and increase, with persistence ”

“ Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
My myself in the summer heaven, godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, ”

“ These two groups of drops are intimately commingled, as is shown by the intricate nature of the system of drainage channels. As they continue their fall to earth, they coalesce, and a brief dash of unusually large drops of rain is observed. ”

“ They may be conquered, dispersed, or even kept for a time in bonds, but they soon shake off the yoke; they compare themselves to reeds, which a storm will bend to the ground, and which will rise when the wind drops. ”

“ In soothing murmurs to complain;
My tongue some secret magic ties,
My murmurs sink in broken sighs!
Condemn'd to nurse eternal care,
And ever drop the silent tear,
Unheard I mourn, unknown I sigh,
Unfriended live, unpitied die! ”

“ VANISHING BUBBLES
Many unknown bubbles float and flow,
Many ripples dance by me
And melt away in sea.
I like to know, ah, whence they come or whither
go—
The rain drops and dies,
My thoughts play wild and vanish quick,
The red clouds melt in skies ”

“ We receive the impression of the falling of a large mass of water, descending always from the same height and with the same difficulty. The scattering of the drops of water, the formation of froth, the sound of the fall by the roaring and by the froth, are constantly produced by the same causes, and, consequently, are always the same. ”

“ One is so fully conscious, even while the drops are falling, that the sun is shining behind the light clouds. And the drops themselves come down so gently, tentatively offering themselves, as it were, to the welcoming earth—pattering lightly on the leaves, and softly rippling the surface of the little pool under the willows. ”

“ The wind has a mournful cadence, and the trees saw as if the motion were a sigh of sorrow. Everything seems to harmonize with the prevailing spirit of sadness, and animate nature moans forth a dirge. Dew drops seem like tears, and the evening breeze is a sigh. ”

“ The droplets get so close together that they shut out the sun's light from the earth, and people say that the sky is darkening.
Meanwhile some of the droplets begin to touch each other and to stick together. Little by little the drops grow bigger by joining together. Pretty soon they get so big and heavy that they can no longer float high in the air, and they fall to the ground as rain. ”

“ When a drop grows large enough it begins to fall through the cloud, gathering up the small droplets as it goes. By the time it gets out of the cloud it has grown to a full-sized raindrop, and falls to earth. The complete story of rain, then, is this:
How rain is caused. The surface of the oceans and lakes is warmed by the sun. The water evaporates, turning to invisible water vapor. This water vapor mingles with the air. After a while the air is caught in a rising current and swept up high, carrying the water vapor with it. ”

“ Two little drops in that river that flowed silently towards the unknown; two little drops that to themselves had so much individuality and to the onlooker were but an undistinguishable part of the water. ”

“ In a general way his music is that of the streams refined and spiritualized. The deep booming notes of the falls are in it, the trills of rapids, the gurgling of margin eddies, the low whispering of level reaches, and the sweet tinkle of separate drops oozing from the ends of mosses and falling into tranquil pools. ”

“ That brought the fog and mist.
''Twas right,' said they, 'such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist.'
"The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow follow'd free:
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
"Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
'Twas sad as sad could be ”

“ So fine was the morning except for a streak of wind here and there that the sea and sky looked all one fabric, as if sails were stuck high up in the sky, or the clouds had dropped down into the sea. ”

“ and the heavy drops fall—drip, drip, drip—upon the broad flagged pavement, called from old time the Ghost’s Walk, all night. ”

“ The clouds consign their treasures to the fields,
And, softly shaking on the dimply pool
Prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow,
In large effusion o'er the freshen'd world. ”

“ When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves,
With minute-drops from off the eaves. ”

“ Every dewdrop and raindrop had a whole heaven within it; ”

“ The fall is the finest I have seen, from the volume of its foaming water, and the violence with which it leaps from crag to crag through the ravine it has hollowed till it makes its last bound of one hundred and twenty feet, and from the basin which receives it, the spray mounts like steam. ”

“ Leap, leap, leap, and each leap was seven ages.
Before me the pale serpent-girdled sector of the sun sank and sank and the advancing shadow swept to seize the sphere before I could reach it. I was two miles away—a hundred leaps or more—and the air about me was thinning out as it thins under an air pump, and the cold was gripping at my joints. But had I died, I should have died leaping. Once, and then again my foot slipped on the gathering snow and shortened my leap ”