Paragon

“ Another Paragon, though of tender years and having a delicate skin, insisted on sleeping uncovered at night, in order that the mosquitoes should fasten on him alone, and allow his parents to slumber undisturbed. A third, who was very poor, determined to bury his own child alive, in order to have more food wherewith to support his aged mother, but was rewarded by Heaven with the discovery of a vessel filled with gold, on which the whole family lived happily ever after. ”

“ He’s a paragon, and I don’t think paragons and I quite hit it.”
“Aw dooan’t know what yo’ meean bi a Paragon, miss, but there’s a Paragon what’s a public-haase i’ Westgate i’ Huddersfielt, an’ yo’ nivver wer’ further off yo’r horse, Miss Dorothy, though aw mak’ bold to say so. Why, yar Tom nivver touches a drop stronger nor teea, an’s awmost ’verted yar Ben, leastwise he tak’s nowt no stronger nor whom-brew’d an’ aw see that’ll nooan hurt ’im.”
“Aye, aye, I see, a paragon, a saint. Oh! I can picture him. Tall, you say? ”

“ She don’t do any harm, jest tramps back and forth between Paragonah and Parowan and Summit and Cedar City. I always have said that women is the contrary half of the human race and man is the sanifying half!”
The cattle were again in motion, and the Bishop after them with strong cries of correction and exhortation.
Toward evening Joel Rae entered Paragonah, a loose group of log houses amid outlying fields, now shorn and yellow. Along the street in front of him many children followed and jeered in the wake of a man who slouched some distance ahead of them. ”

“ Bird life has been scarce in the desert and only in the mountains have we seen any.
The next day we continue up the valley five miles to Parowan and four miles farther to Paragonah, then, being close under the mountains, we finally turn east again through Red Creek Canyon toward Bear Valley. We climb up a few miles and camp for noon.
Bob and Doc are off their feed to-day. Doc says it was the water at Cedar City and Bob says it was the cooking at the hotel, and I think it was just sleeping in a bed. Anyway, they were all right the next morning. ”

“ It will be seen that parallax displaces a body from the zenith towards the horizon, and that the parallax of a body is greatest when it is on the horizon. The parallax of a heavenly body when on the horizon is called its horizontal parallax. A body in the zenith is not displaced by parallax, since it would be seen in the same direction from both the centre and the surface of the earth. ”

“ For the axis of the parabola along which we imagine the natural motion of a falling body to take place stands perpendicular to a horizontal surface and ends at the center of the earth; and since the parabola deviates more and more from its axis no projectile can ever reach the center of the earth or, if it does, as seems necessary, then the path of the projectile must transform itself into some other curve very different from the parabola. ”

“ The cruiser swung more and more toward the great boulder, descending swiftly. There was no sound, only the steady dragging of gravity on the ship from the pale beam. Absently, the Falcon cleared the board before him, cutting all switches.
And then a giant hole flowed open in the top of the huge boulder, and the pirate ship was whisked into a slanting radi-lighted tunnel.
"Hollow!" Jean said. "So this is the Pirate's Base!" She frowned. "But if it is hollow, why doesn't gravitic stress rip it to pieces?" ”

“ If I tilt up the plane and make the force of gravity big, the parabola is long and thin;88 if I weaken down the force of gravity by making the plane nearly horizontal, then it is wide and flat.
One can also show this by a stream of peas or shot. The little bullets go each with a uniform velocity horizontally, and an accelerated force downwards.
Instead of peas we can use water. A stream of it rushing horizontally out of an orifice will soon bend down into a parabola. ”

“ Looking into the matter still further, I asked Orion, the chief falconer of Count Hugo, who was one of the men he had brought here with him, what kind of bird it was he had given to you when the Count desired that you should have one. Orion then told me it was a falcon which had come to him only the day before. He had been out hawking with his master, and was bringing down to him by means of a lure a falcon that had made an unsuccessful flight, when a strange hawk made its appearance and also answered his call, and came down to the lure. ”

