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More "Crack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the Countess, the other to Mrs Turner.' Along with these were some pictures, as they were termed, or, more properly speaking, models of the human figure. 'At the shewing,' says the report, 'of these, and inchanted papers, and other pictures in court, there was heard a crack from the scaffolds, which caused great fear, tumult, and confusion among the spectators, and throughout the hall, every one fearing hurt, as if the devil had been present, and grown angry to have his workmanship shewed by such as were ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... and opened the door a crack. A cry of dismay answered his move, followed by a tremendous commotion and swishing ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... Grayfur," said Constance. "Max brought you, didn't he? If he hadn't sneezed and given himself away, he'd have opened the door a crack ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... being too bemused with terror to do aught to protect ourselves, even had we been possessed of weapons. And as we remained thus, an instant, like silly sheep awaiting the butcher, I heard the framework creak and crack, and there ran splits all across the glass. In another moment, the whole thing would have been torn away, and the cabin undefended, but that the bo'sun, with a great curse at us for our landlubberly lack of use, seized the other ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... sources of creation, She'll take the reins of the world in hand. She'll stop The sun like Joshua, turn the moon to blood, And if I have to swallow half the herbs In Sherwood, I shall stalk a giant yet, Shoulder to shoulder with thee, Little John, And crack thy head at quarter-staff. But don't, Don't joke about it. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... land began twisting like snakes under our feet, and cut figure eights, till I felt like soapsuds, and lay down on my face. Then I sat up, and looked at the Helen Mar, which shook and groaned like a live thing. We heard the trees crack and snap behind her. She seemed to hang a moment as if she hated to go; and over she went with a shriek and crash. The water splashed and the dust went up. Stevey Todd and I ran to the bank, and there lay ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... men lay in a heap upon the floor of a grey chamber. A small fire smoldered in the corner, the smoke disappearing in a crack. In another corner was a bed of faded hemlock boughs and two blankets. Cooking utensils and clothes lay about, with boxes ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... right, Dev. Strong and fit as an ox, and a crack polo-player and a fair shot and boxer and not bad with boats and cars and horses and pretty well off, too. So when you look bored, it's picturesque; but wait! Wait ten years, till you take on flesh, and the doctor puts you ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... With rain and hail, so much could not be spanned; Fell thunderbolts often on every hand, And verily the earth quaked in answer back From Saint Michael of Peril unto Sanz, From Besencun to the harbour of Guitsand; No house stood there but straight its walls must crack: In full mid-day the darkness was so grand, Save the sky split, no light was in the land. Beheld these things with terror every man, And many said: "We in the Judgement stand; The end of time is presently at hand." They spake no truth; they did not understand; 'Twas ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... and dramatic world of London in the years 1589 to 1592 was stirred with pride and astonishment at the productions of William Shakspere, and from the tavern and guilds of tradesmen to the crack clubs of authors, lords and royalty itself, the Dramatic Magician of the Blackfriars was praised to the skies and sought for by even Queen Elizabeth, who saw more than another Edmund Spenser to glorify her reign and flash her name down the ages with even finer, luminous colors than ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... Mame," jeered the boy. He opened a solid door behind him. Through the crack Susan saw busily writing at a table desk a bald, fat man with a pasty skin and ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... and military moral of the Turk. There was never any question of the Turk being demoralized or even flustered by ships sailing past him or by troops landing in his rear. At last, I believe, this moral is beginning to crack up a little (not much) but nothing less than murderous losses would have done it. In their diaries their officers speak of this Peninsula as ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... sharp crack! crack! of rifles was heard from different directions, as the Apaches opened fire upon the whites, who showed an equal readiness in replying. The Indians never allowed their steeds to rest. They were constantly in motion, back and forth, ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... would obey me to the letter. She 'pitched me Lilly.' I gave a dismal wail of dismay as I saw my dear baby come hurtling through the air, but when she landed on her blessed head, and I heard the crack of breaking china, I just abandoned myself to grief and howled desperately. Aunt Rebecca went about her business as if nothing had happened, and by and by I stole off with my ruined dolly and cried to myself in the back yard—because I had ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... we're off for Turkey, Lord knows when we shall come back! Breezes foul and tempests murky May unship us in a crack. But, since life at most a jest is, As philosophers allow, Still to laugh by far the best is, Then laugh on—as I do now. Laugh at all things, Great and small things, Sick or well, at sea or shore; While we're quaffing, Let's have laughing— Who the devil cares for more?— Some good ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... shame of soldiers, Above the best of generals? crack the world, And bruise the name of Romans into ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... suddenly squatted down over the Monk and drowned him in a torrent of very filthy liquid. Each sister followed suit and did the like; then one after the other they re-entered the tomb of San Satiro, slipping in through a tiny crack in the lid, leaving their victim lying full length in a stream ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... for the sting of the spurs, the resounding crack of the heavy quirt, the voice of the rider raised in curses; but all was silence. The very feel of the man in the saddle was different, not so much in poundage as in a certain exquisite balance which he maintained but the pause lasted no longer than a second after ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... Dick was all eagerness now. "There's to be a jolly crowd there. Sammie told me that he has invited a crack-a-jack of an artist he met at the club. He is an English chap and has been out here only a short time. He puts out some great stuff in the way of pictures, so I understand. Then, that Westcote girl is to be there. My, I'm anxious to meet her. She is worth while ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... can no longer be cuffed and scouted in the Senate and snubbed in the salon or public meeting by the private interests of half a million of the most illiberal and ignorant conservatives in existence. Henceforth the North must rule. 'Must' is a hard nut, but Southern teeth must crack it, whether they will or no. We may shuffle and quibble, but to this it must come. Every day of the war renders it more certain. The farm must encroach on the plantation, the rural nobility give place to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was well understood that the author was never to get beyond that passage until he had acknowledged it absurd and egregiously foolish, anybody who knows anything about the genus irritabile will be certain, that if he lived till "the crack of doom," Don Silva would never have passed the Rubicon. It was thus that the poor fellow was tormented: and every time that he was asked to dine in the cabin, he was requested to bring his Tour, in order that the whole ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... WYATT. I do not hear from Carew or the Duke Of Suffolk, and till then I should not move. The Duke hath gone to Leicester; Carew stirs In Devon: that fine porcelain Courtenay, Save that he fears he might be crack'd in using, (I have known a semi-madman in my time So fancy-ridd'n) ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... scene, without speaking, like great lovers that are mute. Starting from the sheltered pool, where the yachts lay in summer, they skirted the dark piles of the long pier, around which the black water gurgled treacherously. Beyond the pier there was a snakelike, oozing crack, which divided the inshore ice from the more open fields outside. This they followed until they found a chance to cross, and then they sped away toward the little island made by the "intake" of the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... bitterly, "is like a bathtub wave. See? The ground was jerked away, and then pushed back. Normal shock-waves push away and then spring back! An ice-crack, a rock-slide, an explosion of any sort, all of them make the same kind of waves! All have compression phases, then rarefaction phases, then compression phases, and so on. What—" his voice was ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... plantation life. Negroes have gathered into motley groups around two weatherbeaten store-houses—the overseer has retired to his apartment-when they wait the signal from the head driver, who figures as master of ceremonies. One sings:—-"Jim Crack corn, an' I don't care, Fo'h mas'r's gone away! way! way!" Another is croaking over the time he saved on his task, a third is trying to play a trick with the driver (come the possum over him), and a third unfolds the scheme by which the extra for whiskey ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... by bursting the dry and contracted shell, in what is known as quarter or toe crack, and the miserable victim becomes practically useless at an age when his powers should be in ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... Here thou mayst through faith look the very devil in the face, and rejoice, saying, O Satan! I have a precious Jesus, a soul-comforting Jesus, a sin-pardoning Jesus. Here thou mayst hear the biggest thunder-crack that the Law can give, and yet not be daunted. Here thou mayst say, O Law! thou mayst roar against sin, but thou canst not reach me; thou mayst curse and condemn, but not my soul; for I have righteous Jesus, a holy Jesus, a soul-saving Jesus, and He ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... easy to talk, but how is he to do it? We live in different worlds. I am a High School teacher, living in rooms in London, without a relation or a house open to me where I am intimate enough to take a friend. He is an officer in a crack regiment, visiting at fashionable houses. Can't you imagine how his hostesses would stare if he asked them to call upon me here, in this poky room! And if he loves me, if I interest him more than the butterflies ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... people disagreeable feelings. Consequently, be it an era of pig-tails or high-heeled shoes, of starched ruffs or trunk-hose, all must continue to wear pig-tails, high-heeled shoes, starched ruffs, or trunk-hose to the crack ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... they shake to its base his watery throne; The billows in angry fury shall rise, And every sea-mark and dam despise; The lightning shall gleam through the firmament black While the poles of earth and of heaven shall crack, The ocean the heights of Olympus explore, From thousandfold jaws with wild deafening roar The thunder shall howl, while with mad jubilee The hurricane fierce sings in triumph to ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... sitting fully dressed in the darkness of her bedroom, got quietly to her feet and went to the door leading to her office. With wildly beating heart she stood listening, seeking to peer through the crack of the door she had left ajar. She had heard the faint, expected sound of ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... to cook and have a natural knack for it. Others hate it. If you are one of the former, select a propitious moment to suggest that you will cook, if the rest will wash the dishes and supply the wood and water. Thus you will get first crack at the fire in the chill of morning; and at night you can squat on your heels doing light labor ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... for an hour or two," said Helen, brightening with hope. "You will tell the general to-night Do you think Granville will come back? Where is the harp key?—I dropped it—here it is." She began to tune the harp. Crack went one string—then another. "That is lucky," said Lady Cecilia, "it will give you something to do, my love, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the Fourth Austrian Landwehr Division, supported by the Forty-first Honved Division, against Ivaniska; they moved along roads converging on Opatow. The Twenty-fifth Austrian Division, commanded by the Archduke Peter Ferdinand, was composed of crack regiments, the Fourth Hoch and Deutschmeisters of Vienna, and the Twenty-fifth, Seventeenth, and Tenth Jaeger battalions. The Russians were outnumbered about 40 per cent. The supposedly demoralized Russians were not expected to give any battle short of their fortified ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... giving them a quartette or a sestette a cheval, with a solo for the Captain! Then the Captain might know all about the murder, and he would reveal it without breaking the seal—unless it were to crack a bottle—and all would end happily. As it is, all ends miserably, or would so end, but for the Captain, whose last words before the fall of the Curtain, uttered in his best French, are "Ong Avong! Marsh!" From which it may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... did not go to Rome to spend a week there and away again; for it was a month or two's journey from France. The crack of the postilions' whips used to announce to the Eternal City in general the arrival of a distinguished guest. Domestiques de place flocked to the call. The luckiest of them took possession of ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... keyhole of Sir Louis's door. He must be sitting in the dark, and I smiled to myself as I thought how I had been wasting a couple of my grandmother's best candles for an hour. The explanation was that Louis, in fear of being spied upon, had carefully plugged up the keyhole and every crack of the door. But this I only ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... outcropping through the soft verdant turf, he saw a stealthy, furtive shape; he was aware of a hasty cowed glance over the shoulder, and then a stretching of supple limbs in flight. Before he himself hardly knew it the sharp crack of his rifle rang out,—the ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... immortality and glory upon a shield of ebony—motionless, inert as the young hero of the Germanic legend—and followed by the lamentations of that poor prisoner of life, Humanity, that ever eagerly seeks a crack, a chink, in the wall about it, through which the inspiriting, comforting ray of beauty ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... could kill the two guards in the proper fashion—rather a large proviso, I admit—the thing was simple as shelling peas which, notwithstanding the proverb, in my experience is not simple at all, since generally the shells crack the wrong way and at least one of the peas remained in the pod. So it happened in this case, for Janee, whom we had both forgotten, ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... usually split by the use of wedges, but it is possible to split them by the use of two axes. Fig. 119 shows both methods. To split with the axe, strike it smartly into the wood at the small end so as to start a crack, then sink the axe in the crack, A. Next take the second axe and strike it in line with the first one at B. If this is done properly it should open the crack wide enough to release the first axe without trouble, ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... thicket; but before he could gather one mouthful, that nameless fear came over him again, that obscure forewarning of doom, and he sprang forward toward the cover of the firs. As he sprang, there was a movement and a flash far down a wooded alley—a sharp, ringing crack—and something invisible struck him in the body. He had been struck before, by falling branches, or by stones bounding down a bluff, but this missile seemed very different and very small. Small as it was, however, the blow staggered him ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... States where the smallest per cent. of illiteracy exists and, by parity of reasoning, the highest per cent. of intelligence. The fact is that the farmer of the West is not the clodhopper, at whose expense the funny man of the modern journal likes to crack jokes. He reads more widely and thinks more deeply than tradesmen or city people do, as a class. Tradesmen wear better clothes, are more urbane, and obtain a certain polish and self-possession which comes only from close contact with ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... that for the devil to crack," observed Mr. Flint, looking savagely after him. "I am in hopes we shall trounce him yet, bravely as he carries it. The check of course is not payable ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... Coleman, "this young Keith probably won't help any, but he's going to be interesting to watch, just the same, to see what he'll do the first time they crack the whip over him. That's the vital point as ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... beavers, mink, Keep glossy guard above the horde that gaily eat and drink; It's oh, the famous yarns we tell and famous yarns we hear, And we taste the grateful viands or we quaff the foaming beer; And many a lively song we sing and many a joke we crack When we're guests of Louis Auer at his Lake ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... a ludicrous little thing; for, you see, the whole story turns upon nothing but a crack ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... A crack started from the left-hand corner of the Captain's mouth, crossed a fissure in his face, stopped within half an inch of his stub nose, and died out ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... expanded with it, broke down the last barrier of reason. He added stop after stop,—at the last and sixtieth stop, he unfettered the whole volume of the wind. That instant was a blast, not to speak irreverently, which sounded like the crack of doom. To her standing stricken underneath, it seemed to explode somewhere in the roof with a shock beyond all artillery,—to tear up the ground under her feet, like the spasm of an earthquake,—to rend ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... can make her think it's a telegram," she thought, and her scheme was rewarded, for after a little wait she heard some one scuffling downstairs. The door creaked as the bolt was drawn back, and then it opened a crack. ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... that morning a queer kind of dawn life went on between the small boy and me. Morning after morning he threw a pebble to waken me and I hurried down to our tryst, which extended through the hour that lies between the crack of day and the first glint of the awakening sun. At first I had carried sweetmeats to our tryst, which were accepted with moderate pleasure, but one morning I had taken a huge volume of Rackham's Mother ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... said Major Hunt-Goring, his eyes boldly passing her to rest upon Violet. "Managed to crack my thumb tinkering at my old motor. Dr. Wyndham tells me that you have been kind enough to ask me to lunch. How do you do, Miss Campion? Charmed to meet you! Someone told me you were yachting in ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... I heard the bitter crack of the rifle and, raising my head, I saw her spring up and then drop down again. Then, staggering a short way up the opposite slope, I saw the slow bulk of the great black bull. He turned and looked back, his head low, his eyes straight ahead. Then slowly he kneeled ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... showers of leaves and twigs pattered sharply upon the buggy top or were thrown smartly into their faces. From all about came the squeaks and groans of branches rubbing against each other, with an occasional sharp crack as a limb gave ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... a suddenness that caused him to sit up, and consequently crack his head against the boards above his bunk. The blow almost knocked Steve back again as he had been before, and must have hurt considerably; but he ignored this fact just then, because from without there were coming loud yells of fright in ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... wall of her cell there was a crack low down by the floor, through which she could see the light from Wolfe's. She had discovered it days before. She hurried in now, and, kneeling down by it, listened, hoping to hear some sound. Nothing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... cronies out to tea in the town, and, as we walked to the shops, stared down the road to see if any Tommies were coming who would salute me in front of my guests. Luck was kind to me. For a large party, marching under an N.C.O., approached us; and the N.C.O. in a voice like the crack of doom cried "Party—eyes RIGHT!" Heads and eyes swung towards me, the N.C.O. saluted briskly, and, when the party had passed us, yelled "Eyes FRONT!" It was one of the most triumphant moments ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... right. But I hate all this running away. I'd like to take a crack at them. Never gave me a fair chance the first time, jumping on me in a gang, and when I had my ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... a short distance beyond the glade where the apes had deserted them, when the roaring of distant lions fell upon their ears. The ape-man paid no attention to the familiar sounds until the crack of a rifle came faintly from the same direction, and when this was followed by the shrill neighing of horses, and an almost continuous fusillade of shots intermingled with increased and savage roaring of a large troop of ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... been violated. He exclaimed to his eldest son, "Let our followers be ready to repel this gross affront." The General's eye danced in telling it. The thing of the firing had been done—nobody was hurt—nobody was in fact in hostile array; and far less was the party itself alarmed. It had been some crack-brained Indian, I believe Sassaba, who yet smarted at the remembrance of the death of his brother, who was killed with Tecumseh in the Battle of ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... horses outside the fair-green, a precious lot of ragamuffins, and a good resort to the public-house opposite; and the gate being open, the artillery band, rousing all the echoes round with harmonious and exhilarating thunder, within—an occasional crack of a 'Brown Bess,' with a puff of white smoke over the hedge, being heard, and the cheers of the spectators, and sometimes a jolly chorus of many-toned laughter, all mixed together, and carried on with a pleasant running hum of voices—Mervyn, the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a good deal to say, for it was a great fleet of vessels sailing out of Gloucester; but even so, even allowing for a young skipper's pride in his first crack vessel, it meant a whole lot coming like that ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... are," snapped the youngster. "I wouldn't care ten cents about the brute only that the girls are aboard. I felt sorry when I saw him climb to his feet yesterday. If you hit him again hit him with something that will crack his skull. He's a devil, Verslun, and before we are much older we will find ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... particular faith. It is reported how he defended his theology with his splendid oratory, and how when this failed he resorted to his fists. His oratory was said to be simply overwhelming. They recounted how, in his oratorical frenzies, he used to fling his homespun coat in the air and crack the heels of his red-topped boots together with an emphasis that would stop the mouth of the most impudent gainsayer. They told how by this masterful eloquence opposers were silenced, heretics were brought to orthodoxy, and infidels were converted. ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... because none was needed. A brother carter standing by performed the part, extempore. His eye suddenly lit on the culprit; his whip sprang into the air and descended on the urchin's breech. Horror-struck, his mouth opened responsive to the crack, and a yell came forth that rose high above the surrounding din, while his little legs carried him away over the sands like a ragged leaf driven ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... mind me and made me mad, and I up with my stick and gave him one crack on the head and ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... or two after, we heard the noise again; and this time it seemed to be just in the rear of the other cabin. Addison stood with an eye at a crack, looking out. ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... only sound was the mournful howling of the wind, and the occasional boom, like that of a cannon, as some immense crack opened up in the ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... boats had been evolved which far surpassed anything Europe had to offer in luxury and speed. Canadian business men were not far behind, and the St Lawrence lake and river route was well supplied with crack steamers, of the Royal Mail and rival lines, or with independent boats. The competition was at times intense, both in fares and in speed. Many Canadians of the day, absorbed in the local or personal rivalries of these boats, and impressed by their magnificence and reliability, were convinced ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... torture is half of his life now. Every morning he leaves his hovel with his dog, his folding-stool and his horrible instrument, and says to himself: 'Now I'll go and make life a burden to the Duc de Mora.' Not a day does he miss, the villain. Look you! if I should open the window a crack, you would hear that deluge of shrill little notes above the noise of the water and the carriages. Very well! this Messager man is your clarinet; if you let him see that his music wearies you, he will never stop. By the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... as the dried-up mirth of this old fellow it would be difficult to imagine. His very laugh seemed as if it had to crack in his throat before it could pass his lips. What would his daughter be like, living in such a house, with such companions? While I was wondering, I heard footsteps in the corridor, and then an old woman entered and curtsied respectfully. My host rose and ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... the precincts of the city house with that funeral ape bidding me do this and do that, sit here and sit there, come in and go out at his pleasure? A thing of dough that I could twist into knots as easily as I can crack ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... father's palette, and crack his eggs just right, and buy things—when there's money," she ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... legs of pork like hams; beat them well with a wooden mallet, till they are tender, but great care must be taken not to crack or break the skin, or the hams will be spoiled. To three hams take half a peck of salt, four ounces of saltpetre, and five pounds of coarse brown sugar; break all the lumps, and mix them well together. Rub your hams well with this mixture, and cover them with the rest. ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... of the convention, is what the law terms a "spinster." She is a sad old girl, presides with timidity and hesitation, is wheezy and nasal in her pronunciation and wholly without dignity or command.... Mummified and fossilated females, void of domestic duties, habits and natural affections; crack-brained, rheumatic, dyspeptic, henpecked men, vainly striving to achieve the liberty of opening their heads in presence of their wives; self-educated, oily-faced, insolent, gabbling negroes, and Theodore ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... how dare you!" shrieked the monkey's victim, rushing at the gallant old gentleman. She raised her parasol and brought it down on his head with a resounding crack. In the meantime the Italian was howling to "Garibaldi," as he called the monkey, to come ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... accomplished great ends against greater odds, was too little of a courtier at heart ever to have been a prime favorite in St. Petersburg until the accession of a ruler with whom he had something in common. A dissolute woman and a crack-brained despot were the last to appreciate an original and independent mind, and the seclusion of Alexander had been so complete during the lifetime of his father that Rezanov barely had known him by sight. But the Tsarovitz, enthusiastic for reform and a passionate admirer of enterprise, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... the steersman lost his nerve, and shrank from the coming shock. The galley's helm went up to port, and her beak slid all but harmless along Amyas' bow; a long dull grind, and then loud crack on crack, as the Rose sawed slowly through the bank of oars from stem to stern, hurling the wretched slaves in heaps upon each other; and ere her mate on the other side could swing round, to strike him in his new position, Amyas' whole broadside, great and small, had been poured into her at pistol-shot, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... such sights is aesthetic rather than moral, and probable that it is strongest in the lower social strata. Several years ago I went to the first night of a rather foolish play about ancient Rome, in which an early Christian is brought in to be very mildly tortured on the stage. At the first crack of the whip my neighbours sprang from their seats, crying, 'Shame! Stop that!'; and the scene had to be removed in subsequent performances. The operatives in a certain factory stopped the engines for an hour ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... of the guns and the fusillade of a hundred British riflemen. We had chanced this time upon an armoured train, and the trucks which bore the cannon had remained uninjured. The nut was rather too hard for us to crack, and failing to take the train by storm, we were compelled to retire, after having sustained the loss of three men, of whom one was my brave adjutant, Vivian Cogell. From what I have said I think my readers will agree ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... them what mettle they he'd tried to crack. A paroxysm of coughing shook him; he spoke through ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... sealed the doom of one of the flock. As the turkeys stood in momentary suspense, the sunlight gilding their bronze feathers to a brighter sheen, there was a movement in the dense undergrowth. The flock took suddenly to wing,—a flash from among the leaves, the sharp crack of a rifle, and one of the birds fell heavily over the bluff ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... heard a crack like a pistol shot, and looking forward saw that the standing part of the bridle to the jib had parted. The seizing pulled out and away ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... "Brandenstein, Schweppermann, and Heidenab brought the tidings. The Emperor received them at the gate of the citadel, where he was keeping watch ere he mounted his steed. He heard him call to the messengers, 'So our Heinz Schorlin will have a hard nut to crack.'" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... built of steel, with supports that would bear the heaviest of weights. Gaining the opposite side, they waited as Dick took his bearings by the tree; and crossing a hard, chalky field, they stole towards the sunken road. They could hear the occasional crack of a rifle, and there was the ping of a bullet passing over their heads as they pressed on ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... fight in the reign of Charles the Second, there was a very bloody engagement between the English and Dutch fleets, in the heat of which a Scotch sea-man was very severely bit by a louse on his neck, which he caught; and stooping down to crack it between his nails, many of the sailors near him had their heads taken off by a chain-shot from the enemy, which dashed their blood and brains about him; on which he had compassion upon the poor louse, returned him to his place and bid him live there at discretion, for ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... important for avoiding infections, and bathing is important for cleanliness. The hands, the face, and finger-nails should be kept clean, especially before meals. Any cut or crack in the skin or mucous membrane may let in germs when the spot is dirty or is touched by dirty hands. This is why surgeons are so scrupulously clean. Super-cleanliness probably also explains the extraordinarily low mortality of Jewish rabbis as ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... whole gamut of the social sciences. It is difficult to see why all this material, except a few diplomatic and military secrets, should not be open to the scholars of the country. It is there that the political scientist would find the real nuts to crack and the real researches for his students to make. The work need not all be done in Washington, but it could be done in reference to Washington. The central agency would, thus, have in it the makings of a national university. The staff could ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... placing there when he went to sleep. By degrees the events of the past night forced themselves upon his benumbed faculties, and he sat up. The sun was riding high; the door of the cabin was open. Stretching himself, he staggered to his feet, and looked in through the yawning crack at the hinges. He rubbed his eyes again. Was he still asleep, and followed by a dream of yesterday? For there, even in the very attitude he remembered to have seen her sitting at her luncheon on the ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the imminence of a battle; but they required no such announcement from their generals. The atmosphere seemed to be surcharged with premonitions of an engagement, and men rubbed sleep out of their eyes and sat erect upon their horses. The blacks even ceased to crack their whips so sharply, and urged the mules forward in whispers instead of shrieks. Burghers took their rifles from their backs, tested the workings of the mechanism and filled the magazine with cartridges. Artillerymen ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... record that the French took their defeat in a most unsportsmanlike fashion; the little Abercorn was received all down the line with storms of hoots and hisses. Possibly we, too, might feel annoyed if, say at Portsmouth, in a regatta in which all the crack oarsmen of the British Home Fleet were competing, a French four should suddenly appear from nowhere, and walk off with the big prize of the day. Still, the conditions of the Cannes regatta were clear; this ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... relish, and they produced the right effect, and a little more; for the crazy machine turned out into the deep snow by the side of the road, and the skinny old pony started on a full trot. As we passed, some one who had the whip gave the jilt of a horse a good crack, which made him run faster than he ever did before, I'll warrant. And so, with another volley of snowballs pitched into the front of the wagon, and three times three cheers, we rushed by. With that, an old fellow in the wagon, who was buried up under an ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... His infinite power on their side and join in the mad slaughter of His own beloved children. And those slaughtered are the workers, and their folks at home naturally wonder why the one big international peace organization on earth, the Church, at the crack of the war demon's whip, deserts its principles of 'Thou shalt not kill,' and 'Peace on earth,' and helps to stampede its followers in the ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... armor. How did those long-ago people manage? Their walls were not sheeted, and they did not know the use of building-paper. Our old wide siding had been laid directly on the bare timbers, the studding; every crevice under the windows, every crack in the plaster, was a short circuit with zero. We decided to take off the antique siding, cut out the bad places, and relay it flat, as sheeting. Over it we would lay building-paper, and on top of ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... tragedy had occurred in Magda's small world—whether it were a crack across the insipid china face of a favourite doll or the death of an adored Persian kitten—there was still balm in Gilead if "petite maman" would but dance for her. The tears shining in big drops on her cheeks, her small chest still heaving ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... the sofa watching Smith, who stood before me. He had not changed countenance and seemed neither troubled nor surprised; but two drops of sweat trickled down his forehead, and I heard an ivory counter crack between his fingers, the pieces falling to the floor. He held out both hands ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... proprietor, who wore a black flap over one eye. "Dey won't bite. If de grease won't cut, souse 'em wit' lye. Don't try to muzzle no breakage on me, neither, like the slut before you. I kin hear a cup crack." ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... lamp chimneys, etc., first make a scratch as before; then heat the handle of a file, or a blunt iron—in a blast-lamp flame by preference—till it is red-hot, and at once press it against the scratch till the glass begins to crack. The fracture can be led in any direction by keeping the iron just in front of it. Re-heat the ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... long before the boys of the town found this out, and the bright idea entered the head of one of them, and was by him told to the others, that it would be a capital place to crack nuts. So, boy-like, they had to try it, and standing at the base of the spire, would fill the cracks as far as they could reach with good English walnuts, and then stand back for the steeple to return to an upright position, cracking the nuts. As the great clock ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... mountains. I have always the feeling that they are lying in wait. At night, their very silence is ominous. The crack of ice as a bit of slow-moving glacier is dislodged, lightning, and the roar of thunder somewhere below where I lie—these are the artillery of the range, and from them I am safe. I am too small for their heavy guns. But a shelving trail on the verge of ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... looking-glass to see that I threw it up straight. Another and better plan was to get a friend to wave about a lighted candle, and then to fire at it with a cap on the nipple, and if the aim was accurate the little puff of air would blow out the candle. The explosion of the cap caused a sharp crack, and I was told that the tutor of the college remarked, "What an extraordinary thing it is, Mr. Darwin seems to spend hours in cracking a horse-whip in his room, for I often hear the crack when I ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... country—and I gathered that a part of his dirty trade lay in assisting British prisoners to break their parole. He assumed that I travelled on parole, and insinuated that I might have occasion to break it: and, with all the will in the world to crack his head, I let the mistake and suspicion pass. For a napoleon I received the address of a Parisian agent in the Rue Carcassonne, whose name I will confide in you, in case you should ever require his services. For truly, ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... more than you; but fear not less; Twice sinking, twice I drew him from the press: But the victorious foe pursued so fast, That flying throngs divided us at last. As seamen parting in a general wreck, When first the loosening planks begin to crack; Each catches one, and straight are far disjoined, Some borne by tides, and others by the wind; So, in this ruin, from each other rent, With heaved-up hands we mutual farewells sent: Methought his eyes, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... when the planets In evil mixture to disorder wander, What plagues and what portents, what mutiny, What raging of the sea, shaking of earth, Commotion in the winds! Frights, changes, horrors, Divert and crack, rend and deracinate, The unity and married calm of states Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shak'd, Which is the ladder of all high designs, The enterprise is sick! How could communities, Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... good, but purely to comply with your request; for those truths which nobody can deny, will do no good to those who deny them. The clergy, who are so impudent to teach the people the doctrines of faith, are all either cunning knaves or mad fools; for none but artificial, designing men, and crack-brained enthusiasts, presume to be guides to others in matters of speculation, which all the doctrines of Christianity are; and whoever has a mind to learn the Christian religion, naturally chooses such knaves and fools to teach them. Now the Bible, which contains the precepts of the priests' ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... purpose of balancing it in its seat, and of sustaining the dome of the sky. Our devout admiration of the power and wisdom of God should be excited by the spectacle of this vast crystalline brittle expanse, which has been safely set in its position without so much as a crack or any other injury. Above the sky, and resting on it, is heaven, built in seven stories, the uppermost being the habitation of God, who, under the form of a gigantic man, sits on a throne, having on either side winged bulls, like those in the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... you so shake my poor nest that you shake the birds out of it. But though I cannot bid you welcome, I will notwithstanding heartily bid you farewell, sir Thomas, and I thank you for your courtesy to me and mine. This nut of Raglan was, I believe, the last you had to crack. Amen. ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... was black; The green grass was not seen; The birds did rest On the bare thorn's breast, Whose roots, beside the pathway-track, Had bound their folds o'er many a crack Which the frost ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... scarcely believe my eyes. Alexander looked at me once, then broke into hysterical tears, laughing and crying and sobbing all at once. He was indeed unrecognizable. I remembered the descriptions I had heard of the young dandy, the gay officer of a crack regiment, irreproachable in every detail of his dress, and delicate as a woman in his tastes. I saw before me a man of good height, wrapped in an old Turkish kaftan of green cloth lined with fur, his feet thrust into a pair of worn-out red slippers. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... an insect without wings at the bottom of some unfathomable cranny. The fog of my first week in London is, I believe, historic, and its five or six days of tearful blindness and catarrh began to look as if they would reach to the very crack of doom. Those fog-bound days, in which it was impossible for a Midland-bred stranger to stray ten yards from his own door without hopelessly losing himself, are amongst the most despondent and mournful of my life. But, on a sudden, the dawning day revealed to me the other side of the street in an ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... But the crack of the matchlocks struck terror into the pale hearts of some of the hackeriwallahs. Several sprang over the breastwork and scuttled away like scared rabbits. The remainder stood firm, grasping their lathis in a manner ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... between these products and the masses formerly ejected from Vesuvius is most remarkable. (Daubeney 'On Volcanoes', p. 81.) Dr. Hibbert regards the Lake of Laach as formed in the first instance by a crack caused by the cooling of the crust of the earth, which was widened afterward into a circular cavity by the expansive force of elastic vapors. See 'History of the Extinct Volcanoes of the Basin ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... promising member of the Band of Hope," says WILFRED LAWSON, regarding GRANDOLPH with fatherly kindness. "Wonder if I might ask him to crack a bottle of ginger-beer with me. Will certainly proffer the hospitality if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... precisely on that morning of June 9, the attempt had first become hopeless. Until then, the place had been positively emptied of all inhabitants whatsoever. Exactly on the 9th, the old garrison had been ordered back from Wicklow, and reenforced by a crack English regiment, (the Durham Fencibles,) on whom chiefly at this critical hour had devolved the defence, which was peculiarly trying, from the vast numbers of the assailants, but brilliant, masterly, and ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... efforts to crack down on career criminals, organized crime, drugpushers, and to enforce tougher sentences and paroles are having effect. In 1982 the crime rate dropped by 4.3 percent, the biggest decline since 1972. Protecting victims is just as important as ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... Suddenly a sharp crack, crack and whir of a machine-gun rang out. A fight was going on up there; our anti-aircraft guns ceased, being afraid of hitting our own men, but ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... to his knees he looked round, and then crawled to a crack that appeared much wider than the rest, the boards being more than half an inch apart. Lying down over it, he was able to obtain a view of a portion of the room below. He could see a part of a long ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... Faithful, indeed I know not how it came there and I am guiltless of that whereof you suspectest me." So he sent for the Kazi Ab Ysuf and acquainted him of the case. The Judge raised his eyes to the ceiling and, seeing a crack therein, said to the Caliph, "O Commander of the Faithful, in very sooth the bat hath seed like that of a man,[FN121] and this is bat's semen." Then he called for a spear and thrust it into the crevice, whereupon down fell ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... "Your crack ones, too. I'm tired of this," growled Harney, and Ellen's riding pony was led out. The colonel saw the playful animal, and tottered to Ellen's ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... to pray without moving with uplifted hands all day in order to force the Lord to grant his request. The more exhausted his body became, the more vivid visions filled his brain. He heard the walls of cities fall and the houses crack. Shrieking, terrified crowds rushed by him, pursued by the angels of vengeance and destruction, mighty forms with stern, beautiful faces, wearing silver coats of mail, riding black horses and swinging scourges, woven of ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... close quarters with my useless leg, I gave him a shot with my two-ounce rifle, at about 120 paces. It did not even check him, but it had the effect of making him lower his trunk, and he came on at undiminished speed. Taking the four-ounce rifle from Wallace, I heard the crack of the ball as it entered his head at about 100 yards. He was down! A general shout of exclamation rose from Banda and all the gun-bearers. I reloaded the four-ounce immediately, and the ball was just rammed ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... south wall, 9 feet from the east corner, was a boulder, its diameters 11, 12, and 15 inches, whose largest surface lay uppermost and was hollowed out to form, a deep saucer-shaped depression like a mortar; but as there was nothing to grind, it was probably to crack or pound nuts in. At the middle of the southeast quarter of the inclosure was a pile of stones 31/2 feet across and 1 foot high; there was nothing under them. Seven feet from the north wall, 10 feet from the east wall, was a fireplace formed of two slabs on the east and west sides and a flattened ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... she'd put her fish in her pail, and then she'd put her frog in her pail. Then she would shake her pail with all of the nuts and the marbles and the quack-quack and the frog and the fish, and they would all go bingety-bang, crickety-crack, ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... "Well, what's the odds? You'll never find it, and anyhow, everybody knows it's Tippoo Tib's ivory. I mean to have a crack at spotting it myself, soon as I get my farm fenced an' one or two other matters attended to. Gov'ment offers ten per cent. to whoever leads 'em to it, but they can't believe any one's as soft as that surely! They'll be lucky ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... termorrer," she thought, "an' have a crack wi' Jimmy Gedge; ee needn't be afeard for 'is livin'. An' them great fules as ha' bin runnin' in a string arter 'er, an' cacklin' about their eighteen-pence a score, as I've told 'em times, I'll eat my apron the fust week as iver they get it. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at all," he said. "I made it plain as a pikestaff to them both. It mustn't be thought I countenanced their crack-brained troth-plighting. 'T was by reason of my final 'Nay' that Will went off. He 's gone out of her life, and she 'm free as the air. I tell you this because you may have heard different, and you mix with the ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... quick-natured, too. She put him out of the kitchen with a coal shovel, after which Herman told her through a crack of the door that ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... sailors was on the point of covering it with his hat. It stayed about the vessel nearly all day, flitting from point to point, or hopping along a few feet in front of the promenaders, and prying into every crack and crevice for food. Time after time I saw it start off with a reassuring chirp, as if determined to seek the land; but before it had got many rods from the ship its heart would seem to fail it, and, after circling about for a few moments, back it would ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... again. The toy sovereignty began to rattle around in its own conceit, the "people" regarded themselves, and wished to be regarded, as a chartered Democracy. The little gim-crack economic system experienced the joys of reform. A "New Nationalism" was established in the brewery down by the railway station and a reciprocity treaty was negotiated between the Casino and Vanity Fair, witnessing the introduction of two roulette tables ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... him but for a few weeks at the end of the first year, when he was on his way from Erfurt to Padua. In the letters he wrote from thence there was ever a greeting for Mistress Anna, and often there would be a few words in Greek for her and me; yet, as he knew full well that she alone could crack such nuts, he bid me to the feast only as the fox bid the stork. While he was with us he ever demeaned himself both to me and to her as a true and loving brother, when he was not at the school of arms proving to the amazement of the knights and nobles his wondrous ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... shudder, swoon, wax pale, Nose bend, veins stretch, and breath surrender, Neck swell, flesh soften, joints that fail Crack their strained nerves and arteries slender. O woman's body found so tender, Smooth, sweet, so precious in men's eyes, Must thou too bear such count to render? Yes; or pass quick ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... while Master Jim stalked out of the room. It was observed, however, that he was not above taking up a squatter's claim in the hall and listening through the crack of ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... bay, which was some twelve miles wide, a crack in the ice was passed over. Presently cracks became numerous, and glancing behind him Bob noticed a wide black space along the shore at the point where they had taken to the ice, and could see in the distance farther to the northwest, as it reflected the light, a white ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... eyes on just such wonderful feats as you have seen pulled off beside these massive walls; and step by step, be taken into our confidence as we progress, until finally the amazing climax arrives. Right now you can hear the machine clicking away, as the operator takes a crack at the players resting between their acts. Perhaps it may please you chaps to know that you'll be seen in the finished production along with the rest of ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... offices on Fourth Avenue and have him locate this cook, Bridget Fallon. I want her finger-prints, too. Perhaps she had better be detained, for I don't want her to get away. Oh, and say, O'Connor, do you want to finish this case up like the crack of a whip to-night?" ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... few moments he paused opposite a large hut, from which issued a subdued murmur. The window had been covered, but a thin ray of light pierced through a crack in the door, and to this ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... into the hall the wild cry of the populace that the Swiss guards had been killed, and shouts accompanied the heads as they were carried about on the points of pikes. The crack of muskets was heard, and the roar of cannon. The last faithful regiments were contending against the army of the revolutionists, while within the hall the election by the French people of a ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... week," said Aladdin, holding the study door on the crack. "Key to be brought down to his study in five minutes. 'Brutes! Barbarians! Savages! Children!' He's rather agitated. 