In the materialistic commercial town of Mecca, where lust of gain and usury reigned supreme, where women, wine, and gambling filled up the leisure time, where might was right, and widows, orphans, and the feeble were treated as superfluous ballast, an unfortunate being like Mohammed, if his constitution were sensitive, must have experienced most painful emotions.

Golden ballast.

B.J. was now so well satisfied with his live ballast that he began once more to sing and make a mad hullabaloo of pure enjoyment.

He turned his rudder for the lateral movements, and changed his shifting bags of ballast hanging fore and aft, pulling in the after bag when he wished to point her nose down, and doing likewise with the forward ballast when he wished to ascendthe propeller pushing up or down as she was pointed.

The quiet and sustained resistance to indifference and lack of appreciation, is truly the steady ballast which has prevented our Theosophical ship from aimless and fatal wanderings, though of inclement weather and adverse winds we had plenty.

While the larger part of the contents is humorous, there are inserted many quotations of a serious nature which may serve as appropriate literary ballast.

Santos-Dumont was built to jockey a Pegasus or guide an air-ship, for he weighed but a hundred pounds when he made his first ascensions, and added very little live ballast as he grew older.

While the larger part of the contents is humorous, there are inserted many quotations of a serious nature which may serve as appropriate literary ballast.

It is possible that the personal knowledge of these four hundred enduring family lives was, perhaps, the most important mental ballast taken on by the children of the community during their eight years' cruise at school.

I will not undertake to say, for certain, that the stout man was paid for doing this; but, as his hands were small and remarkably white, indications that he toiled not with them, and as he made his appearance on deck only when movable ballast was wanted, I am bound to suppose that he secured a living by sitting heavily and throwing himself on for weight, in circumstances under which such actions command a standard value.

After this correction of his sister, Master Edward did not like the condescension of acknowledging her suggestion to be a good one; so he went silently to the house in search of the requisite ballast; but not being able to find anything suitable, he came back to his turfy hillock, littered round with chips of wood, and tried to insert some pebbles into his vessel; but they stuck fast, and he was obliged to ask again.

"'As it was, the front wheel struck the heel of the newsboy's boot and he and Jimmy fell, face downward on the sharp, fresh-gravel ballast so hard that they were both bleeding and the baggage man thought sure the wheel had gone over them.

Baccalaureate, badinage, bagatelle, baleful, ballast, banality, baneful, beatitude, bellicose, belligerent, benefaction, beneficent, benison, betide, bibulous, bigotry, bizarre, bombastic, burlesque.

The weather was all to the good the other afternoon, so we hike up to Harlem and collar the ship, six of us, and, after loading a bunch of bottled ballast on board, we started out.