“ Cat men from the tombs of Mars played Martian chess with their traditional enemies, the big-chested Upland boiloongs whose tentacles were like living ropes of steel. Creatures from a dozen worlds watched or played or rested, singly and in groups, about the gargantuan room.
"They're my men," The Falcon said proudly, feelingly. "And regardless of body-form, each is a man. They're the Falcon's Brood." ”

“ Major C. E. Radclyffe, who has had almost unrivalled experience as a falconer, writes as follows:
“All forms of falcons and short-winged hawks, such as sparrow-hawks and goshawks, [144] always strike their quarry with their feet, and never with anything else. The killers are those which ‘bind to’ their quarry in the air, that is, pick up a bird in their feet, and never let go of it until they come to the ground. A really experienced old trained falcon does this nine times out of ten. ”

“ Necessarily, therefore, bd must not exceed the half of ba; for of all the rectangles formed by parts of a straight line the one of greatest area is obtained when the line is divided into two equal parts. Let e be the middle point of the line ab; and now if bd be equal to be the problem is solved; for be will be the altitude and ea the sublimity of the parabola. (Incidentally we may observe a consequence already demonstrated, namely: of all parabolas described with any given terminal speed that for which the elevation is 45° will have the maximum amplitude.) ”

“ He proved that if a body be projected with any velocity in free space, subject only to a central force, varying inversely as the square of the distance, the body must revolve in a curve which may be any one of the sections of a cone—a circle, ellipse, parabola, or hyperbola; and he found that those comets of which he had observations move in parabolae round the Sun, and are thus subject to the universal law. ”

“ The falconer points to the fleeing heron, the impatient hawk shakes its pinions, utters a cry, and quick as lightning soars aloft. The affrighted heron tries in vain to rise higher than his pursuer, but the latter directs its flight in such a manner as to be constantly hovering above its quarry. ”

“ A projectile which is carried by a uniform horizontal motion compounded with a naturally accelerated vertical motion describes a path which is a semi-parabola. Sagr.
Here, Salviati, it will be necessary to stop a little while for my sake and, I believe, also for the benefit of Simplicio; for it so happens that I have not gone very far in my study of Apollonius and am merely aware of the fact that he treats of the parabola and other conic sections, without an understanding of which I hardly think one will be able to follow the proof of other propositions depending upon them. ”

“ He stricken in body, she in soul, together they fell down to the margin of the pool. The falcon still clung fleshing its beak in the neck of its prey. The heron-Princess threw back her head, and, darting furiously, struck her own sharp bill deep into the falcon's breast. The bird threw out its wings with a hoarse cry and fell back dead, with a little tuft of the grey heron's feathers still upon its beak. ”

“ According to Kiron, it points always toward the center of Amtor—that is, toward the center of the mythical circular area called Strabol, or Hot Country. This statement assured me that I was in the southern hemisphere of the planet, the needle of the compass, of course, pointing north toward the north magnetic pole. Having no sun, moon, nor stars, their navigation is all done by dead reckoning; but they have developed instruments of extreme delicacy that locate land at great distances, accurately indicating this distance and the direction ”

“ If the eccentricity of the orbit is very large, the portion of the ellipse in the vicinity of the perihelion approximates to a parabola, which it becomes when the eccentricity equals unity.
As a matter of history, the great majority of comet orbits hitherto studied are either parabolas or are portions of excessively elongated ellipses, so as to be indistinguishable from parabolas, at least in the part of the orbit traversed during visibility. This portion of the orbit is always adjacent to the perihelion. ”

“ At midday the Falcon was abreast of the Old Man of Hoy--a curious isolated pinnacle of rock some five hundred feet in height standing out in the sea--and before the time of sunset we rounded Rora Head and entered a beautiful sheltered bay with a fine stretch of sloping beach, beyond which, on the brown moor, about a dozen tiny houses could be seen snugly nestling together beside a flowing stream that had its source away up amongst the hills. ”