'Arrah, Patsy, mind the baby,'" he sang in a whisper as he clung to the door-knob, dancing a ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... in a side direction, but it brought her as she passed within range of the party by the sledge. The owl kept above her as she ran. A dozen leaps was all the hare ever made. A loud crack was heard, and she was seen to spring up and fall back upon the snow, dead as a door-nail. Like an echo another crack followed—a wild scream rang through the air, and the great white owl fell fluttering to the earth. The ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... and Forty-nine ingenious men, struggling with their whole force and industry, for a long course of weeks, to do at bottom this: To stretch out the old Formula and Law Phraseology, so that it may cover the new, contradictory, entirely uncoverable Thing? Whereby the poor Formula does but crack, and one's honesty along with it! The thing that is palpably hot, burning, wilt thou prove it, by syllogism, to be a freezing-mixture? This of stretching out Formulas till they crack is, especially in times of swift change, one of the sorrowfullest ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... time we were about ten yards past the shack, standing all in a group. The person inside couldn't see us through the opening in front of the shack but for all we knew he might be peeking at us through some little crack or hole. It made me feel funny to think that he was in there staring at us and we not ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... confronted the enemy in stubborn battle; and the work was hard. It was fighting, fighting, fighting—now, as in 1862, when he covered Lee's retreat after Sharpsburg. Day and night the cavalry had no rest. The crack of carbines, the clash of sabres, and the roar of cannon were incessant. It was a war of giants which Fauquier and Loudoun saw in those days—and not until the rear of Lee's column had nearly reached the Potomac, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... fetched the horse himself and tightened the girths. They walked together towards the great gate of solid wood which fitted into the high wall so closely that none could peep through so much as a crack. At the door the colonel lingered, leaning against his great horse and stroking its shoulder thoughtfully with a ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... vigorous new house at an humble salary. By processes such as I have analyzed above, he made himself the best man in technical work in the firm's employ. The next step was to demonstrate his ability as a manager and financier as well as a skilled workman. There was a nut to crack, was it not? But see, now, how simply he broke the shell ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... He is an old, grizzled man dressed in dungaree pants, a sweater, and a woolen cap with ear-flaps. His manner is sullen and angry. He stops stacking up the plates and casts a quick glance upward at the skylight; then tiptoes over to the closed door in rear and listens with his ear pressed to the crack. What he hears makes his face darken and he mutters a furious curse. There is a noise from the doorway on the right, and he ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... loves a kiss beneath the berry. Then full many a shape hath he, All in said ubiquity: Now is he a green array, And now an "eve," and now a "day;" Now he's town gone out of town, And now a feast in civic gown, And now the pantomime and clown With a crack upon the crown, And all sorts of tumbles down; And then he's music in the night, And the money gotten by't: He's a man that can't write verses, Bringing some to ope your purses: He's a turkey, he's a goose, He's oranges unfit for use; He's a kiss that loves to grow Underneath the ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... had been heavy, still; weatherwise pickers watched the white sky anxiously. In the middle of the night, Rose-Ellen woke to the shriek of wind and the crack of canvas. Then, with a splintering crash, the tent-poles collapsed and she was buried under ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... at his rifle. A crack and a whizz in the air. The noble creature gave one mighty bound and fell dead. The ball had entered his broad forehead and penetrated ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... apparently overlooked the point; therefore this morning I went down to Kew, and finding only a constable in charge, I made a thorough search through the place. In the dead man's room I naturally expected to find it, and after nearly a couple of hours searching in every nook and every crack I succeeded. It was hidden in the mould of a small pot-fern, standing in the corridor outside ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... in our places long before we heard a shot followed by another, and then two, then three. The first was evidently a chassepot; one recognized it by the sharp report, which sounds like the crack of a whip, while the other three came ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... balloting spurred the Algerian army to intervene and postpone the second round of elections to prevent what the secular elite feared would be an extremist-led government from assuming power. The army began a crack down on the FIS that spurred FIS supporters to begin attacking government targets. The government later allowed elections featuring pro-government and moderate religious-based parties, but did not appease the activists who progressively widened ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... intolerable shame. A fierce peremptory longing seized him to kill his bliss and his shame at one stroke. Four words would do it. He had but to stand up and cry aloud, "I am an Englishman!" and the whole beautiful hideous dream would crack, shiver, dissolve. Only four words! Almost he heard his voice shouting them and saw through the trembling heat her body droop under the stab, her love take the mortal hurt and die with a face of scorn. Only four words, and an end ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... disabled by his lameness. And . . . was he sorry? He had not answered this question when the crash came—the ferry-boat striking the very stem of the keel, her gunwale giving way to it with a slow grinding noise, then with a bursting crack as the splinters broke inwards. As it seemed to him, there were two distinct bumps, and between them the boat filled slowly and the mare slid away into the water. He heard voices shouting on board the keel. The water rose ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the three had happened to look steadily at the back window of the bar-room, they might have detected, in the dusk, the face of Dougherty, the Irish ostler of the Unicorn Tavern. It disappeared instantly, but there was a crack nearly half an inch wide between the bottom of the back-door and the sill under it, and to that crack a large, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... Second, there was a very bloody engagement between the English and Dutch fleets, in the heat of which a Scotch sea-man was very severely bit by a louse on his neck, which he caught; and stooping down to crack it between his nails, many of the sailors near him had their heads taken off by a chain-shot from the enemy, which dashed their blood and brains about him; on which he had compassion upon the poor louse, returned him to his place and bid ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... slab was forced outward not long ago. Before that this treasure was concealed in a narrow crack between the two rocks. That's why no one was able to find it when the search was made soon after the loss! Isn't it great that we have ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... capital essay on "Agricultural Drainage," which appeared in the Quarterly Review, No. CLXXI, says: "We really thought that no one was so ignorant as not to be aware that clay lands always shrink and crack with drought, and the stiffer the clay the greater the shrinking, as brickmakers well know. In the great drought, 36 years ago, we saw in a very retentive soil in the Vale of Belvoir, cracks which it was not very pleasant to ride among. ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... implicit confidence in the killing power of the gun in my hand, and at the crack of the rifle the huge brute settled forward with hardly a quiver not ten feet from the kids upon which he was about to spring. A second shot was not necessary but was fired as a matter of precaution as the tiger had fallen behind rank grass, and the bullet passed through the ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... bed, and change into damp clothes, and put on the wet ones again the next morning. The villages were poor, and most of the houses were of boards rudely nailed together for ends, and for sides straw rudely tied on; they had no windows, and smoke came out of every crack. They were as unlike the houses which travellers see in southern Japan as a "black hut" in Uist is like a cottage in a trim village in Kent. These peasant proprietors have much to learn of the art of living. At Tsuguriko, the next stage, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... water. The moon was quite full. Out on the horizon to the south its light shone on the sea, making it look like the silver beach of some distant fairy island. The girl appeared to be wrapped in thought, and it was not till the sharp crack of Sam's head against an overhanging stanchion announced his ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... Arctic Circle, mountain ranges, some of great altitude, are everywhere visible. There are also many large lakes, surrounded by the swamps, and impenetrable forests, that formerly rendered Alaska so hard a nut for the explorer to crack. Only a few miles north of the coast range fertile soil and luxurious vegetation are replaced by Arctic deserts. Here, for eight months of the year, plains and rivers are merged into one vast wilderness of ice, save during the short summer when dog-roses bloom ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... whirled in the air and fell with a resounding crack, but the stallion merely switched his tail and started forward at a clumsy stumbling trot. The thunder of the host was too hoarse for applause; they saw a victory and a defeat but what they had wanted was blood, and a death. ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... also. Still, she knew that if she left her eggs and the ducklings in them to die none of her friends would ever speak to her again; so there she stayed, only getting off the eggs several times a day to see if the shells were cracking—which may have been the very reason why they did not crack sooner. ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... apparently rear two broods in the year. In the first nest, which we found under the root of an old spruce-fir on the 17th May, the eggs were quite hard-set; and I may remark that immediately over this nest, about 8 feet up the tree in a crack in the wood, a little Muscicapula superciliaris was sitting on five eggs. Later at the end of June we found fresh eggs in several nests. The eggs in our collection were all taken between the 17th May ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... silence for one brief moment. Then there was a red flash under the apple trees followed by the sharp crack of a rifle. There was another brief moment of silence, and then the young girl sighed softly, leaned forward, and fell ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... got to the top, his attention was attracted by loud shouts coming from the rear of the fort. Above them quickly rose a hearty British cheer. Showers of bullets came flying through the air. The shouts and cries increased. Amid the clash of steel, and the sharp crack of pistols, the voices of the officers reached him calling the men to abandon the guns and defend the fort. But it was too late. Already a strong party of ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... I thought she was going to capsize. Harry sprang up from below. Tom had rushed forward, and with the hands stationed there let fly the jib-sheets, and was hauling down the forestay-sail—the foresail had been stowed. Suddenly she rose, and I heard a loud crack, like the report of a musket fired close to ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... dared to remove the barricade until a thin ray of sunlight appeared through a crack in ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the accident, the patient usually gives the history that while making a sudden movement he was seized with an intense sickening pain in the knee, accompanied, it may be, by a sensation of something giving way with a distinct crack, and followed by locking of the joint. He may fall to the ground and be unable to rise. On examination, the knee is found to be fixed in a slightly flexed position; and while the surgeon may be able to carry out movements of flexion to a considerable ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... a little," said Isabelle, whose father wrote articles much appreciated by the public in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' "But he said at the same time that it was horrid to give such crack-brained stuff to us poor girls. Happily, our subject this week is much nicer. We have to make comparisons between La Tristesse d'Olympio, Souvenir, and Le Lac'. That ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... declared to be outstanding in vigor and health of tree, and production of good regular crops of delicious nuts that crack well. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies, wearing ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... flash of lightning, followed by a crack like that of a cosmic whip-lash, and a long reverberating roar ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... I was compelled to hold that awful figure down upon the seat before me, lest it should slide to the floor. On we sped, past hedge and tree, by field and lonely wood. And ever in my ears was the whir of the wheels, the drumming of hoofs, and the crack of the whip; and ever the flitting moonbeams danced across that muffled face until it seemed that the features writhed and gibed at me, beneath the folds ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... than you; but fear not less; Twice sinking, twice I drew him from the press: But the victorious foe pursued so fast, That flying throngs divided us at last. As seamen parting in a general wreck, When first the loosening planks begin to crack; Each catches one, and straight are far disjoined, Some borne by tides, and others by the wind; So, in this ruin, from each other rent, With heaved-up hands we mutual farewells sent: Methought ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... from the darkness of the buckeye; a crack like the snap of a whip; Yuba Bill steadying himself for a moment, and then dropping ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... Endelstow Church had reached the last weeks of its existence. It was to be replaced by a new one from the designs of Mr. Hewby, the architect who had sent down Stephen. Planks and poles had arrived in the churchyard, iron bars had been thrust into the venerable crack extending down the belfry wall to the foundation, the bells had been taken down, the owls had forsaken this home of their forefathers, and six iconoclasts in white fustian, to whom a cracked edifice was a species of Mumbo Jumbo, had taken lodgings in the village previous to ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... noise is heard outside, the big door opens, there is a rush forward, and four people flock in a man in a linen duster, a stout woman, a lad of ten, a smartly dressed young lady, and a dog. Movement, welcome, ringing of bells, tramping of feet—the whole machinery has started. It was adjusted to crack an egg-shell or smash an iron-bound trunk. The few drops presaged a shower. The next day there were a hundred on the register; the day after, two hundred; and the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the road toward Richmond came the crack of a whip. I saw a team coming—four or six mules, I could not ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... evening the occupants of the camp kept careful watch, and then without warning, as before, the crack of repeating rifles broke the almost ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... has lost his seat from not observing that rule. In the open air pitch out a fact or two—not too many—or a couple of round sums of figures first of all, just to give them confidence in you, and then go straight for your opponent. No rapier play—it's lost then—but crack him on the top-knot with a bludgeon. They'll want to hear his skull ring before they'll believe that you have touched him. Phrases! Those are the things to get you in, not arguments. Pin a label on his coat-tails. You'll see them laugh as he squirms round to pull it off. And, ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... the coarse lips. "I'll make you repent this interference, I swear I will. You shall swing some day, and I'll be there to hear your neck crack!" ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... Livingstone received a letter from his father giving an account of Burgoyne's surrender. "Soon we heard hollooing and other expressions of joy from him and others in the (lower) rooms. * * * He put the letter up through a crack in the floor for us to read. * * * The whole prison was filled with joy inexpressible. * * * From this time we were better treated, although the provision was bad, but we drew rather larger quantities of it. Some butter, and about a gill of rice and some cole were dealt out to us, which ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... he had heard. His faded old blue eyes were fixed steadily on the single crack in the rampart of mountains, through which the afternoon train was just now leaving the valley. Its whistle echoed back hollowly, as it fled away from the prison walls into ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... passed through the curtain which I had drawn across the entrance to the smoking cabin. Only a peculiar tremor from the mysterious engines broke the utter stillness. Was I growing deaf? I snapped my fingers to reassure myself, and the sound startled me like the crack of a pistol. Evidently my sense of hearing had become abnormally acute. My mind, too, was preternaturally clear, and the solitude became so irksome that I rose from my seat, and looked out of the scuttles to relieve the tension ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... could not be laid hold of mentally in any sort of way, so that one remained faced by the fact of a man blown to bits for nothing even most remotely resembling an idea, anarchistic or other. As to the outer wall of the Observatory it did not show as much as the faintest crack. ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... the lawn! Covered with broken dishes, earless jugs, cracked plates, and bottomless saucepans," continued Mrs. Kitson. "What a dish of nuts for my neighbours to crack! They always enjoy a hearty laugh at my expense, on Kitson's clearing-up days. But what does he care for my distress? In vain I hide up all this old trumpery in the darkest nooks in the cellar and pantry—nothing ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... too cramped to stand on his feet so Chick-chick kneeled down at his side to rub some circulation into his wrists and ankles. Suddenly a great noise of running was heard. Chick-chick looked out through the crack of ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... down, Lige. You can't go for a while." Nor could he. It was long before he could venture out; the storm raged and roared without abatement; it was Carlow's worst since 'Fifty-one, the old gentleman said. They heard the great limbs crack and break outside, while the thunder boomed and the wind ripped at the eaves till it seemed the roof must go. Meanwhile the judge, after some apology, lit his pipe and told long stories of the storms of early ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... a hole we're goin' to make in the end of 'em. Then we're goin' to carry 'em in our pockets, and if anybody says anything to us—OH, oh! look out! They won't get a crack ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... hill to the top of a ridge, down the other side of the hill to a water-course, then up a hill to the top of a ridge, down again, up again, etc. That is all traveling is—valley, hill, valley, hill, valley, etc., though you wander till the crack o' doom. And so your map travels must go—valley, hill, valley, hill—till you run off the map or come back to the ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... frightened. It will be the interest of both not to revive an order that bullies with arsenic in its sleeve. The poisoned host will destroy the Jesuits, as well as the Pope: and perhaps the Church of Rome will fall by a wafer, as it rose by it; for such an edifice will tumble when once the crack has begun. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... he explained, "there are places out there where the horses have to climb like goats. It's only fair to them to distribute your weight equally. A side saddle is likely to turn and drop you a mile or two down a crack." ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... lingered until I heard the dinner-bell ring. But even this retreat was not without disaster, for in my hurry I trod upon one of the young lady's dresses; I don't know whether it was Dolly's or Polly's (they were named Dolly and Polly) and heard a dreadful crack about her middle as though she were breaking in two. Thereon Archibald giggled again and Dolly and Polly remarked with ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... those dishes?" asked the old man, as he reached over and lifted the sugar bowl and pitcher from his window. "Ach! them is a great bargain. I let you have them cheap. And see, not a chip or a crack on 'em. Good china, too! Very valuable, but they is all I have left. ...
— Bobbsey Twins in Washington • Laura Lee Hope
... growing dark one Thursday evening, and Sarah Ann had just brought the lamp into her mistress's parlour. Miss Michin turned up the light slowly, remarking, as she did so, "I don't want this glass to crack. I might do nothing else but buy lamp-glasses if I left the turning-up of them to Sarah Ann. This one has been boiled, which, Mrs. Dodd says, is a good thing to make them stand heat." Then she broke off suddenly, and stared at her apprentice, exclaiming, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... camp near Conrad's store, the 7th Louisiana, Colonel Hays, a crack regiment, on picket down stream, had a spirited affair, in which the enemy was driven with the loss of a score of prisoners. Shortly after, for convenience of supplies, I was directed to cross the river and camp some miles to the southwest. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... feelings of Engine Company No. 99 the details will be lightly touched. The company does not like to be reminded of that day. There was a great crowd, and hurry calls were sent in; and while the ambulance gong was clearing the way the men of No. 99 heard the crack of the S.P.C.A. agent's pistol, and turned their heads away, not daring to look ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... opened. Israel was sitting so that, accidentally, his eye pierced the crevice made by the opening of the door, which, like a theatrical screen, stood for a moment between Doctor Franklin and the just entering visitor. And behind that screen, through the crack, Israel caught one momentary glimpse of a little bit of by-play between the pretty chambermaid and the stranger. The vivacious nymph appeared to have affectedly run from him on the stairs—doubtless in freakish return for some liberal advances—but had suffered ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... built?' And yet all the while he has the most affecting consciousness that all this is not God's will, but the will of the flesh; that the house of fame is not the house of God; that its floor is not the rock of ages, but the sea of glass mingled with fire, which may crack beneath him any moment, and let the nether flame burst up. He knows that he is living in a splendid lie; that he is not what God meant him to be. He longs to flee away and be at peace. It is to this ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... usual for ladies who received in the evenings to wear what were called "simple dinner dresses": a close-fitting armour of whale-boned silk, slightly open in the neck, with lace ruffles filling in the crack, and tight sleeves with a flounce uncovering just enough wrist to show an Etruscan gold bracelet or a velvet band. But Madame Olenska, heedless of tradition, was attired in a long robe of red velvet bordered about the chin and ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... me—but you did say you would the reward moany crack among us. No, it was not crack; he ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... is drifted into his worst crimes. His first one leads on by fell necessity to others. A man who has done no sin is conceivable, but a man who has done only one is impossible. Did you ever see a dam bursting or breaking down? Through a little crack comes one drop: will it stop there—the gap or the trickle? No! The drop has widened the crack, it has softened the earth around, it has cleared away some impediments. So another and another follow ever more rapidly, until the water pours ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... nearly to upset him by the waft of her petticoats, threw herself on to an ottoman, and hiding her face on the stump in the middle of it, sobbed and screeched, till Macassar feared that the buttons behind her dress would crack and fly off. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... the relief of pain, and massage is applied to the abdomen in cases of obstinate constipation; in certain cases they claim to break up hard lumps in the belly by squeezing them with the hands. Bodily aches and fatigue are relieved by pulling and bending the parts of the limbs until all the joints crack ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... earth which had been thrown out of the hole; and on the rough floor of the latter I stepped on the spade which had done the work. It nearly turned my ankle as I jumped on to it, but I hardly felt the pain. Torch and lantern showed clearly that the crevice in the wall was not a natural crack, but a man-made opening. It was as if a slab of rock fitted roughly into grooves had first been lifted, and had then fallen heavily ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... the grounds they disbanded, and then various games were begun. Baseball came first between two crack teams. Those not interested in this made for the shore, where, protected by thick trees, they were able to enjoy a ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... never had any privacy get a little crack at it?" Eddie demanded hotly. "Hell, you old people had plenty of privacy back when you were kids. I was born and raised in the middle of that goddamn barracks in ...
— The Big Trip Up Yonder • Kurt Vonnegut
... worse! I shall try to look between the fragile divisions, through a crack which has revealed itself ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the body of water over it, and yet close enough to the sea to overcome the intensity of subterranean heat. Needless to say, it was an extremely hazardous undertaking, despite the very careful surveys that had been made, for the little parties of workmen could never tell when they would strike a crack or an unexpected crevice that would let down upon them with a terrible rush, the waters of the Atlantic. But hazard is adventure, and as the two little groups of laborers dug toward each other, the eyes of the press followed them with more persistent interest than ...
— The Undersea Tube • L. Taylor Hansen
... Still he found her a very different creature from the proud Antonia of other years. Then, haughty and calm, she would show impertinence his place by a mere frown. It was the serenity of a majestic river flowing between its embankments. But now the embankment was giving way; there seemed to be a crack somewhere, through which was breaking the real nature of the woman. She had fits of rebellion against custom and social convention, which hitherto she had respected scrupulously, sudden desires to go somewhere else, and ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... wife and his paragon among huntsmen, Roesemeyer, for whose particular benefit he maintained a fine pack of hounds. He kept open house, and loved to divert his guests with stories, not in the braggart vein of Dugald Dalgetty, but so embellished with palpably extravagant lies as to crack with a humour that was all their own. The manner has been appropriated by Artemus Ward and Mark Twain, but it was invented by Munchausen. Now the stories mainly relate to sporting adventures, and it has been asserted by one contemporary of the baron that Munchausen ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... step in dealing with many of them. It is very unfortunate for them that they have become a first-class power so rapidly and with so little preparation in many ways; it is a terrible task for them to live up to their position and reputation and they may crack under the strain. ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... hours, en dis was one un um, en 't wan't long 'fo' here he come. He got a mighty quick eye, mon, en he tuck notice dat ev'ything mighty still. When he got a little nigher, he tuck notice dat de front door wuz on de crack, en dis make 'im feel funny, kaze he know dat when his ole 'oman en de chillun out, dey allers pulls de door shet en ketch de latch. So he went up a little nigher, en he step thin ez a batter-cake. He peep here, en he peep dar, yit he ain't see nothin'. He lissen in ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... I can curb my emotions. But I fear that Comrade Windsor's generous temperament may at any moment prompt him to start throwing ink-pots. And in Wyoming his deadly aim with the ink-pot won him among the admiring cowboys the sobriquet of Crack-Shot Cuthbert. As man to man, Comrade Parker, I should advise you ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... wouldn't!" said Ellen, throwing them back; "and you oughtn't to crack them there, Nancy; you'll make ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... "Thank goodness then that if there BE a crack we know it! But if we may perish by cracks in things that we don't know—!" And she smiled with the sadness of it. "We can never then give each ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... toasting-fork. Ha, sonny, what a throw-in for me! Here was a game worth playing. I rode at the man I hated, loosening my stock-whip, and as I came near him, I turned aside and sent out the lash—so as not to touch him. The crack of it sounded in his ears and in his horse's as well, and the beast began to plunge. Here was my chance, and I took it. As the horse reared and plunged, I waited till it was facing away from me, and then sent the lash fair on to its flanks. It brought a lump out of the brute, ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... had a tool that was as frail as his mind, he would fear to use it. He would not trust himself on a plank so liable to crack. He would not venture into a boat so liable to go to pieces. He would not drive a tack with a hammer, the head of which is so liable to ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... come out!" said Julia's mouth, appearing at a crack of the scullery door, "I have as many lies told for ye—God ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... spell, period, season, interval; catch, clasp; fillip, crack, smack, fico; (Collog.) ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... where the hare had passed, and occasionally the huge, splayed imprints of a caribou. But, though the life of the wild creatures was teeming at this season, there was no sound in all the leagues of forest, except the sharp crack of some freezing tree-trunk and the ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... he dropped to the steps and rolled quickly to one side Tebron heard the low vibration of a disintegrator beam pass over his shoulder and the crack of the wall behind him as it struck. And then the guards were on ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... pocket, I snatched out the box, secured one; then, taking off the cap, which hung by a strap, I pulled the brass and leather telescope out to its full extent, presented the large end at the mob, uttered as savage a yell as I could and struck a fusee, which went off with a crack, and flashed and sparkled with ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... drawing,—angel, arabesque, caricature, or a mere hieroglyphic symbol of which I could make nothing. A rag of cloud on one page, as I remember, with a streak of red zigzagging out of it across the paper as naturally as a crack runs through a China bowl. On the next page a dead bird,—some little favorite, I suppose; for it was worked out with a special love, and I saw on the leaf that sign with which once or twice in my life I have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the bull likewise appeared on the edge of the glade, and stood with outstretched head, scratching his throat against a young tree, which shook violently. I aimed low, behind his shoulder, and pulled trigger. At the crack of the rifle all the bison, without the momentary halt of terror-struck surprise so common among game, turned and raced off at headlong speed. The fringe of young pines beyond and below the glade ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... who are left—the boatswain among them—are toiling on the wet deck to give a last signal from the little brass howitzer on the forecastle. As the sharp crack breaks on the air,—a miniature sound in that howl of the storm,—the red flash of the gun gives Reuben, as the boat lurches toward the wreck again, a last glance of Madam Maverick,—her hands clasped, her eyes lifted, and calm as ever. More ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... came into the hall the wild cry of the populace that the Swiss guards had been killed, and shouts accompanied the heads as they were carried about on the points of pikes. The crack of muskets was heard, and the roar of cannon. The last faithful regiments were contending against the army of the revolutionists, while within the hall the election by the French people of a General ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... time, until at last he seemed to receive the calmness and strength he prayed for so fervently; then he rose, tore the letter into pieces so small that not a word remained whole, and squeezed them so firmly together that they were compressed into a tiny, solid ball, which he let fall through a crack between the floor puncheons. After waiting twenty years for that letter, hungry as his heart was, he did not even open it when at last it arrived. He would never know what message it bore. The link between him and the old sweet days was broken forever. Now with God's help ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... hour and a half—taking their turns at chopping—almost without speaking. At length the top of the tree began to waver, and a loud crack announced that it was about to fall. Frank and Archie were chopping, and the blows of their axes resounded with redoubled force, and the other boys caught up the guns, and ran off in the direction in which the tree was about ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... sheriff, for the latter, having his rifle trained towards his right jerked it about with a short curse and blazed at the new target, again, again, and the line of the posse joined the fire. Before the crack of their guns went from the ears of Vic, long before the echoes bellowed back from the hills, Satan leaped high up. Perhaps that change of position saved both it and its rider. Straight across the pale moon drove the body ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... with drawn clubs, but there they stopped. They could not dent that compacted mass. The soldiers struggled manfully, but they were held at bay. Harrigan could see the heaving shoulders of the defender over the heads of the assailants, and the crack of hard-driven fists. The attackers were crushed together and had little room to swing their arms with full force, while the big man stood with his back against the wall of the cottage and made every ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... instinctively to watch the scene, without speaking, like great lovers that are mute. Starting from the sheltered pool, where the yachts lay in summer, they skirted the dark piles of the long pier, around which the black water gurgled treacherously. Beyond the pier there was a snakelike, oozing crack, which divided the inshore ice from the more open fields outside. This they followed until they found a chance to cross, and then they sped away toward the little island made by the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... cramping-point, and his hip-bones protruded like knots on a log. "I didn't know I had door-knobs on my hips," he remarked, with painful humor, and, looking down at his feet, he saw that a thick rime was gathering on his blanket. "This sleeping out at night isn't what the books crack it up to be," he groaned again, drawing his feet up to the middle of his bed to warm them. "Shall I resign to-morrow? No, I'll stay with it; but I'll have more clothing. I'll have blankets six inches thick. Heaps of blankets—the fleecy ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... Nova Scotians pushed their way up the Lens-Arras road to the village of Leauvette. Here they took a number of prisoners. At the other end of the line, east of the railway tracks, enemy dugouts were bombed. Their occupants belonged to the crack Prussian Guards Corps, the Fifth Guard Grenadiers, who refused in most cases to ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... forgotten her." She gave orders to one of the sisters, who at once entered the house, and returned in a minute with a young nun. The door was now opened, and they moved out in procession. Terence could hear regular volleys amidst the roar of guns and the incessant crack ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... children and they danced and sang. Then the two next-door girls handed round the nuts. Nobody could find the nutcrackers and Joe was nearly getting cross over it and asked how did they expect Maria to crack nuts without a nutcracker. But Maria said she didn't like nuts and that they weren't to bother about her. Then Joe asked would she take a bottle of stout and Mrs. Donnelly said there was port wine too in the house if she would ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... dusk found them with more than thirty miles to go. They were in an almost deserted section of the country when suddenly, as they were running slowly up a hill, there was a sudden crack, the auto gave a lurch to one side of the roadway and then settled heavily. Tom clapped on both brakes quickly, and gave ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... from such action, and thus moulding a new, or fuller character, which would create new Karma, which would determine the future birth, etc., and so on, and on. Those holding to this view believed that in this way the soul would learn its lesson, with many a crack over the knuckles, and with the pain of many an experience that would tend to turn it into the road most conducive to spiritual happiness and well-being; and lead it away from the road of material desires and pleasures, because ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... around into the alley. Peeping in at the back window, they took in the situation quickly: Dorcas on one side of the room, the little gray mouse on the other, the trap between. The silence lasted for several seconds. Then came a sharp crack! And Dorcas, throwing her arm across her eyes, ran out of the room with a shriek and fell upon ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... thrust his fingers between the carpet and the wood of the window-sill, holding it back with one hand while he passed his magnifying glass over the accumulation of dust and dirt and sweepings that lay in the crack. His pains were rewarded. A tiny scrap of something that glittered in its nest of dirt caught his eye, but it was not until it lay on the tip of one finger beneath his glass that he realized the importance of his treasure trove. It was ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... New.—The canvas you work on should not be too freshly primed. The painting is likely to crack if the priming is not well dried. You cannot always be sure that the canvas you get at stores is old, so you have an additional reason for getting a good stock and keeping it on hand. Then, if you have had it in your own possession a long while, you know it is not fresh. Canvas ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... down under a spreading elder-bush, and proceeded to open his violin-case. Drawing out the instrument with as much care as if he were a mother taking her babe from the cradle, he looked it all over with anxious scrutiny, scanning every line and crack, as the mother scans face and hands and tiny curled-up feet. Finding all in order, he wiped it with a silk handkerchief (the special property of the instrument; a cotton one did duty for himself), polished it, and tuned it, and polished again. "Must look well, ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... warp and crack, The silver plates turned filthy black, And drooping down on the carven rails Hung ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... a crack," Harry suggested, "and get the drop on him. If he starts anything, shoot him in ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Angelfyr He sprang on his courser's back: "And I will ride to Upsal too, Though the earth beneath me crack." ...
— The Fountain of Maribo - and other ballads • Anonymous
... his own weakness, and Andrew, crawling to the door and putting his ear to the crack under it, found that the sounds of the voices became instantly clearer; the others were plying Jeff with the liquor, and Jeff, knowing that he had had enough, was persistently refusing, but ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... validity of the arguments against me, that a wholesome green or goodly red wash would suffice. It would suffice indifferent well for a kennel of dogs. But mark this. Although your painter may drop hints for the soul, let him not strain above his pitch lest he crack his larynx. To his colour he may add form in the flat; but he cannot escape the flat, however he may wriggle, any more than the sculptor can escape the round, scrape he never so wisely. Buonarroti will scrape and shift; the Fleming has scraped and shifted all ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... in the field, always carry a mace instead of a sword, so that they may not shed blood; though I say not that the cracking of a man's skull is to be accomplished, without some loss thereof. However, if a bishop may lawfully crack a man's head, as an eggshell, I see not that blame can attach to me, a humble and most unworthy son of the church, if some slight harm should come to any man, from the use of so peaceful an instrument as a staff. And ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... alternatives to choose—the chair or the table, for, oddly enough, I never thought of the bed, when my host settled the question by leading me forcibly forward and flinging me down on the mattress. He then took a wooden wedge out of his pocket, and, going to the door, thrust it in the crack, giving the handle a violent tug to see whether the door stood the test. 'There now, mate,' he said with a grin—a grin that seemed to suggest something my tipsy brain could not grasp, 'I have just shut us in snug and ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... from all sides, till at length there appeared to be hundreds of them. They seemed in high glee and danced and skipped and capered about, while Hok Lee grew so eager watching them that he crept farther and farther along his branch till at length it gave a loud crack. All the dwarfs stood still, and Hok Lee felt as if his ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... city. As he was passing through a street in that part of the town inhabited only by the meaner sort, he heard some people talking very loud; and going close to the house whence the noise proceeded, and looking through a crack in the door, perceived a light, and three sisters sitting on a sofa, conversing together after supper. By what the eldest said, he presently understood the subjeft of their conversation was wishes: "For," said ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... curtain. There was a woman borne in a garden-chair, dangerously high, by the most zealous of the Cloudeslyites, while the rest followed in applauding procession, augmented every moment, and Tom's hands went together like the 'crack of doom' as he exclaimed: 'By jingo, it's ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... I could be one of them!" thought a little boy peeping through the crack of the door, by permission of the cook for whom he had been turning the spit. But no, his parents had not even a penny to spare, and his ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... thunderbolts often on every hand, And verily the earth quaked in answer back From Saint Michael of Peril unto Sanz, From Besencun to the harbour of Guitsand; No house stood there but straight its walls must crack: In full mid-day the darkness was so grand, Save the sky split, no light was in the land. Beheld these things with terror every man, And many said: "We in the Judgement stand; The end of time is presently at hand." They spake no truth; they did not ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... house. Three pulls at the bell brought no response, and all rattlings and shakings of the doorknob were without result. The door was as tightly closed as though it never expected to be opened again till the crack o' doom. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... crack was station enough for me, With a fresh jackyarder blowing and the Vicarage goal a-lee! And I leaned and patted her centre-bit and eased the quid in her cheek, With a "Soh my lass!" and a "Woa you brute!"—for she could ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... wounded from among her dead. Grey night falls on your going and black night on your returning. You go Under the thunder of the guns, the shrapnel's rain and the curved lightning of the shells, And where the high towers are broken, And houses crack like the staves of a thin crate filled with fire; Into the mixing smoke and dust of roof and walls torn asunder You go; And only my dream ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... inexplicable. If they were interiorly shattered, it would be easy to understand that, in their hardened condition, they had been broken violently asunder; but it is not easy to conceive a firm cliff of limestone broken through a thickness of 2000 feet without showing a crack in any other part of it. If they were divided in a soft state, like that of paste, it is still less easy to understand how any such soft material could maintain itself, till it dried, in the form of a cliff so enormous and so ponderous: it must have flowed down from the top, or ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... distinct signs of age. Slates and tiles loosen and at last slide off, and leave bald the boards that supported them; shingles darken and decay, and soon the garret or the attic lets in the rain and the snow; by and by the beams sag, the floors warp, the walls crack, the paper peels away, the ceilings scale off and fall, the windows are crusted with clinging dust, the doors drop from their rusted hinges, the winds come in without knocking and howl their cruel death-songs through the empty rooms and passages, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ambitious of making a good book; and, with all the calm impetuosity which characterises a youthful Hauteville, determined to have a crack stud at once. So at Ascot, where he spent a few pleasant hours, dined at the Cottage, was caught in a shower, in return caught a cold, a slight influenza for a week, and all the world full of inquiries and anxiety; at Ascot, I say, he bought up all the winning horses at an average ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... side. Yes! But which was the left side of the grotto? She had lost her bearings in the darkness. Ah, could this be it? She grasped it with both hands; it gave slightly; she wrenched at it, throwing all her weight against it. It resisted, and she felt as though her spine must crack with the immense strain; the veins of her temples seemed bursting, the tips of her fingers as though the blood must gush out. Still the heavy, rusty iron bar only gave a little. She could hear the noise outside, but it sounded faint ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... disapproved. But his twinkling little eyes burned with wrath and determination. He sniffed again that honey smell. He stared up at the bee tree, and noted that the opening was much larger than it had been before his visit. A big crack extended from it for nearly two feet down the trunk. Moreover, there did not seem to be so many bees buzzing ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... it?' she cried, becoming furious. 'It's no business of yours. I snap my fingers at your Fagerolles, do you hear? He knows very well that people don't quarrel with me. We know each other; we sprouted in the same crack between the paving-stones. Look here, whenever I like, I have only to hold up my finger, and your Fagerolles will be there on ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... the white woman on the charger. She was alone. I don't think even a highwayman, though, would tackle her," with a low laugh. "She'd be a pretty good handful for anybody. I could imagine her mesmerising a lion with those eyes. I have no doubt she is a crack shot, too, from the bold way she carried her gun. She ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... not justification for going farther into its faded and, in some parts, almost obliterated writing. But so much may pass into these pages as a pleasant authentication of what otherwise might be altogether too sweet a double nut for the critic's teeth to crack. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... the door by the click of the latch; in the next second I made the discovery that she was still on my side of it. "What—" I was beginning, when she laid her hand over my mouth. A line of light showed through the crack. She had not quite closed the door on account of the noise of the latch. She tried again; again it rattled and she desisted. I heard her fluttered breathing and I heard something else—a rapid, heavy tread in the corridor without. ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... the attempt to force the Dardanelles. At the end of February the Allied Fleet bombarded the forts at the entrance, and landed a party of bluejackets. Since then these naval operations have been resumed, and our new crack battleship Queen Elizabeth has joined in the attack. We have not got through the Narrows, and some sceptical critics are asking what we should do if we got through to Constantinople, without a land force. It is a great scheme, if it comes off; and the "only ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... as serenely as though he had come into an estate, instead of having lost one. "There'll be bonfires all over the place to-night, Lionel—left-handed compliment to me. Here comes Luke Roy. I told him to be here this morning. What nuts this will be for old Roy to crack! He has been fit to stick me, ever since I refused him the management ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Soviet Union has surrounded itself with captive and sullen nations. Like a crack in the crust of an uneasily sleeping volcano, the Hungarian uprising revealed the depth and intensity of the patriotic longing for liberty that ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... last straw which breaks the camel's back; Mrs. Brinkley felt her moral vertebrae give way; she almost heard them crack; but if there was really a detonation, the drowned the noise with a harsh laugh. "Oh, he had other friends in Washington. I met him everywhere with Miss Anderson." This statement conflicted with the theory ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... various directions, the crack-brained revolutionists played their parts; nor should history overlook the contribution of the learned Dr. Faust, of Buckelburg, whose profound treatise, "Origin of Trousers," was read in Paris as a sort of historical endorsement of the great democratic ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... room with his big shoulders and bigger laugh as Dad is doing now while tossing Brother Gilbert. He, little Will, he will never be one like Goodman Sadler, Gammer's son-in-law, with a lean, long nose, and a body slipping flatlike through a crack ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... whole interior of the balloon being plainly visible. I kept as still as possible, as the slightest agitation of the car tended to hasten the ripping. The balloon had slowly descended nearly a thousand feet when suddenly, with a sharp crack, the rip extended upward about five feet more, until stopped by another seam. I now began to be alarmed, fearing the balloon would collapse entirely. I was over the roughest and most mountainous part of Vermont, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... went to the door, and as he approached it there was a knock. He turned the key and cautiously opened a crack to look out. The door was instantly slammed in his face, and six men rushed in, with Campo, a burly, black-browed fellow, at their head. Three of the men threw the captain on his back, and pinioned his hands before he could draw a weapon, while ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... said he again, with the same boisterous manner. "What grieves thee, man? and Betty too?—what loss hast thou sustained? Cuffed by fortune? Broken on her wheel? Ha! ha! I despise the old gammer, and will laugh out my furlough, though my lungs should crack in ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... guessed how her reason trembled and almost fell in those moments when she began firing. Certainly John Graham and his men did not, for her first shot was a lucky one, and a man slipped down among the rocks at the crack of it. After that she continued to fire until the responseless click of the hammer told her the gun was empty. The explosions and the shock against her slight shoulder cleared her vision and her brain. She saw the men still coming, and they were so near she could see their ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... surface, weakening it in spots, and if one went through, the tide swept him under the ice, where the water was at least cold enough to chill one and make death easy. On such a day Father crossed the river on a crack, for, strange to say, one of the big cracks that always come in the ice had pushed or folded down, and not up, and the water had frozen over, making a streak of triple-thick ice, and on this streak he crossed the Hudson, ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... means, this air adheres to the gold in such a peculiar manner, that, in a moderate degree of heat, the whole of it recovers its elasticity in the same instant of time; and thus, by the violent shock which it gives to the air around, produces the loud crack or fulmination of this powder. Those who will imagine the explosion of such a minute portion of fixed air, as can reside in the aurum fulminans, to be insufficient for the excessive loudness of the noise, will consider, that it is not a large quantity of motion communicated ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black