“ Off the coast lies the palmclad volcanic island of Oena-Oena. Paragi is the home of somewhat restless and troublesome natives; but then, the interior of the country is populated by savages who are cannibals and slave-dealers, and who can only be brought under control by degrees.
In the mountains in Celebes—which are about 7000 feet high—is found the sapi-utan, or wild cow, half antelope and half buffalo, a small animal; and the babirusa, or pig-deer, peculiar to this island, the Sulu Isles, and Bouru. It has upper tusks curling back to its eyes, and is different from all other animals. ”

“ Pipes as thick as a man's arm, bank upon bank, were braced in rows through the center of the immense room, and thousands of clear bubbles of water clung to them. The light of gravitic-stasis bulbs glowed deep in each bubble, and the surfaces of all were threaded with the tender shoots of growing seedling plants.
"How utterly incredibly marvelous!" Jean whispered.
The Falcon nodded proudly. "Ten thousand tons of food go out of this cavern every day, taken to the starving people of a dozen worlds. It is not a one man job; it is a tremendous task for hundreds of thousands of men and women." ”

“ Several observatories whose telescopes picked up and followed the trail of the contraption reported that it described a huge parabola, mounting high into the stratosphere and falling back to earth, where it was lost in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. There the thing ended and it was soon forgotten. But I believe that this rocket ship of Oradel's reached Mars or Venus and that the peoples of whichever planet they reached have been prevailed upon and prepared to war upon the world. ”

“ Individual sprays and fronds, projecting from the mass in parabolas with flamboyant abandon and poise, were as rigid as metallic and enamelled shapes. The diversity of forms, and especially the number and variety of the palms, so overloaded an unseen standing that the parapets of the woods occasionally leaned outwards to form an arcade above our masts. ”

“ As he passes a tall cliff overhanging a silent lake, he is attacked by a fierce peregrine falcon, which darts and plunges at him, as if resolved to deprive him of his booty, or drive him headlong to the ground. ”

“ Ethel again unhoods her favourite falcon, Grey-eye, and flings him towards the game. But the falcon has another matter in hand than that of bringing down a sluggard pheasant; for moorfowl, when fairly on the wing, scud along like the wind. Immediately also when they perceived the enemy in pursuit they changed their tactics, and, quitting the mountain side, made a dart for the valley, where shelter was to be had. Plump and heavy, the descent suits them more than the falcon; and with impetuous whirl they rush along with incredible speed. It seems as though the hawk will never head them! ”

“ The deep and inaccessible bottom of the crater loses itself in misty obscurity, and glimmers indistinctly through the vapours which are there slowly and incessantly ascending from its mysterious depths. All is desolate and silent, save when a solitary falcon, hovering over the vast chasm, awakes with her discordant screech the echoes of the precipice. Through a telescope may be seen, in various parts of the huge crater walls, swarms of small swallows, which have there built their nests, flying backwards and forwards. ”

“ All that has been said above concerning the amount of momentum in the projectile at the extremity of the parabola must be understood to refer to a blow received on a line at right angles to this parabola or along the tangent to the parabola at the given point; for, even though the motion has two components, one horizontal, the other vertical, neither will the momentum along the horizontal nor that upon a plane perpendicular to the horizontal be a maximum, since each of these will be received obliquely. ”

“ He flicked on the tractor rays again, sent them spiralling to one side. They touched a fifty-foot meteor, caught it, spun it into the path of the hurtling death-ship.
Duke Ringo tried to swerve the cruiser, failed, for the ship and meteor struck in a titanic slanting blow. White heat flared for a soundless moment, force waves pushing outward in the burst of energy. Then the ship and meteor were one, and in their place was only a fused lump of metallic refuse that spun endlessly in the Sargasso of Space.
The Falcon cut all switches, turned slowly about on his seat. ”

“ He spun about, seeking a manhole opening, saw none. He did not know where he was, for there were no identifying marks in the tube. He thought swiftly, but his thoughts seemed to move with a treacly slowness. Then he lifted his gun, flicked it to full force, blasted a hole through the side of the conduit.
Metal flowed in a crimson stream, grew turgid, hardened with the queerness of the native iron. Great blisters reared on the Falcon's hands as he clawed his way from the tube. He fell to the ground outside, blinked, tried to find his directions by some distinctive landmark. ”