... ceaseless activity of the city parish he had never once felt that intense satisfaction of emptying himself, nor, the sweet weariness that follows it. His seemed the weariness of futility. And introspection was revealing a crack—after so many years—in that self that he had believed to be so strongly welded. Such was the strain of the pent-up force. He recognized the danger-signal. The same phenomenon had driven him into the Church, where the steam had found an outlet—until now. And yet, so far ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... beautiful animals, the pride of the African forests! It was at my option to shoot any of them! Mine they were without money or without price; yet, knowing this, twice I dropped my rifle, loth to wound the royal beasts, but—crack! and a royal one was on his back battling the air with his legs. Ah, it was such a pity! but, hasten, draw the keen sharp-edged knife across the beautiful stripes which fold around the throat; and—what an ugly gash! it is done, and 1 have a superb animal at my ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... banishing, hanging and beheading all his Enemies, sending immense Sums to foreign Courts, to support his Power at Home, bribing Senates, and carrying all before him without Controul, when he vanish'd. My English Friend told me, that Soul belong'd to the Body of a Money-Scrivener, who almost crack'd his Brain with Politicks, and thought of nothing less than being a prime Minister. I knew him while I was in the World; his whole Discourse always ran on Liberty, Trade, Free Elections, &c. and constantly inveigh'd against ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... awake in a minute. The fire had burned down and only a soft, indistinct glow from the embers lighted the room, while through a hole in the roof I could see a star glimmering frostily. It was Gavotte at the door and he called through a crack saying he had been hearing queer noises for an hour and he was going to investigate. He had called us so that we need not be alarmed should we hear the noise and not find him. We scrambled into our clothes quickly and ran outdoors ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... he read none now. Diana said: 'There are many Alexanders, but Alexander of Macedon is not dwarfed by the number.' She gave him an opening for a smarter reply, but he lost it in a comment—against Whitmonby's cardinal rule: 'The neatest turn of the wrist that ever swung a hero to crack a crown!' and he bowed to young Rhodes: 'I 'll read your versicler to-morrow morning early.' The latter expressed a fear that the hour was too critical ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... expected,—nothing but this oblong figure, which had something of the shape of a small window or door. In fact, as we stood gazing at it, it suggested to us the idea of a little door that opened into the side of the tree, for the crack all round its edge looked black, as if we could see into some dark cavity ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... heavy gale in the South Atlantic as a cure for a blase state of mind. It cannot be described; the sound, the sense of being hurled along without the smallest regard to 'this side uppermost'; the beauty of the whole scene, and the occasional crack and bear-away of sails and spars; the officer trying to 'sing out', quite in vain, and the boatswain's whistle scarcely audible. I remained near the wheel every day for as long as I could ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... calling many names, and at the same time the crack of a whip. But his name was not among the rest; and he just had time to notice that the Over-Lord stood still, with the other dogs about him. Then he was off in pursuit, straight as a line for the river. There the hare made ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... and her delirium transported her abruptly to the crime she contemplated, she said to herself that she would go up the stairs with the bottle well hidden under her shawl; she would knock at the door very loud and continuously. He would come at last and would open the door a crack. She would say nothing to him, not her name even. She would go in without heeding him. She was strong enough to kill him! and she would go to the bed, to her! She would take her by the arm and say: "Yes it's me—this is for your life!" And over ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... a scant hundred feet from the broad metal wings of the unsuspecting plane, when suddenly there was a tremendous jerk, and each man felt himself pressed to the floor beneath a terrific weight that made their backs crack with the load. Doggedly they fought to retain their senses; ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... said the emperor, scratching his head with an expression of ludicrous surprise; "then we have really got back from the peach- stone to political affairs and the war-question. Now, this war- question is a hard peach-stone to crack, and the mere thought of it sets ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... and to understand some of at least their simpler instincts. The large Diadem Spider, which spins so strong a web, that, in pressing my way through the furze thickets, I could hear its white silken cords crack as they yielded before me, and which I found skilled, like an ancient magician, in the strange art of rendering itself invisible in the clearest light, was an especial favourite; though its great size, and the wild stories I had read about the bite of its cogener ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... solicitudes, put on no gilt smiles, wore no reproaches: spoke to him as if so it happened—he had necessarily a journey to perform. One could see all the while big drops falling from the wound within. One could hear it in her voice. Imagine a crack of the string at the bow's deep stress. Or imagine the bow paralyzed at the moment of the deepest sounding. And yet the voice did not waver. She had now the richness of tone carrying ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I'll teach you: think yourself a baby; That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay, Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly; Or,—not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, Wronging it thus,—you'll tender me ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... stories has no pretentious purpose. It is merely the record of a most delightful hunting trip into those fascinating regions along the Equator, where one may still have "thrilling adventures" and live in a story-book atmosphere, where the "roar of the lion" and the "crack of the rifle" are part of the every-day life, and where in a few months one may store up enough material to keep the memory pleasantly occupied all the rest of a lifetime. The stories are descriptive of a four-and-a-half months' trip in the big game country and pretend to no more serious ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... said that if we meant to get up we'd better stick to him. Walters, however, sent this fellow off with Lucy, and then we fastened on the rope and began to climb. We got up perhaps a hundred feet by kicking steps in the snow, but that's a tiring job for the leader, and when he found a crack in the wall, where we could stop, the guide had ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... damp blotting-paper, and the smell that had been only faintly in the air before was now heavy around them, blown in thick gusts as the wind moved through the trees. Shrapnel now could be distinctly heard at no great distance, with its hiss, its snap of sound, and sometimes rifle-shots like the crack of a ball on a cricket bat broke through the thickets. They separated, spreading like beaters in a long line: "Soon," Trenchard told me, "I was quite alone. I could hear sometimes the breaking of a twig or a stumbling footfall but I might have been alone ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... more except to warn Luke of a bad piece of road about two miles on. Sure enough, in its very middle—crack!—we broke down. "De kingbolt done gone clean in two!" said Luke, and ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... of a town appears, in the shape of some straggling cottages: and the carriage begins to rattle and roll over a horribly uneven pavement. As if the equipage were a great firework, and the mere sight of a smoking cottage chimney had lighted it, instantly it begins to crack and splutter, as if the very devil were in it. Crack, crack, crack, crack. Crack-crack- crack. Crick-crack. Crick-crack. Helo! Hola! Vite! Voleur! Brigand! Hi hi hi! En r-r-r-r-r-route! Whip, wheels, driver, stones, beggars, children, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... were a rackless foo, An' spent his days i' spreein'; At th' end ov every drinkin-do, He're sure to crack o' deein'; "Go, sell my rags, an' sell my shoon, Aw's never live to trail 'em; My ballis-pipes are eawt o' tune, An' th' wynt begins ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... up to the grub we get after a crack let-off in the Close,' added Will; for requisitions for their voices at private concerts had made the choir connoisseurs ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... street of the grain-sellers and the locksmiths. Here is the East, with its memories of Akbar and Shah Jehan, its fiery superstitions and its crudities of decoration. Gaudy chandeliers of coloured glass hang from the roof of a marble mosque, and though the marble may crack and no one give heed to it, the glass chandeliers will be carefully swathed in holland bags. Here is the East, but outside the city walls the pile of Mayo College rises high above its playing-grounds and gives to the princes and the chiefs of Rajputana a modern public ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... including Boer fraus — whose husbands, brothers and fathers were away at the front — in many cases actively engaged in shattering our own liberty? But see their appreciation and gratitude! Oh, for something to — Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack Nature's moulds, all germins spill at once! That make ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... jib-sheet block that he held in his hand, turning it over and over, and spinning the sheave round with his finger, much after the manner of a monkey, with any object he does not understand—as, for instance, a nut that he cannot crack—and ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... PUSHED MY HOUSE right over—yes, I did; An' then I turned the streets all round, and runned away and hid! When I come back, my childruns was cryin' awful loud, Fer nobody knowed wher they lived, an' there was such a crowd. I says, "Now, folks must shet their eyes—don't open them a crack!"— An' then I straightened out the streets, ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... he made one that had the tint of real flesh. Thus he was the first to overcome the difficulties of drawing and the first to discover a mixture that would not leave a glazed, hard, unnatural appearance and be likely to crack and destroy the finest effort ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... somebody doing something to the stove, which must have been Mr. Black finishing laying the fire, 'cause right that second I heard a sound like an iron door closing on the big round iron Poetry-shaped stove, and almost a second later, a puff of bluish smoke came bursting out through a crack where the board didn't quite cover the chimney on one side, and I knew that the fire was started. I knew that in a few jiffies that one-room school would be filled with smoke, and a mad teacher would come storming ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... and repeated explosions of volcanoes are shown by Mr. Mitchell in the Philosoph. Transact. to arise from their communication with the sea, or with rivers, or inundations; and that after a chink or crack is made, the water rushing into an immense burning cavern, and falling on boiling lava, is instantly expanded into ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... it," persisted Bob. "In the idea, I mean. If there's a secret hiding-place in that upright carved beam, that rose is the key to it. See how deeply it's cut in, compared to the other; and I can almost see a crack all round it, as if it could be removed. May I try to get it ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... Crack went the whip, tinkle went the bells. Over the house-tops, through the frosty air, among the moonbeams, up and away sailed fairy horses and sleigh, American flags ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... Spaniards. And so, closely pent and packed, discharging their carbines into each other's faces, rolling, coiled together, down the slimy sides of the dyke into the black waters, struggling to and fro, while the cannon from the rebel fleet and from the royal forts mingled their roar with the sharp crack of the musketry, Catholics and patriots contended for an hour, while still, through all the confusion and uproar, the miners dug ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the interval, and an attempt was made to resist the onslaught of the soldiers. The Lieutenant in charge was astonished at the attitude assumed, and did not care to assume the responsibility of ordering his men to fire, as many of the colonists were well armed and were undoubtedly crack shots. He, accordingly, adopted more diplomatic measures, and, by establishing somewhat friendly relations, got into close quarters with the settlers. A rough and tumble fight with fists soon afterwards resulted, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... conspiracy was on foot. A particular prayer was used, it is said, by numbers in England, for the success of the conspiracy; it was couched in the following terms: "Prosper, Lord, their pains, that labour in thy cause day and night; let heresy vanish like smoke; let the memory of it perish with a crack, like the ruin and fall of a broken house." It would appear that this prayer was framed by one who was privy to the conspiracy; nor can it be doubted that it was intended to convey some intimation of the nature of the treason. I am, aware, ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... they can shoot, and shoot straight, too!" he added. "Look at the shooting galleries," the two were walking down the Bowery, "they've been kept going for years by the practice of the Tong marksmen. You'd never think it, but some of those Highbinders could make our crack shots do their best to keep an even score. Well," he broke off, "here we are at Mott Street. Bob," he called to the policeman across the street, "here's a young fellow wants ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... nice white soap, and, after trying the water to see that it was not too warm or too cold, she mixed the soap in thoroughly. The beautiful glass bowl was lifted carefully into the pan and scrubbed with the little brush till every crack was cleaned and it was brilliant with the suds. Margaret was not allowed to lift it out on the tray for fear she should let it slip, but she watched ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... "There's a gold crack in the sky now that shows a little weenty bit of Heaven's floor, I think, right now," said Ethelwyn, going to the ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... trap, no secret door, no hiding place, no opening of any sort is found; if the examination of the walls—even to the demolition of the pavilion—does not reveal any passage practicable—not only for a human being, but for any being whatsoever—if the ceiling shows no crack, if the floor hides no underground passage, one must really believe in the Devil, as Daddy ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... century of rule by France, Algeria became independent in 1962. The surprising first round success of the fundamentalist FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) party in the December 1991 balloting caused the army to intervene, crack down on the FIS, and postpone the subsequent elections. The fundamentalist response has resulted in a continuous low-grade civil conflict with the secular state apparatus, which nonetheless has allowed elections featuring pro-government and moderate religious-based ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... all sit down in a ring, the young fellow amongst them; a coko would then put a stick in Ursula's hand, who would then get up and go to the young fellow, and say, 'Did I play the . . . with you?' and were he to say 'Yes,' she would crack his head before the eyes ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Rachel ten years ago," said Cecily, "and asked her if she might open the chest to see if the moths had got into it. There's a crack in the back as big as your finger. Cousin Rachel wrote back that if it wasn't for one thing that was in the trunk she would ask mother to open the chest and dispose of the things as she liked. But she could not ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... is all I have to ask at present. It is a very difficult nut we have to crack, Mr. Ferguson," he went on, when he and the first lieutenant were alone. "To attack six strongly armed prahus with the boats of this ship would be a serious enterprise indeed, and its success would be very doubtful, while the loss would certainly be very heavy, especially ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... at him a moment and then laughed; and he laughed so rarely that it distorted the yellow parchment of his face as if it must crack it. The sound of his laughter was something like the creaking of a cart imitated by a ventriloquist. But Padre Francesco knit his bushy brows, for he thought the sailor was making game of him, who had been boatswain ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... to me," he retorted, "that your proceedings are rather like those of the amiable individual who offered the bear a flint pebble, that he might crack it and extract the kernel. Your confounded will seems to offer no soft spot on which one could commence an attack. But we won't give up. We seem to have sucked the will dry. Let us now have a few facts respecting the parties concerned in ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... and quietly did the 11th, considered to be the crack regiment of the brigade, swing round; and as calmly and firmly did the Egyptian battalion—composed of the peasants who, but twenty years before, had been considered among the most cowardly of people, a host of whom would have fled before a dozen of the dreaded Dervishes—march into the gap between ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... can guess ye're gawn to gather dew.' She scoured awa, and said, 'What's that to you?' 'Then fare ye weel, Meg Dorts, and e'en's ye like,' I careless cried, and lap in o'er the dyke. I trow when, that she saw, within a crack She came with a right thieveless errand back: Misca'd me first; then bade me hound my dog, To wear up three waff ewes strayed on the bog. I leugh, an sae did she: then with great haste I clasped my arms about her neck and waist, About her yielding waist, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... van, found it difficult to sleep on account of the owner's loud snoring. At day-break he lay looking out on the camp through a crack in the cover. He saw the girls rise and depart, and the boys follow them. Thinking it about time for them to be moving, he woke Abrahams and went ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... one of his short little shoes was split across the top just back of the toe cap, and the next morning it was patched. Pretty soon the other shoe followed suit—first a crack in the leather, then a clumsy patch over the crack. He wore his black slouch hat until it was as green in spots as a gage plum; and late in August he supplanted it with one of those cheap, varnished brown-straw hats ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... there to believe? There stood the gate with the pebble holding it away from the post; and here stood half the neighbourhood, staring at that pebble and at the all but invisible crack it made where an opening had never been seen before, in a fascination which had for its motif, not so much the knowledge that these forbidden precincts had been invaded by a stranger, as that they were open to any intruding foot—that they, themselves, ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... and diminished presentment of that majestic presence whose ministering spirits are the rainbows, whose voice is the thunder, whose awful front is veiled in clouds, who was monarch here dead and forgotten ages before this sackful of small reptiles was deemed temporarily necessary to fill a crack in the world's unnoted myriads, and will still be monarch here ages and decades of ages after they shall have gathered themselves to their blood-relations, the other worms, and been mingled with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... own steps lest he should by slipping cause the horse to stumble, and in a few seconds they were slowly picking their way over the rough ice. The horse's hoofs crunched into the snow, and Betty held her breath, and a little thrill went over her as she fancied she heard the ice crack ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... And tied with ribands, ruffling in the wind: Sometimes he nodded down his head awhile, And then the waves did heave him to the moon, He climbing to the top of all the billows; And then again he curtsied down so low I could not see him. Till at last, all sidelong With a great crack, his belly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... but the bullet, the first of the battle, whistled over their heads. The sharp crack, sounding triply loud at such a time, came back from the forest in many echoes, and a light puff of smoke arose. Quick as a flash, before the brown shoulder and body exposed to take aim could be withdrawn, Tom Ross ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... As fine as daubers' hands can make it, In hopes that strangers may mistake it, We[3] think it both a shame and sin To quit the true old Angel Inn. Now this is Stella's case in fact, An angel's face a little crack'd. (Could poets or could painters fix How angels look at thirty-six:) This drew us in at first to find In such a form an angel's mind; And every virtue now supplies The fainting rays of Stella's ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... tryin' to cook over the airtight in the settin'-room. Seemed kind o' queer to go to the front door, too, for you had to open it wide an' squeeze round the partition to git into Lyddy Ann's part, an' a little mite of a crack would let you into Josh's. But they didn't have many callers. It was a good long while afore anybody dared to say a word to her; an' as for Josh, there wa'n't nobody that cared about seein' him but the ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... get in. An' he's wise. Jim knows engines. He has a knack for machinery. An' nerve! No boy ever had more. He'll make a crack flier." ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... Rover, as he turned again to the lesson he had been studying. "He tries to keep up a brave front, but that crack he got on the head some weeks ago was a worse one than most folks imagine. I'm thinking he ought to be home and under the doctor's care instead of trying to rack his brains making up lessons he missed ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... "'Crack Sanders one on the bean with your six-gun on account for me.' Seems to me if I was you, Buck, I'd alibi myself down the river into Texas as quick as I could jog a bronco along. But, of course, I don't know yore friend Go-Get-'Em as well as you do. Mebbe you'll be able to explain it to him. Tell ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... this command was obeyed, and the almost simultaneous crack of two rifles, might well have caused the belief that she had fallen because shot through the heart; but such was not the case. The command of Lewis broke upon her like a thunder-peal, and as quick as a flash of lightning did she comprehend the fearfully ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... with gold-bound brows, and sceptres in their hands, with two-fold balls and sceptres in their hands—are here filling the stage, and claiming it to the crack of doom; and now he 'smiles,' he smiles upon his baffled foe, 'and points ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... It was—a smear plus. Tickled? Why, Old Hickory came so near smilin' I was afraid that armor-plate face of his was goin' to crack. ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... answer came like the crack of a whip. Braithwaite drew himself up with the pride of one who had moved men like pawns across the checker-board of life and death. "The two cases afford no parallel. Ann and Terry have remained ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... whirlwind, crashing across the pebbled streets, and out upon the broad, smooth road again. Before we had well considered the fact that we were out of Lyons, we stopped to change horses. Done in a jiffy; and whoop, crick, crack, whack, rumble, bump, whirr, whisk, away we blazed, till, ere we knew it, another change, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... stream, under which they were carried and drowned, despite the exertions of four or five of the party to pull them across by the rope. Their efforts to save them nearly cost their own lives, and A. Jardine chronicles receiving a "nasty crack" in the head from a log in attempting to disentangle his own horse "Jack" from the vines, one which might have closed his career, had it been a degree harder, the other, "Blokus," was a Government horse, belonging to Mr Richardson; both were useful horses, and a great loss to the party, but only ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... the river, and the successive crack of carbines afforded the music of our march to James City, where the conflict deepened into a battle, which raged with fury and slaughter. The enemy, conscious of having outgeneraled us in this instance, and having ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... sight. "This style of dancing would delight A simple Rum-ti-Foozleite. I'll learn it if I can, To please the tribe when I get back." He begged the man to teach his knack. "Right Reverend Sir, in half a crack! Replied that dancing man. ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... course of a week I got one. Before I procured him I examined into the merits, and price, of about one hundred dogs. My dog was named Pete, but I determined to make a change in that respect. He was a very tall, bony, powerful beast, of a dull black color, and with a lower jaw that would crack the hind-leg of an ox, so I was informed. He was of a varied breed, and the good Irishman of whom I bought him said he had fine blood in him, and attempted to refer him back to the different classes of dogs from which ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... near enough, sheik," Edgar, who had levelled his rifle at one of the horsemen, said. As he spoke he pulled the trigger, and simultaneously with the sharp crack of the piece the Arab threw up his arms and fell from his horse. The sheik and five of his men fired almost at the same moment. Kneeling as closely as they could, there was room for but seven along the face of the fort fronting the enemy, and at Edgar's suggestion the chief ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... disappeared an hour earlier, cautiously opened the door of his bedroom a crack. He was clad in his pajamas. Seeing that the coast was clear he thrust out a ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... my darling dolly safely into my hands. But she didn't. If I were giving orders she would obey me to the letter. She 'pitched me Lilly.' I gave a dismal wail of dismay as I saw my dear baby come hurtling through the air, but when she landed on her blessed head, and I heard the crack of breaking china, I just abandoned myself to grief and howled desperately. Aunt Rebecca went about her business as if nothing had happened, and by and by I stole off with my ruined dolly and cried to myself in the back yard—because I had no ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... which is equivalent to a strong natural instinct is his disposition to "do murder." This may account for his love of "sport," or it may only be an hereditary trait derived from the period when he had not yet concerned himself with agriculture, but slew wild beasts and used his implements of stone to crack their bones and get the marrow out. The instinct to slay birds, beasts and fishes is certainly strong within us, whatever be its remote origin, and it is very little affected by what we are pleased to call our civilization. Indeed, it is hardly to be believed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... encouragement, I went to school in spite of my bare feet. Often the ground would be frozen, and often there would be snow. My feet would crack and bleed freely, but when I reached home Mother would have a tub full of hot water ready to plunge me into and thaw me out. Although this caused my feet and legs to swell, it usually got me into shape for school ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... hard at a crack in the wall. The little blue eyes were very sad. David, too, fell ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... tried ran out on the face into nothingness, and I had to make a dangerous descent. The second was a deep gully, but so choked with rubble that after nearly braining myself I desisted. Still going eastwards, I found a sloping ledge which took me to a platform from which ran a crack with a little tree growing in it. My glass showed me that beyond this tree the crack broadened into a clearly defined chimney which led to the top. If I can once reach that tree, I thought, the battle is won. The crack ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... my wife, with a sting in her accent which showed that she was deep in the ploy, whatever it had been. It now came to my mind that I had not seen Alec since the day before, when I sent him out to play with the minister's son, till Maister Marchbanks had peace to give us his crack before I went out ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... about the college that Farmer Appleby had made a "crack" about his hay fire, and great was the ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... children, wisdom, and a fair-voiced wife— Thus, great King! are counted up the five felicities of life. For the son the sire is honored; though the bow-cane bendeth true, Let the strained string crack in using, and what ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... as she lighted a pine-knot and stuck it into a crack in the wall (for it was already dark, and candles were expensive), "it is a great sin and shame—the lad is neither crooked nor misshapen—the Lord has done well enough by him, Heaven knows; and yet never a stroke of work has he done since ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... it (the Body being to be buried by and by) and the croud of People was a further hindrance. But if any thing had been considerably out of order to the view, it would surely have been by some of them discover'd. Some of them thought, they discern'd a small fissure or crack in the skull; and some who held it, while it was sawing off, said, they felt it Jarring in their hands, and there seem'd to the eye something like it, but it was so small, as that by candle-light we could not agree ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... this point, she found herself able to crack the egg. The anticipation of her day in London made her quite ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... first felt in her Majesty's recruiting department. The standard will, of necessity, be lowered; the dwarfs will grow smaller and smaller; the vulgar expression "a man of his inches" will become a figure of fact, instead of a figure of speech; crack regiments, household-troops especially, will pick the smallest men from all parts of the country; and in the two little porticoes at the Horse Guards, two Tom Thumbs will be daily seen, doing duty, ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... was sitting in the parlor reading his paper when he thought he heard something stir. He turned, and was surprised to see a large blue eye fixed upon him through the crack of a neighboring door—the effect was most disconcerting. It was not like the ordinary eye, which, under such embarrassing circumstances, would have been immediately withdrawn; it kept its position with deliberate boldness. He ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... backs, because here at all events was a scene of the purest and most innocent rapture. I went on my way full of wonder and even of hope. I could not fathom the deep mystery of the failure, the suffering, the weakness that runs across the world like an ugly crack across the face of a fair building. But then how tenderly and wisely does the great Artificer lend consolation and healing, repairing and filling so far as he may, the sad fracture; he seems to know better than we can divine the things that belong to our peace; so that as I looked ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... allowed this feature of his character a much freer run. The legend used to be that he was looked upon in Egypt as rather grim, and by no means to be trifled with. He was not the man, we may be sure, to be funny with a Young Turk, or to crack needless jokes with a recalcitrant Khedive. But retirement softened him, and the real nature of Lord Cromer, with its elements of geniality and ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... you recognize me," was the harsh reply. "Not so loud, please, unless you want that crack I ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... enemy, the saber-toothed, with whom they were at endless and deadly feud. Away off to the left, quite clear of the woods, but safely remote from the fire, a pack of huge cave-hyenas sat up on their haunches, their long, red tongues hanging out. With jaws powerful enough to crack the thigh-bones of the urus, they nevertheless hesitated to obtrude themselves on the notice either of the crouching saber-tooth or ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... appeared, the trees cracked and split beneath the weight of it. They went off like a battery of artillery. Alone in his room, without a light, surrounded only by the phosphorescent darkness, Christophe sat listening to the tragic sounds of the forest, and started at every crack: and he was like one of the trees bending beneath its load and snapping. He ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... Uttering a deafening yell of pain and fury, the monster clasped me closer to his foul and loathsome body; his sharp claws, dug deeper into my back, seemed to tear up my flesh: the agony was insupportable—my eyes began to swim, and my senses to leave me. Just then—Crack! crack! Two—four—a dozen musket and pistol shots, followed by such a chorus of yellings and howlings and unearthly laughter! The creature that held me seemed startled—relaxed his grasp slightly. At that moment a dark arm was passed before my face, there was a blinding flash, a yell, and I fell ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... alien places through tear-dimmed eyes, the answering to strange voices with an aching throat, and the poignancy of memory! Jim's mind dwelt monotonously on the worn spot in the library hearth rug where he and Uncle Denny had spent so many, many hours. There was the crack in the brown teapot that his mother would not discard because she had poured Big Jim's tea from it. There was Uncle Denny's rich Irish voice, "Ah, Still Jim, me boy!" And there was Pen—dear, dear Penelope, with her woman's eyes in her child's face—with ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... white turpentine, 1-1/2 lbs.; gum shellac 1-1/2 lbs.; venice turpentine, 1 gill; let these stand in a jug in the sun, or by a stove, until the gums are dissolved; then add sweet oil, 1 gill; lampblack, 2 oz., and you have a varnish that will not crack when the harness is twisted like the old shellac varnish. It is good also for boots and shoes, looking well, and ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... against the sun, or, further still southeast among the "breaks" of the many forks of the South Cheyenne, on the sandy flats men dug for water for their suffering horses, yet shrank from drinking it themselves lest their lips should crack and bleed through the ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... to this request, having first tied a knot in the end of the rope and fixed it firmly in a crack in the rocks, I went carefully down as far as it reached, when, with a back-handed fling, I sent the pick ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... for the rest, Cecile began to consider what they could do to save now. It was useless to expect such foresight on Maurice's part. But for herself, whenever she got an apple or a nut, she put it carefully aside. It was not that her little teeth did not long to close in the juicy fruit, or to crack the hard shell and secure the kernel. But far greater than these physical longings was her earnest desire to keep true to her solemn promise to the dead—to find, and give her mother's message and her mother's gift to the beautiful, wayward ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... raids on the mob of spectators who pressed round the door, and stood with their eyes glued to every crack in the bark of which the hut was made. The next door neighbours on either side might have amassed a comfortable competence for their old age, by letting out seats for the circus. Every hole in the side ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... engagement at all," he said. "I made it plain as a pikestaff to them both. It mustn't be thought I countenanced their crack-brained troth-plighting. 'T was by reason of my final 'Nay' that Will went off. He 's gone out of her life, and she 'm free as the air. I tell you this because you may have heard different, and you mix with the countryside ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... history of the second Rembrandt, and the reason why Henson stabbed you and gave you that crack over the head. If you tell me the truth you are safe; if you don't—why, you stand a chance of joining ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... only is sonus quid materiale, but further something much more grossely material then the objects of the rest of the senses, as for instance in the discharging of a canon being a distance looking on we would think it gives fire long before it gives the crack, tho in wery truth they be both in the same instant. The reason then whey we sie the fire before we hear the crack is because the species Wisibiles that carries the fire to our eyes, tho material ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... minutes the silence continued, with not so much as the crack of a twig to interrupt it. What's that? It's a cock crowing! There it is again! There's another! The laager's there right enough, and ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... weather, we could plan our drives with more discretion; but it sometimes remains as steady as a rock during two days of sea mist, and Francesca, finding it wholly regardless of gentle tapping, lost her temper on one occasion and rapped it so severely as to crack the glass. That this peculiarity of Irish barometers has been noted before we are sure, because of this verse ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... agreed on, all hearty and hale, The lord and his party, at crack of the dawn, With hounds at their heels canter'd over the lawn. Arrived, said the lord in his jovial mood, 'We'll breakfast with you, if your chickens are good. That lass, my good man, I suppose is your daughter: No news of a son-in-law? Any one sought her? No doubt, by the score. Keep ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... running through a long, lighted hall, out into a garden; a gate flew open; we rushed across the street and sprang into another carriage; Maximilian leaped to his place; crack went the whip, and away we flew; but on the instant the quick eyes of my friend saw, rapidly whirling around the next corner, one of the carriages that ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... interrupted. "Bang! bang!" challenged another "express," the shots so close together as to be almost simultaneous. "Crack! crack! crack!" retorted the Winchesters, and from the fact that silence followed I drew a clear inference. I said to myself, "That is an ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... heard the sharp crack of rifles. They saw the dust spurting up. Doctor Spechaug heard himself howling as he became aware of peculiar stings in his body. Queer, painless, deeply penetrating sensations that made themselves felt ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton
... painter does a landscape or a face upon canvas, to the best of his ability, and according to his particular gift. If ever I think I have the stuff in me to write an epic, by Jove, I will try. If I only feel that I am good enough to crack a joke or tell a ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and ill formed; his legs were short and shrunken. He was the schoolmaster of Wythburn, and his name Monsey Laman. The dalesmen found the little schoolmaster the merriest comrade that ever sat with them over a glass. He had a crack for each of them, a song, a joke, a lively touch that cut and meant no harm. They called him "the little limber Frenchman," in allusion to a peculiarity of gait which in the minds of the heavy-limbed mountaineers was somehow ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... man thrust his foot into the crack and when the girl said: "The Doctor is very busy; he's received some bad news and he won't want to talk with you," old Jerry repeated: "I wanter see the Doctor!" and added an imperative "Now!" which caused the girl to come to the conclusion that here was a determined and desperate man. She announced ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... etc., are generally apt to produce skin diseases. They contain, in almost every instance, substances which are either directly or indirectly poisonous to the skin. The "tooth washes," "powders," and "dentifrices," are hurtful. They crack or wear away the enamel of the teeth, leave the nerve exposed, and cause the teeth to decay. If you are wise, dear reader, you will never use a dentifrice, unless you know what it is made of. The ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... who was on the poop, hearing the crack of a revolver, called out something; whereupon Captain Snaggs turned round and aimed his next shot at him, although, fortunately, it missed the second-mate, on account of Jan dodging behind the companion hatchway just in the nick ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... most nonsensical trash, and undervalued by the most of my companions for a time; getting forward, and held to be a bold and clever fellow, contrary to the opinion of all who had held me a mere dreamer; broken-hearted for two years, my heart handsomely pieced again,—but the crack will remain till my dying day. Rich and poor four or five times; once on the verge of ruin, yet opened a new source of wealth almost overflowing. Now to be broken in my pitch of pride and nearly winged (unless good news should come) because London chooses to be in an ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... word, I moved the lever as requested, and the two vessels began steaming out toward one another. Their weight and speed were such that the light wind blowing affected them not in the least, and their prows struck with an audible crack. This threw them side by side, steaming head on together. At the same time it operated to set in motion their guns, which fired broadsides in such rapid succession as to give a suggestion of rapid ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... American savage pays attention to every sound that strikes upon his ear when the leaves, softly shaken by the evening breeze, seem to sigh through the air, or when the tempest, bursting forth with fury, shakes the gigantic trees that crack like reeds. "The chirping of the birds, the cry of the wild beasts, in a word, all those sweet, grave, or imposing voices that animate the wilderness, are so many musical lessons, which he easily remembers." ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... he said. "It tells how and when you will work. A steel-and-vanadium-bound contract that you couldn't crack with ...
— The Repairman • Harry Harrison
... to the hair and the finger nails, as for every ounce of dirt that they take out of the skin, they do a pound of damage to it. They scrub off the delicate epidermis, as well as the natural oil in it, and leave it dry and irritated and ready to crack open. Then more dirt gets into the cracks just formed, and more scrubbing with bristles and hot water and soap is indulged in to get it out. This opens the cracks still further, and the next layer of dirt is worked in still deeper. Wash frequently with cold or cool water, occasionally with hot water, ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... once buffalo hunting in Arkansas. I was on a strong well-trained horse, pursuing a bull, when we arrived at a rent or crack in the prairie, so wide, that it was necessary for the animals to leap it. The bull went over first, and I, on the horse, following it close, rose on my stirrups, craning a little, that I might perceive the width of the rent. At that moment the bull turned round ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... still speculating upon the cause of this phenomenon, it became apparent. A small curl of smoke, like a lady's ringlet, on the summit of the right-hand precipice, caught my eye, and simultaneous with the echoing crack of the matchlock a high-trotting dromedary in front of me rolled over upon the sands. A bullet had split his heart, throwing his rider a goodly somerset of five or ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Jed Wallop to hook up the team to the boxsled, and in a few minutes more the man was off with a crack of his whip, which sent the team away ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... of his ten brothers and sisters helped to card and spin the cotton for the looms. Sometimes they worked all night, Charlie often going to sleep while carding, when his mother would crack him on the head with the carder handle and wake him up. Each child had a night for carding and spinning, so they all would get a ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... the unexpected compliment, but before she had time to enjoy it, or to reply, there came a sudden knock at the dining-room door, and Janey's black face peered in at the crack. ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... poor victim seems to have consisted solely in his intimacy with Leigh Hunt, Mr. Hazlitt, and some other enemies of despotism and superstition. My friend Hunt has a very hard skull to crack, and will take a deal of killing. I do not know ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... and more cries and curses in harbor-English, and a second engine-room signal and a cessation of the screw thrashings. This was followed by a shower of carbine-shots and the plaintive whine of bullets above the upper-works, the crack and thud of lead against the side-plates. At the same time Blake heard the scream of a denim-clad figure that suddenly pitched from the landing-ladder into the sea. Then came an answering volley, from somewhere close below Blake. He could not tell whether it was from the boat-flotilla ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... the merchant's eldest son. He was bold, stout, active, middle-sized, and seventeen years of age; full of energy and life, a crack rower, a first-rate cricketer, and generally a clever fellow. George was ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... considerable weight had already weakened the wood. When Tom attempted to draw himself up, crack! went the board, and a jagged piece broke off. This would not have been so serious if the ice had not given way. Then, into the water, with many strange, guttural cries, slipped the deaf and dumb man. Grace herself was wet ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... not only in the examination halls and on the river that Charles Dilke was winning reputation. He had joined the Volunteers, and proved himself among the crack rifleshots of the University corps; he had won walking races, but especially he had begun to seek distinction in a path which led straight to ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... is a quite unsuspected pitfall into which they successively plunge headlong. For it is precisely in such cryptographies that mankind are prone to seek for and find a wonderful amount and variety of significance. Omne ignotum pro mirifico. How do we admire at the antique world striving to crack those oracular nuts from Delphi, Ammon, and elsewhere, in only one of which can I so much as surmise that any kernel had ever lodged; that, namely, wherein Apollo confessed that he was mortal. ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... personally knew that the clique had strength in reserve, and had I enjoyed the support of my company, would willingly have stood for a compromise. But it was out of the question to suggest it, and, trusting to the new administration, we politely told them to crack their whips. ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... the subterranean river beneath the town has yielded an uninterrupted supply of the richest brine in Europe; and it is curious to observe how the vacuum created by the amount raised has caused the ground to collapse and crack, as shown by the decrepit state of the buildings, many of which are broken-backed, twisted, and contorted—although the intermediate earth is about 200 feet in thickness. The place, therefore, has a sort of downcast look, and ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... Christ, Christ, there was nothing but Christ that was before mine eyes. I could look from myself to Him, and should reckon that all those graces of God that now were green upon me, were yet but like those crack-groats, and fourpence-halfpennies that rich men carry in their purses, while their gold is in their trunks at home. Oh, I saw my gold was in my trunk at home. In Christ my Lord and Saviour. Further the Lord did lead ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... of several other visits they made that night; but, as I said before, even a Christmas yarn and a ghost story must not spin itself out, like Banquo's line, to the crack of doom. However true or authentic a story may be—and you can easily verify this by asking any member of the Christmas Club in Huckleberry Street—however true a yarn may be, it must not be so long that it can never be ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... me a little," said Isabelle, whose father wrote articles much appreciated by the public in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' "But he said at the same time that it was horrid to give such crack-brained stuff to us poor girls. Happily, our subject this week is much nicer. We have to make comparisons between La Tristesse d'Olympio, Souvenir, and Le Lac'. That ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... you know, gentlemen, that if the negro had never had the right to vote until the majority of the rank and file of white men, particularly foreign-born men, had voted "Yes," he would have gone without it till the crack of doom. It was because of the prejudice of the unthinking majority that Congress submitted the question of the negro's enfranchisement to the Legislatures of the several States, to be adjudicated by the educated, broadened representatives of the people. We now appeal ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... from Southminster. "Take your time, my son," said Dick, just eluding by a hair's-breadth a charge through a geranium-bed on the part of the eldest boy. "If you are such jolly little fools as to crack your little skulls on the sun-dial, I shall eat them both myself. Miss Turner says you may have them, so you've only got to take them. I can't keep on offering them all day long. My time"—(Dick ran his bicycle up a terrace, and, as soon as the boys were up, glided down again)—"my time ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... to bed, my Cousin Tom and I had a crack together; and he seemed to me more sensible than I had thought him at first. We talked of a great number of things; and he asked me about France and my life there; and I had a great ado from being indiscreet and telling him too much. I represented to him ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... for six passengers, but it smelt too musty, and was too full of the fumes of bad tobacco, for me; and I very much preferred sitting beside the driver, a red-faced, smooth-cheeked Norman, habited in a blue blouse, who could crack his long whip with almost the skill of a Parisian omnibus-driver. We were friends in a trice, for my patois was almost identical with his own, and he could not believe his own ears that he was ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... ye, Ratton, blithe will Nicol Muschat be to see ye, for he says he kens weel there isna sic a villain out o' hell as ye are, and he wad be ravished to hae a crack wi' ye—like to like, ye ken—it's a proverb never fails; and ye are baith a pair o' the deevil's peats, I trow—hard to ken whilk deserves the hettest corner ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... furiously down the slope. He straightened himself in his seat with both hands on the reins, and Agatha held her breath when she felt the light vehicle tilt as the wheels on one side sank deep in a rut. Then something seemed to crack, and she saw the off-side horse stumble and plunge. The other beast flung its head up, Hawtrey shouted something, and there was a great smashing and snapping of undergrowth and fallen branches as they ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... is a group of impulsions and habits. Citing a few absurd impulsions: a person feels compelled to step over every crack, to touch the posts along his journey, to take the stairs three steps at a time. The habits range from the queer desire to bite one's nails to the quick that is so common in children and which persists in the psychasthenic adult, to the odd grimaces and facial contortions, ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... Miss Elizabeth a pretty tough nut to crack," the detective went on. "Anyhow, you know what her price was from her name, which is hers right enough. Wenham, who was a year younger than his brother, was the first to bid it. Three months ago, Mr. and Mrs. Wenham Gardner, Miss Beatrice, and the devoted father ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and their authority was enforced; but they were not precisely the tables of Moses. The enormous pretence which men practise for the true benefit of women was abandoned in the Five Towns Hotel. Domestic sultans who never joked in the drawing-room would crack with laughter in the Five Towns Hotel, and make others crack, too. Old men would meet young men on equal terms, and feel rather pleased at their own ability to do so. And young men shed their youth there, displaying the huge stock of wisdom and sharp cynicism which by hard work ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... want 'em," muttered Wealthy. Then, seeing that Mrs. Bright looked troubled, she was sorry she had spoken, and made haste to add, "However, the medicine may be first-rate medicine, and if it does you good, Mrs. Bright, we'll crack it ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... As he dropped to the steps and rolled quickly to one side Tebron heard the low vibration of a disintegrator beam pass over his shoulder and the crack of the wall behind him as it struck. And then the guards were on the ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... biscuit and coffee, was the bill of fare; and the young men had sharpened their appetites in the sports of the morning. Before they were half done they heard the crack of a rifle. They listened for the second shot, ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... thoroughly beastly I was. I—I wasn't man enough to tell you so, nor to admit how sorry I was for my severity; so after you were asleep, I put this in your hand, thinking it might—make up for my harshness. I suppose it dropped to the floor during the night and rolled into that wide crack in the corner where the bed used to stand. I saw the glint of it this morning when a sunbeam chanced to fall upon it, and it brought back the memory of that other day. Tabitha, I am sorry. Is it too late to forgive ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the little sneaky black fly That gobbles up our ham, The beggar's not a slack fly, He really is a crack fly, And wolfs ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... he, "why we took a crack at the Russians—they made me eat my best horse. But the English are a thousand times worse. If this young man" (the Emperor Napoleon III.) "doesn't know it, I'll tell him. There is no quarter possible after what they did at St. Helena! If I had been commander-in-chief ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... he reached the crest between the hills. At this point the southern grade of the pass winds sharply, whence its name, the Elbow; but from the head of the pass the grade may be commanded at intervals for half a mile. Trotting down this road with his head in a whirl of excitement, McCloud heard the crack of a rifle; at the same instant he felt a sharp slap at his hat. Instinct works on all brave men very much alike. McCloud dropped forward in his saddle, and, seeking no explanation, laid his head low and spurred Bill Dancing's horse for life ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... ice-crack flies and flaws, Shore to shore, with thunder shock, Deeper than the evening daws, Clearer than the ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... "Why, I was first reserve for England against Wales, and I've skippered the 'Varsity all this year. But that's nothing! I didn't think there was a soul in England who didn't know Godfrey Staunton, the crack three-quarter, Cambridge, Blackheath, and five Internationals. Good Lord! Mr. Holmes, where HAVE ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lost all patience, and again seizing his blunderbuss, he exclaimed: "Come, Jack, my boy, take your pistols and follow me; I have but one life to lose, and I will venture it to have a crack ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... and thousands of dollars worth of feed and flour have been stolen from these three places in the last five years—as much as ten thousand dollars at a crack. ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... the style of the passage—it is perfectly pellucid in meaning, rings on the ear like the crack of a rifle, is sonorous, rich, and swift. One can fancy the whole passage spoken by an orator; indeed it is difficult to resist the illusion that it was "declaimed" before it was written. We catch the ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... so. The sled which had almost reached the bluff, had swung from it again, and had turned towards the open lake. But now, instead of three figures, they could see only one; and even whilst they watched, again came the distant crack of a rifle—a faint far-away sound, something felt by sensitive nerves rather than anything heard—and the solitary man left with the sledge and making for the sanctuary of the open lake, plunged suddenly forward, disappearing ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... said, with the former at fifty yards, and with the latter at five-and- twenty. It would require some skill to hit a rabbit in the head with a bullet; and as there was no report to speak of, only a slight crack, killing or missing one would not scare the others. The price was not high, and as Sir Richard never objected to his having anything in reason that he wanted, and was, moreover, glad that the rabbits who committed sad havoc in the garden should ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... rent, split, rift, crack, slit, incision. dissection anatomy; decomposition &c. 49; cutting instrument &c (sharpness) 253; buzzsaw, circular saw, rip saw. separatist. V. be disjoined &c.; come off, fall off, come to pieces, fall to pieces; peel off; get loose. disjoin, disconnect, disengage, disunite, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Herbert Spencer's inference as to the existence of primitive coyness and its consequences, how are we to account for the comedy of mock capture? Several writers have tried to crack the nut. Sutherland (I., 200) holds that sham capture is not a survival of real capture, but "the festive symbolism of the contrast in the character of the sexes—courage in the man and shyness in the woman"—a fantastic suggestion which does not call for discussion, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the upstretched hand of the Yates right guard and bounded toward the crimson's goal. The Yates left half fell upon it. From there, without forfeiting the ball, Yates crashed down to the goal line, and hurled Elton, her crack full-back, through at last ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... But while they were at this Mr. Edison, getting on to the joke, for he generally naps with one eye open, got up and put a lot of stuffing under the couch spread, stuck his old hat on it so as to make it look as though his face was covered; then peered through the crack of a door. When the music commenced he opened the door ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... The crack of the postilion's whip told Victurnien that the fair romance of his first love was over. While peril lasted, Diane could still see her lover in the young Count; but out of danger, she despised him for the weakling that ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... hushed cryin' the minute he spoke; "Come up here, Major! don't let him slip." And jest as nice as a woman could do, He wropped his blanket around them two, And was off in the crack of ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... location of the saw-mills, the hills appeared to rise nearly one thousand feet above the level of the Sacramento. They were diversified by groves of gigantic pine and oak trees. We were looking anxiously about for the saw-mills, when we heard the crack of a rifle; and presently a man in white linen trousers, with his legs defended by buckskin mocassins, wearing a broad Mexican sombrero, and carrying his rifle in his hand, approached us. This person turned out to be Mr. Marshall. He received us kindly, and asked the news from the lower ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... brows in deep thought, and stared into the fire. Mr. Buxton was about to speak, but Buck held up his hand for silence, and the quiet remained unbroken till the American slapped his knee with a crack like a pistol-shot, looked round on them, and ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... shadow had left her eyes and in them was a quiet glow as she smiled upon her husband whose nerves were as tautly strung as those of a sprinter crouched upon his mark and straining to be away at the pistol's crack. "The traitoress has the infamy to smile at me—whom she has betrayed," was the thought in his heart. "It ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... had lived for sixty years, and been known for nothing but good butter and a godly conversation, was to be rooted from her grave at midnight and carried, dead and naked, to that far-away city that she had always honoured with her Sunday's best; the place beside her family was to be empty till the crack of doom; her innocent and almost venerable members to be exposed to that last curiosity ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "That crack on the head keeps him quiet enough," he said in explanation, "but he might come to and give trouble, or try to swim for it, since such cats have many lives. Ah! Senor Ramiro, I told you I would have my sword back before I was half an hour older, or go where I shouldn't want one." Then he touched ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... which stood ajar, was a poor boy, peeping through the crack of the door. He was of such a lowly station that he had not been allowed even to enter the room. He had been turning the spit for the cook, and she had given him permission to stand behind the door and peep in at the well-dressed children, who were having such a ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... not going to crack up the same people as the other papers," said De Haan; "otherwise we should not supply a want. We must dole out our praise and blame quite differently, and we must be very scrupulous to give ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... air, working his lungs like a bellows. A long jump down, he thought dizzily. If he didn't crack his skull open on a reef he might well be clawed under by the sea. But there was no other place for him ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... it was. The sky was blood-red. At first it was black, a somber black. Not a coal-black but a slate black. Then suddenly just at the edge of the horizon a crack began to appear. It was a slit of blood. It looked more like a wound than anything else I ever saw. The slit of blood grew larger and larger in ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... by the sense of sight The wing of a partridge (the remainder of the brace fell to Barton's lot) was disposed of by the patient; and then, over the wine, which he did not touch, and the walnuts, which he tried nervously to crack in his thin, white hands, Maitland made ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... all along—the old man, the boys, the mother and the bride. Then[advances to the pastor at the door], as a preliminary celebration we'll crack a bottle of my oldest Johannisberger. But what is the matter out there? Who ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... pious Puritans would lock themselves up in one of these cells, say their prayers and go to bed. In the morning they would devoutly return thanks for the "preservation of their lives" during the night, and nobody had better reason to be thankful. Probably some big crack in the window, or in the door, let in a little fresh air, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... Christ's death in us, to see that all His deeds are done in us. Christ's will must become our will, Christ's peace our peace, Christ's sufferings our sufferings, Christ's cross our cross, and then we may know "the eternal Sabbath," and keep "quiet, even if the whole fabrick of heaven and earth crack and ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... themselves the name of the Whip Club, because each member drove his own team of four horses. The chief tutor of these titled Jehu's in the art and mystery of driving, was no less a personage than the celebrated Tom Moody, driver of the Windsor Coach, and by that crack coach it was intended to proceed as far as Slough, on the intended excursion to Stoke, and then turn off to the left; but as the Whip Club, at the period in question, attracted a large share of public attention in the metropolis, perhaps a short notice of it may be here permitted, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... crowned the hill which overlooked Deep-mead Farm—broad acres of land that the Seviers had had granted them from Virginia—dead, his pistol under his shoulder and a smile on his face. Just so he had looked as he rode at the head of our crack gray regiment in that hell-reeking charge at Perryville, and it was such a smile we had followed into the trenches at Franklin. Stalwart, dashing, joyous Andrew, how we had all loved ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... for the start, but the driver had a great many last words with the public, which the interest in our proceedings had gathered about us. Presently with an air of triumph he took his seat, gave a loud crack or two with his whip, and off we started at a good swinging trot, just to show what ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... on the point of stepping out into the road again when a horseman rode into sight between the two rocks. In the same instant of his appearance she heard the unmistakable crack of a gun, saw the rider jerk backward in the saddle, throw up one hand—and then the darkness ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... floor. 'He deserves to escape, for he fought like a devil for it. D—n him, he's a brave fellow! There's no use in chasing him, I suppose; you and I ain't cut out for running. If that last crack had hit me on the nose, it would have smashed it. Come, let's see after the other fellow; perhaps he's playing possum, and may be off. If you don't stop the barking of that d——d dog of yours, I'll kill him.' Groping their way back to the upper floor, from which ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... replaced the barrel-vault, though the oblong plan of the vaulting-bays, due to the nave being wider than the pier-arches, led to somewhat awkward twisted surfaces in the vaulting. But even here the vaults had insufficient lateral buttressing, and began to crack and settle; so that in the great ante-chapel, built thirty years later, the side-aisles were made in two stories, the better to resist the thrust, and the groined vaults themselves were constructed of pointed section. These seem to be the ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... grenadiers charged across the bridge, led by Captain Fordyce. He proved himself a good soldier, but he found the colonials good soldiers too. They held back their fire till the grenadiers were across the bridge and less than fifty yards away. Then the crack of rifles was heard and a line of fire flashed out all along the low breastwork. And it came from huntsmen who knew how to ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... eyes sall I see my Redeimer: yea not only is sonus quid materiale, but further something much more grossely material then the objects of the rest of the senses, as for instance in the discharging of a canon being a distance looking on we would think it gives fire long before it gives the crack, tho in wery truth they be both in the same instant. The reason then whey we sie the fire before we hear the crack is because the species Wisibiles that carries the fire to our eyes, tho material ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... pitch out a fact or two—not too many—or a couple of round sums of figures first of all, just to give them confidence in you, and then go straight for your opponent. No rapier play—it's lost then—but crack him on the top-knot with a bludgeon. They'll want to hear his skull ring before they'll believe that you have touched him. Phrases! Those are the things to get you in, not arguments. Pin a label on his ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... snow on the stormy blast. The sails are scattered abroad like weeds; The strong masts shake like quivering reeds; The mighty cables and iron chains, The hull, which all earthly strength disdains,— They strain and they crack; and hearts like stone Their natural, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... doctor and the slender Obtyosov walked in. Now she could get a view of them. The doctor was corpulent and swarthy; he wore a beard and was slow in his movements. At the slightest motion his tunic seemed as though it would crack, and perspiration came on to his face. The officer was rosy, clean-shaven, feminine-looking, and as supple as an ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the loud crack of a musket rang upon the still night air. At the same instant Dick Dare fell sprawling upon his face on ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... bemoaned our hard fate, mutually, in being attached to such a regiment: 'A damnable corps this,—low, vulgar fellows, practical jokes; not the kind of thing one expects in the army. But as for me, I've joined it partly from necessity. You, however, who might be in a crack regiment, I can't conceive your ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... indifferently hard, are fit to bear Weight; but there are some sorts of them, that easily crack with ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... you see you are where you ought to be," repeated the ruffian, brandishing the horsewhip over him, "and now take the advice of a friend, and make no more noise. The lads are ready for you with the darbies, and they'll clink them on in the crack of this whip, unless you prefer another touch of it first." They then were advancing into the room as he spoke, with fetters in their hands (strait waistcoats being then little known or used), and showed, by their ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... cried Scraggs, with a grin; "I do believe they're going to pitch a fellow over that cliff. What a crack he'll come down into the water with, to be sure. It's to be hoped the poor man is dead, for his own sake, before he takes that flight. Hallo!" added Scraggs, with an energetic shout and a look of surprise; "I say, that's one of our ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... cold and brilliant waiting-room which was Henry James at its highest and Wilde at its worst, there broke in two positive movements, largely honest though essentially unhistoric and profane, which were destined to crack up the old Victorian solidity past repair. The first was Bernard Shaw and the Socialists: the second was Rudyard Kipling and the Imperialists. I take the Socialists first not because they necessarily came so in order of time, but ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... to the right spot," said he to himself. "He must have seen the track. It is just fifty feet from there that the chamois springs across a crack in the ice to get to the pasture higher up; and when he once gets sight of him, father won't let him escape. But, first and foremost, I must find the game, ...
— Harper's Young People, November 25, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... great ragged fragments from the rooks' nests up in the tower. The trees themselves so toss and creak, as this tangible part of the darkness madly whirls about, that they seem in peril of being torn out of the earth: while ever and again a crack, and a rushing fall, denote that some large branch has ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... hide behind my temporary rank," I answered hotly. "I waive it, gladly. Anything, for a chance to puncture that rotten carcass of yours or to get a good fair crack at your smooth face." ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... moisture enough to permit a heavy frost on the windows in zero weather. The absence of frost under such conditions is positive proof of an entirely dry atmosphere, and this is a piano's most dangerous enemy, causing the sounding board to crack, shrinking up the bridges, and consequently putting the piano seriously out of tune, also causing an undue dryness in all the action parts and often a loosening of the glue joints, thus producing clicks and rattles. To obviate this difficulty is ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... gave you the last drop of his jollity. He inspired Newman with something of the same kindness that our hero used to feel in his earlier years for those of his companions who could perform strange and clever tricks—make their joints crack in queer places or whistle at the back ...
— The American • Henry James
... such a hard nut for the opponents of the canal theory to crack, that I am quite prepared to learn that all these careful observations ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... continually, mustard by whole shovelfuls. Immediately after that he drank a horrific draft of white wine for the ease of his kidneys. When that was done, he ate according to the season meat agreeable to his appetite, and then left off eating when he was like to crack for fulness. As for his drinking, he had neither end nor rule. For he was wont to say, that the limits and bounds of drinking were when the cork of the shoes of him that drinketh swelleth up half ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... indignation when circumstances required it. He was never on the lookout for trouble, but was always ready to meet it half way, and his courageous character together with his vigorous physique had made him prominent in the sports of the boys of his own age. He was a crack baseball player and one of the chief factors of the high school football eleven. No one in Clintonia was held ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... every sense of the word an arduous training, for the first regiment of Guards being considered all the world over as the crack corps of the German army, and as the embodiment of military perfection in every sense of the word, its officers, realizing that it is, so to speak, the star phalanx of Germany, are engaged, morning, noon and night, in maintaining it at its ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... and sent up to the doctor. But the case was far more terrible than that! For Mr Parrett had been fearfully and wonderfully mixed up in the whole affair. A few weeks ago the Parrett's juniors had done their best to drown him; now they had done their best to drown him and break his neck and crack his skull all at one onslaught; and as if that wasn't enough, the Welchers had stepped in at the same moment and added poison and suffocation to the other crimes of which the unlucky master ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... the tumult moving in his mind and soul. He pulled out his watch and laid it on the top rail of the old oak fence: there was not enough light to read the time, but he could count the ticks he had to live. Suddenly hope flashed through his heart, like the crack of a gun, like a lightning fork—a big rat was biting an elbow of the yarn where some tallow had fallen upon it. Would he cut it, would he drag it away to his hole? would he pull it a little from its fatal end? He was strong enough to do it, if he only ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... was going out again from here; he was coming out of the yard. I tried to ask him about his dog, but he wasn't in the best of humors, I could see. Well, he gave me a shove; I suppose he only meant to put me out of his way, as if he'd say, 'Let me go, do!' but he fetched me such a crack on my neck, so seriously, that—oh! oh!" And Stepan, who could not help laughing, shrugged up and rubbed the back of his head. "Yes," he added; "he has got a fist; it's something like a ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... suddenly that I recognized the speakers in spite of the whispers. It was Marilyn and Shirley. They were together. Now I recollected the figured chintz which covered the wall and was to be seen through the crack made by the open door. It was her room. They had not heard my hand on the knob, nor the catch, did not know that anyone ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... thus agreed on, all hearty and hale, The lord and his party, at crack of the dawn, With hounds at their heels canter'd over the lawn. Arrived, said the lord in his jovial mood, 'We'll breakfast with you, if your chickens are good. That lass, my good man, I suppose is your daughter: No news of a son-in-law? Any one sought ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... From the crack of the rifle and baying of hound, Takes the poor panting bondman his flight; His couch through the day is the cold damp ground, But northward he runs ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... bring you up to the point where I began to suspect," Ren continued. "I described the feeling I had that was something like watching a large chunk of the bank of a stream break away, starting first as a jagged crack in the turf, with it widening slowly at first, then faster, until the broken chunk becomes a separate THING, dissociated from the bank. It breaks away, drops into the stream—and vanishes; while the bank itself remains, enclosing and containing the ...
— Unthinkable • Roger Phillips Graham
... request, having first tied a knot in the end of the rope and fixed it firmly in a crack in the rocks, I went carefully down as far as it reached, when, with a back-handed fling, I sent the pick sliding ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... STATION training to adequately fit a man to pronounce definite judgment on the availability or non-availability of country. One of Warburton's suggestions to the South Australian Government was to explore the interior-which had proved such a difficult nut to crack—by means of the POLICE. One has to know the country well to fully appreciate the exquisite humour of ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... resisted; the old quarrel with the Jansenists was revived, and soon Church and Crown were convulsed by an agitation that shook society to its very base. During the popular ferment the king was attacked in 1757 by a crack-brained fanatic named Damiens, who scratched him with a penknife as he was entering his coach at Versailles. The poor crazy wretch, who at most deserved detention in an asylum, was first subjected to a cruel ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... was perfect; the utter stillness of the air at the time when the final congelation of the waters had taken place had resulted in the formation of a surface that for smoothness would rival a skating-rink; without a crack or flaw it extended far beyond the ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... "Answerest thou back thy betters so pertly, sirrah? By my soul, I have a mind to crack thy head with this clog for ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... do your work far better than I could have done it. What an intellect we have lost in Newman—so delicately capable of adjustment that it could crush a Hume or crack a Kingsley! And what an example both in literature and in life. But that ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... his hand raised to strike when something happened. A lithe, muscular form glided under the upraised fist, and the next moment there was a sharp crack as the newcomer's fist collided with the ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... behind. In an instant the surrounding air became full of innumerable tiny, brilliant flames, passing me at an incredible speed like minute streaks of lightning, each one giving forth a curious staccato whistling crack as it plunged through or beside the tormented machine, leaving in its wake a thin curling line of blue smoke. I was in the middle of a relentless storm of burning tracer bullets, vying one with the other for the honour of passing through the petrol tank, thereby ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... all further pursuit. Hastily kicking off his loose boots, the merchant plunged into the water, rather than encounter the princely whip, which already began to crack and snap in fierce anticipation. Prince Alexis kicked off his boots and followed; the pond gradually deepened, and in a minute the tall merchant stood up to his chin in the icy water, and his short pursuer likewise but out of striking ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... lived for sixty years, and been known for nothing but good butter and a godly conversation, was to be rooted from her grave at midnight and carried, dead and naked, to that far-away city that she had always honoured with her Sunday's best; the place beside her family was to be empty till the crack of doom; her innocent and almost venerable members to be exposed to that last curiosity of ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... travelling, the first indication of a town appears, in the shape of some straggling cottages: and the carriage begins to rattle and roll over a horribly uneven pavement. As if the equipage were a great firework, and the mere sight of a smoking cottage chimney had lighted it, instantly it begins to crack and splutter, as if the very devil were in it. Crack, crack, crack, crack. Crack-crack- crack. Crick-crack. Crick-crack. Helo! Hola! Vite! Voleur! Brigand! Hi hi hi! En r-r-r-r-r-route! Whip, wheels, driver, stones, beggars, children, crack, crack, crack; helo! hola! charite pour l'amour de Dieu! ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... ready writer. Coming from New Zealand, through the War, to England, his natural talents were at once recognised, and he won a position for himself on the staff of The Times. In the leisure moments spared from the service of the Old Lady of Printing House Square, he would crack a jest, now and then, with the Old Sage of Bouverie Street. Mr. EDWIN ARNOLD now publishes a collection of his writings under the title, Noel Ross and His Work, and Mr. Punch confines himself to commending the volume to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... animal's back and throws the poor thing over; it saves argument. If he gets cross and puts his shoulder to the massive oaken door, we know there is going to be work next morning for the carpenter. Maybe he is a party belonging to the Middle Ages. Then when he reluctantly challenges the crack fencer of Europe to a duel, our instinct is to call ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... that, too, but Juli's agonized face came between me and the picture of disaster. I clenched my fist around the chair arm, not surprised to see the fragile plastic buckle, crack and split under my grip. If ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... of the biggest came upon me and pulled hold of my coat. I could not let this pass, the hooting I don't care about. So I fetched some people to have the biggest fellow taken to Jabour. This we did to frighten them, for after one of my friends gave him a crack over the head, he was let off, promising to do so no more. The lower Moors and Touaricks, both here and at Ghadames, teach the slaves to call Christians kafer, "infidel." The blacksmiths, near Hateetah's house, mostly salute me as I pass by them, with "There's ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... long-horned oxen, the Tartars brought barrels of frozen honey, quarters of killed lambs, poultry and game, and returned heavily laden with bags of flour and rolls of sole leather. The whole day long the crack of whips and the curses of the drivers rent the icy atmosphere. Whatever their destination, the carters were in a hurry to reach human habitation before nightfall—before the dreaded time when packs of wolves came out to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... would bob against the canvas roof. This was suggestive. Procuring a stick of proper size, I crossed over to the rear street, and stood back of the tent watching my opportunity. Presently Dunn's head came bobbing against the canvas, and I brought the stick down on it with a good, sharp crack. The effect was all that could be desired. There came an unearthly bellow, accompanied, I grieve to say, with many exclamations suggestive of the future prospects of the culprit who had cracked the head of the festive dancer. Out they poured through the little door ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... last, and the lovers have, as the poet says, "moonlight [actually] and sleep [possibly] for repayment." But with the morning a worse thing happens. The lover, waking, sees at the foot of the bed, flowing sluggishly from the crack under the Englishman's door, a dark brownish-red fluid. It is blood, certainly blood! and what on earth is to be done? Apparently the Englishman (they have heard a heavy bump in the night) has either committed suicide or ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... youngest Rover, as he turned again to the lesson he had been studying. "He tries to keep up a brave front, but that crack he got on the head some weeks ago was a worse one than most folks imagine. I'm thinking he ought to be home and under the doctor's care instead of trying to rack his brains making up lessons he missed while we ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... the articles from Banneker's pen was 'A Plan of Peace Office for the United States,' for promoting and preserving perpetual peace. This article was concise and well written, and contains most of the ideas set forth today by advocates of peace. Banneker took a 'crack' at European military ideas, and advocated the abolishment in the United States of military dress and titles and all militia laws. He laid down laws for the construction of a great temple of peace in which hymns were to be ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... yards or so away from his transit to call something to Dave, when the crack of a rifle sounded from the hillside and a bullet whined near by. The engineer pivoted about. Another shot followed, and he beheld a spurt of dust close by his instrument. The hidden rifleman was not seeking to murder him, but to ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... "Discovery." The humor was in my hands. I was obliged to keep a covering on them for months at a time, changing the covering morning and night. The stinging, burning and itching sensation would be so intense that at times it seemed as if I would go crazy. When I bent the fingers the flesh would crack open and bleed. It is impossible for me to describe the intense pain and suffering which I endured night and day. After taking six bottles of the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... her cloth and showed it to him through the crack of the door and at the sight of this he was convinced; then he reflected on the advice of his teacher and repented, because he had nearly killed his sister through not ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... as an extinct controversy; and, unlike the Ossian puzzle, which was a harder nut to crack, this Rowley controversy was really settled from the start. It is not essential to our purpose to give any extended history of it. The evidence relied upon by the supporters of Rowley was mainly of the external kind: personal testimony, and especially the antecedent unlikeliness that a boy of Chatterton's ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... these, when the air was filled with the shouts and yells of attackers and besieged, when the crack of the muskets and the intermittent reports of the cannon almost deafened her, Lady Cholmley was assiduously attending to the wounded and the many cases of scurvy, which was rampant among the garrison. One of her maids who shared these labours crept out of the castle one night ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... listening again, but when she heard a short groan mingled with the sobs, she immediately tapped on the door. Instantly the sobs ceased and the room became still. Kate put her lips to the crack and said in her off-hand way: "It's only a school-marm, rooming next you. If you're ill, could I get ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... belonged was a crazy building, sapped and undermined by the rats, and only upheld by great bars of wood which were reared against its walls, and had propped it up so long that even they were decaying and yielding with their load, and of a windy night might be heard to creak and crack as if the whole fabric were about to come toppling down. The house stood—if anything so old and feeble could be said to stand—on a piece of waste ground, blighted with the unwholesome smoke of factory chimneys, and echoing the clank ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... cavities, so likely to be forced by such pressure into the skull. They were particularly anxious to detect linear fractures. One of their methods of negative diagnosis for fractures of the skull was that if the patient were able to bring his teeth together strongly, or to crack a nut without pain, then there was no fracture present. One of the commentators, however, adds to this "sed hoc aliquando fallit—but this sign sometimes fails." Split or crack fractures were also diagnosticated by the method ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... rules the royal martyr drew; The Seasons, framed with listing, found a place. And Prussia's monarch show'd his lampblack face. The morn was cold: he views with keen desire A rusty grate unconscious of a fire; An unpaid reckoning on the frieze was scored, And five crack'd ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... rain and hail, so much could not be spanned; Fell thunderbolts often on every hand, And verily the earth quaked in answer back From Saint Michael of Peril unto Sanz, From Besencun to the harbour of Guitsand; No house stood there but straight its walls must crack: In full mid-day the darkness was so grand, Save the sky split, no light was in the land. Beheld these things with terror every man, And many said: "We in the Judgement stand; The end of time is presently at hand." They ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... friend did not comply with his courteous invitation? Let it suffice, I could not come—are impossibilities nothing—be they abstractions of the intellects or not (rather) most sharp and mortifying realities? nuts in the Will's mouth too hard for her to crack? brick and stone walls in her way, which she can by no means eat through? sore lets, impedimenta viarum, no thoroughfares? racemi nimium alte pendentes? Is the phrase classic? I allude to the grapes in Aesop, which cost the fox a strain, and gained the world an aphorism. Observe ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... we really started at the hour named, and at four o'clock, with a crack of the whip, our ponies galloped out of the yard of the most delightful majatalo we had ever slept in. On we drove through the early hours of the morning, everything looking fresh and bright, the birds singing, the rabbits running across the road. As we passed fields where the peasants ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... slaves on the large plantations began work at sunrise, and toiled to the crack of the whip on the great plantations until sundown. Women and children, only half grown, were compelled to do their share in the fields. In Brazil conditions generally were easier for the slave. The Portuguese planter was perhaps less anxious to "drive" the work out ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... may possibly be mistaken in his measures," answered De Retz. "He will find Paris a hard nut to crack." ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... the right man came along. He was Sidney Shallet, a writer for The Saturday Evening Post. He seemed to have the prerequisites that were desired, so his visit to ATIC was cleared through the Pentagon. Harry Haberer, a crack Air Force public relations man, was assigned the job of seeing that Shallet got his story. I have heard many times, from both military personnel and civilians, that the Air Force told Shallet exactly what to say in his article—play down the UFO's—don't ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... away, his swift feet slowing to a walk as he neared the bit of woods where he delivered his message in an undertone. Ethel Blue meanwhile, had rushed into the house to tell Moya to heat plenty of water and to crack some ice, and Margaret had opened Mrs. Schuler's closet of simple remedies and found the bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia. Ethel Brown and James ran to meet Mrs. Tsanoff, Ethel taking the baby from her and James ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... a saucepan two and one-half cupfuls of sugar and one-half cupful of water. Stir until it is dissolved. Then wash the sides of the pan and let it boil without touching a few moments, and add a tablespoonful butter and let boil until it will crack when tested in cold water. Add a teaspoonful vanilla and turn in onto a tin to cool. Mark it off into ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... gardens by the lake The sleeping peacocks suddenly wake; Out in the gardens, moonlit and forlorn, Each of them sounds his mournful horn: Shrill peals that waver and crack and break. What can have ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... some day," Anthea was saying, dreamily looking up at the blue of the sky that showed between the long straight chestnut-leaves. But at that moment the Lamb, struggling gaily with Cyril, thrust a stout-shod little foot against his brother's chest; there was a crack!—the innocent Lamb had broken the glass of father's second-best Waterbury watch, which ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... To inform. His pall nosed and he was twisted for a crack; his confederate turned king's evidence, and he ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... us to his home and sat us down to a steaming breakfast, while a few of the chosen were invited in to watch us polish it off. The crowd remained outside, choking the road. Some of the bolder of the children crept slyly in the door, others peered shyly at us from the crack of it. And one little chap, braver than his comrades, clumped sturdily up to my knee, where he stood clutching it in round-eyed wonder and saying never a word for the rest of the ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... adventure in London has given the reader some short notice of his friend, Mr Macshane. Neither the wits nor the principles of that worthy Ensign were particularly firm: for drink, poverty, and a crack on the skull at the battle of Steenkirk had served to injure the former; and the Ensign was not in his best days possessed of any share of the latter. He had really, at one period, held such a rank in the army, but ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was over, there was a social upheaval known as "the great beard movement." Leech was very keen upon all this question of moustaches, and held with many others that no one had a right to them save the crack cavalry regiments. One day it happened that Leech, Tenniel, and Pritchett were riding together, and, agreeing on the subject, they arrived at cross-roads, where, holding their crops together, they cried "We Swear!"—not to wear ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... clothed herself in the white robes and the thick head-dress that hid her face, all except a little crack left for the eyes to peep through, whilst Betty, with the help of Inez, arrayed herself in the wondrous wedding robe beset with jewels that was Morella's bridal gift, and hid her dyed tresses beneath the pearl-sewn veil. ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... think me very queer, Each unennobled guest: I munch my chop, I quaff my beer At meal-times unrepressed, I laugh a laughter rude and loud; My little jokes I crack; The parlour-maid with mirth is bowed— Oh, bring ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... down to open the furnace door a crack, "this is mair than murder ye're comin' at; it's a buitchery—or else it's juist a ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... day when I saw the procession through a crack in the shutter, there were soldiers and police in the street. This was as usual, but I did not know it. I asked the nurse, who was pressing to the crack over my head, what the soldiers were for. Thoughtlessly she answered me, "In case of a pogrom." Yes, there were ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... had taken our leave of Master Churl, we were conducted into the apartment of Mr. Pug, a chattering young monkey, who, as soon as he saw us whipt his little hat under his arm in a crack, and seating himself upon his backside, welcomed each of us into the room by several ceremonious nods, which were intended to supply the place of a bow, and were accompanied by such a noisy affected ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... occupied almost the whole of the back seat, and Jo was squeezed into the crack which was left. Jan was perched on a sort of ledge, facing them. The carriage was narrow, six legs were two too many for the space. Jan's were the superfluous ones. He tried this pose, he tried that, but in spite of his contortions he endured much of the seven hours' ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... found was the missing one, and although apparently hidden with intent, the fact of its never having been opened seemed to suggest that Anna was innocent, and that the envelope had, by some extraordinary accident, fallen unnoticed by Anna through the crack between the boards. Anyhow, its discovery put an end to the disturbances and the apparition of the unfortunate suicide—whether guilty or innocent, and the Judgment Day can alone determine that—has ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... of it (the Body being to be buried by and by) and the croud of People was a further hindrance. But if any thing had been considerably out of order to the view, it would surely have been by some of them discover'd. Some of them thought, they discern'd a small fissure or crack in the skull; and some who held it, while it was sawing off, said, they felt it Jarring in their hands, and there seem'd to the eye something like it, but it was so small, as that by candle-light we could not agree it ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... door a little wee crack, and in they came. And one took one of her little hands, and the other took her other little hand, and they ran, ran, ran with her, right up to the top of the ground. Then ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... tight, Mame," jeered the boy. He opened a solid door behind him. Through the crack Susan saw busily writing at a table desk a bald, fat man with a pasty skin and a veined ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... I would rather live with others," Oswald said. "I am used to it, and to live in a hut on the moors would in no way be to my fancy; and if I cannot get a place where I have comrades to talk to, and crack a joke with, I would rather cross the seas, take service with an Irish chieftain, or travel to Wales, where I hear men ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... been made, by placing a stuffed bear near the house, probably in imitation of the Zoological Gardens; but the idea is rather a failure, and would appear more suitable over the door of a perfumer's shop, to intimate the presence of bear's grease. A little gim-crack model of a wooden house is also visible, by way of an ornament, stuck on the summit of a wooden pillar, but the effect is disproportioned to all surrounding objects, even more than the designs on Chinese paper; where men of six feet high ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... an improving book was prepared for children concerning a Peasant and a Camel. The Peasant was depicted as having a Hut, and a Fireside, and as loafing lazily in its warm glow. Then, in the crack of the door, appeared the appealing nose of a Camel—might he warm that nose? The lazy Peasant wouldn't take the trouble to get up and shut him out. The appealing nose became an insinuating neck, then intrusive shoulders, and presently ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... like the membrane of some huge lobster, invisibly manipulated by thirty thousand men or women, of whom each individual occupies a space of six square feet, but has a kitchen, a workshop, a bed, children, a garden, little light to see by, but must see all. Imperceptibly, the articulations begin to crack; motion communicates itself; the street speaks. By mid-day, all is alive; the chimneys smoke, the monster eats; then he roars, and his thousand paws begin to ramp. Splendid spectacle! But, O Paris! he who has not admired your gloomy passages, your gleams and flashes of light, your deep and silent ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... his partner did not comfort Jim. He was suspiciously near a breakdown. "Why didn't I take another crack at him when I had the chance?" he whimpered. "I been waitin' all ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... there," pointing out of the window in the direction of the capitol, "called the Congress, and if they would only give me the four battleships I want, I'd be perfectly willing to have any one take a crack at me." Then, for the first time recognizing the existence of the parents, the President said: "And I don't know but if they did pick me off I'd be pretty well ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... is in this old chest," she said. "I believe it really should be opened. The moths may have got into it through that crack in the lid." ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the greater part of this day by a tribe of ragged beggars, whose importunity was really disgusting. The men were in general old, flat-headed, and pot-bellied. The women skinny and flap-eared. To these garrulous ladies and gentlemen they were obliged to talk and laugh, shake hands, crack fingers, bend their bodies, bow their heads, and place their hands with great solemnity on their heads and breasts. They had not indeed a moment's relaxation from this excessive fatigue, and had Job, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... induction mostly," answered Hooker. "And when I want a rest I take a crack at the fourth dimension—spacial curvature's my hobby. But I'm always working at radio stuff. That's where the big things are going to ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the universe ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... at the sleeping youth, and then knelt beside him. The colonel briskly brought his pistol to bear on him, and with great satisfaction noted that Tom's muzzle occupied a crack in the front walls, and that he himself ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... as simple a chasm between Lord Curzon and Lord Milner. But I am afraid that the chasm will become almost imperceptible, a microscopic crack, if we compare it with the chasm that separates either or both of them from the ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... Lee, whom Clinton had faced at Boston, now met him at Charleston. Lee, and the gallant garrison there, made a brilliant and most successful resistance. The fort on Sullivan's Island, which we attacked, was a nut we could not crack. The fire of all our frigates was not strong enough to pound its shell; the passage by which we moved up to the assault of the place was not fordable, as those officers found—Sir Henry at the head of them, who was always the first to charge—who attempted ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sheep were still huddled on the edge of the ravine when there came the thud of horses' hoofs and the crack of revolvers, accompanied by hoarse, triumphant yells and cries. Melissy knew instantly what it was—the attack of cattlemen upon her defenseless flock. They had waited until the sheep were on the edge ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... reinforced and on its guard, was not an easy nut to crack. But Panama? Panama meant a risky march inland and a still riskier return by the regular treasure trail. But with the help of the Maroons, who knew the furtive byways to a foot, the thing might yet be done. Ranse thought the game not worth the candle ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... an insolent stare, as at one who had dared him. He told the same boy who had told him what Maria had said, that he thought Amy Long was the prettiest girl in school, and Maria was homely enough to crack a looking-glass, and that came back to Maria. Everything said in the school always came back, by some mysterious ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... success of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in the December 1991 balloting spurred the Algerian army to intervene and postpone the second round of elections to prevent what the secular elite feared would be an extremist-led government from assuming power. The army began a crack down on the FIS that spurred FIS supporters to begin attacking government targets. The government later allowed elections featuring pro-government and moderate religious-based parties, but did not appease the activists who progressively widened their attacks. The ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... just reseated himself, turned his chair round at that question with such vivacity that Mrs. Mivers heard it crack. Her chairs were not meant for such usage. A shade fell over her rosy ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... greedy ears to every word which fell from my lips, as, seated directly fronting him, my back supported by the binnacle, I read in a clear and distinct voice, and with due emphasis, the crude absurdities of a crack-brained religious enthusiast. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... fifth glass you will weep over yourself—you will be foolishly happy, or become stupidly noisy. From this glass will spring Prince Carnival, flippant and crack-brained. He will entice you to accompany him; you will forget your respectability, if you have any; you will forget more than you ought or dare forget. All is pleasure, gaiety, excitement; the maskers carry you off with them; ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... refugees out and killed them, nearly all, and those of them who died were still buried beneath our feet in as hideous a sepulcher as ever was digged. There was no getting them out from that tomb. The Crack of Doom will find them still there, ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... home, past the back yard, in the nick of time. We couldn't hear what the fellow was saying to Mrs. Brown, but his attitude was enough to make us pull up, and as we did so we saw him try to shove her aside. She was plucky enough and banged the door in his face, but he got his foot in the crack, so that it couldn't shut, and began to ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... and parades galore, with sham battles in which the sharp crack of rifle fire was punctured by the louder, steadier booms of field artillery. There were gun-pointing contests aboard the monitors ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... curtain it was traveling eastward at the rate of sixty miles an hour. In one minute we were all as wet as if we had fallen off the dock at home. We abandoned the car and ran for the shelter of a big tree near-by. We were no sooner under its spreading branches when, with a sound like the crack of doom, lightning struck it and it went crashing to earth in the opposite direction from us. We didn't stop to reflect what would have happened to us if it had fallen in our direction, but made for the open road where there was nothing but the sky to fall ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... staircase. Arrived at the top, the soft wind was murmuring through the great iron railings, the cages of the bells. From the centre of the vault hung the famous "Gorda," an immense bronze bell, with all one side split by a large crack; the clapper, which was the author of the mischief, lay below it, engraved and as thick as a column, and a smaller one now occupied the cavity. The roofs of the Cathedral, dark and ugly, lay at their feet, and in front on a hill rose the Alcazar, ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... table, the two smugglers, opposite each other, yielding to insistence and eating absent-mindedly the frugal things, on a cloth as white as the walls. Their broad shoulders, accustomed to loads, lean on the backs of the little chairs and make their frail wood crack. Around them come and go the Sisters, ever with their discreet talk and their puerile laugh, which escape, somewhat softened, from under their veils. Alone, she remains mute and motionless, Sister Mary Angelique: standing near her brother who is seated, she places ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... in France; Everywhere men bang and blunder, Sweat and swear and worship Chance, Creep and blink through cannon thunder. Rifles crack and bullets flick, Sing and hum like hornet-swarms. Bones are smashed and buried quick. Yet, through stunning battle storms, All the while I watch the spark Lit to guide me; for I know Dreams will triumph, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... hounds, to be sure," continued Benson: "there is a dead silence till pug is well out of cover, and the whole pack well in: then cheer the hounds with tally-ho! till your lungs crack. Away he goes in gallant style, and the whole field is hard up, till pug takes a stiff country: then they who haven't pluck lag, see no more of him, and, with a fine blazing scent, there are but few of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... in a twinkling he climbed up the nearest nut-tree, and shook it with all his might. The large nuts fell like a shower of hail, and the hungry Prince began to crack and eat them with all speed; and he did not feel quite revived until ...
— The King of Root Valley - and his curious daughter • R. Reinick
... amusement of places blessed with sea or river space, but introduced to us (Aug 2, 1879), on the Reservoir, by the Y.M.C.A., whose members had to compete with some crack rowers from Evesham, Shrewsbury, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... M'riar commented as she took the brush and started to do Anna's painfully accomplished task all over, from the big crack by the door where she had started. "'Ow's 'e hever goin' to know w'ere we 'ave moved to?" she asked ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... trek!" he repeated, making his vast whip crack like a pistol; "yes, baas, I'll inspann;" and, having satisfied himself that his "voor-slag" was properly adjusted, Swartboy rested the bamboo handle against the side of the house, and proceeded to the kraal to ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... guessed why, and smiled to herself at Eleanor's blushing shyness. "Poor child, her hands were all trembling too," she said in her thoughts. They were broken off by a low summons to the cabin door, which Eleanor held slightly ajar. Through the crack of the door ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... dinner, which is getting sadly dry in the oven at this late hour; but he will not touch it till he has fed his horses—the strong, submissive beasts, who, I fancy, are looking mild reproach at him from between their blinkers, that he should crack his whip at them in that awful manner, as if they needed such a hint! 3. See how they stretch their shoulders up the slope toward the bridge, with all the more energy because they are so near home. 4. Look at ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... might provoke—he must, at least, ask me as a favour to retain the name I have temporarily adopted—a name in my family, sir. A Losely married a Hammond, I forget when—generations ago—you'll see it in the Baronetage. My grandfather, Sir Julian, was not a crack lawyer, but he was a baronet of as good birth as any in the country; and my father, sir"—(Jasper's voice trembled) "my father," he repeated, fiercely striking his clenched hand on the table, "was a gentleman every inch of his body; and I'll pitch any ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... But me no ambition fires: I have no longing either to rise or to shine. I don't desire to be a colonel, nor an admiral, nor a member of Parliament, nor an alderman; I do not yearn for the fame of a wit, or a poet, or a philosopher, or a diner-out, or a crack shot at a rifle-match or a battue. Decidedly, I am the one looker-on, the one bystander, and have no more concern with the active world than a stone has. It is a horrible phantasmal crotchet of Goethe, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... them. After this is done you will force the expander into the flues driving it well up, in order to bring the shoulder of expander up snug against the head of the flue. Then drive the tapering pin into the expander. By driving the pin in too far you may spread the flue sufficient to crack it or you are more liable, by expanding too hard, to spread the hole in flue sheet and thereby loosen other flues. You must be careful about this. When you think you have expanded sufficient, hit the pin a side blow in order to loosen it, and turn the ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... safe-guarded from even the thought of peril. And here was this little one left to the wild beasts! "Thank God! Thank God I came!" murmured the settler, as he dropped on one knee to take a surer aim. There was a loud report (not like the sharp crack of a rifle), and the female panther, shot through the loins, fell in a heap, snarling furiously and striking ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... white man; and which for a moment stirred up an evil spirit in my animal nature. Entering a large paved court-yard, around which ran galleries filled with slaves of all ages, sexes, and colours, I heard the snap of a whip, every stroke of which sounded like the sharp crack of a pistol. I turned my head, and beheld a sight which absolutely chilled me to the marrow of my bones, and gave me, for the first time in my life, the sensation of my hair stiffening at the roots. There ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... they going to do about it? Should they sit quietly and starve like a lost tribe wandering in the desert? Did they wish to see their wives naked and their children hungry? No! Mr. Butefish smote the table until the crack in the water pitcher lengthened. Then by all that was Great and Good, somebody had ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... responsible for this. As for his official rank—with us Russians the rank comes first—he was what is called a perpetual titular councillor, over which, as is well known, some writers make merry and crack their jokes, obeying the praiseworthy custom of attacking those who ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... days, with hardly a break for three or four months; an invigorating breeze always blowing, the thermometer ranging between 50 deg. and 60 deg., a cloudless sky, the air perfectly dry, so that furniture and wood fittings shrink, and crack audibly. As rain does not fall during this favored season, the dust becomes objectionable; but that drawback does not extend to shipboard. The man must be unreasonable who doubts life being worth living during the northeast ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... pillars. The subsequently-added roof did not fit properly on to that of the original verandah, and there was a considerable chink between the beam that supported it and the wall that enclosed the old verandah, so that the house afforded endless nesting sites. An inch-wide crack is quite large enough to admit of the passage of a tit; when this was negotiated the space between the old and the new roof afforded endless possibilities. Small wonder, then, that a pair of tits had ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... for supper, the whole school jumped upon the tables and cheered and broke the chairs on the floor and smashed the crockery—for a given time, until the Reverend Mother rang a hand-bell. That is of course the Catholic tradition—saturnalia that can end in a moment, like the crack of a whip. I don't, of course, like the tradition, but I am bound to say that it gave Nancy—or at any rate Nancy had—a sense of rectitude that I have never seen surpassed. It was a thing like a knife that looked out of her eyes and that spoke with her voice, just now ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... stop that man first," said he. "But what excuse have I? He may be nothing but a crank, with some crack-brained idea in his head. We'll soon know; for there's certainly ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... to be the performers in this ingenious theatre, it is the unaccustomed stranger who is forced into the position of actor. As he toils up the steep and slovenly streets, faced with shabby buildings that crack and blacken behind their ill-adjusted fronts of stucco and distemper, he cheapens rapidly in his own view: he feels painfully like the hapless supernumerary whom he has seen mounting an obvious step-ladder behind a screen of rock-work on his way to a wedding in the chapel or a coronation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... chase the hours away. Where the huge heap lies centred in the hall, The lamp suspended from the cheerful wall, Brown corn-fed nymphs, and strong hard-handed beaux, Alternate ranged, extend in circling rows, Assume their seats, the solid mass attack; The dry husks rustle, and the corn-cobs crack; The song, the laugh, alternate notes resound, And the sweet cider trips in silence round. The laws of husking every wight can tell; And sure, no laws he ever keeps so well: For each red ear a general kiss he gains, With each smut ear he ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Beneventum, whither the noble Vatinius has summoned me to make a trial, in presence of Caesar, of a certain Syphax, the most powerful negro that Africa has ever produced. Dost thou imagine, lord, how his spinal column will crack in my arms, or how besides I shall break his black jaw with ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... down with a scurry and plunge, nervously edging up to the door, wagging his tail, and with a low, anxious whine springing one side and another, his paws now on the sill, his nose at the crack, until the door was finally ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... in wait for the Premier to utter them. Only by an effort of will could he lift them to a plane of high interest. He could sketch great issues with the solemn hand of a great preacher pronouncing a benediction; but he never could utter an aside, or crack a joke, or tell a story, or forget that once upon a time Fate had picked him to be a leader and so help him he would go through the motions of shepherding while the other men were the real collie dogs of the flock. If only Borden could have broken some bucking broncho, or worn some new ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... right off! Can't a fellow crack a joke? Don't you see that it's a joke? Drink ahead, dearie! I'm drinking too. And then ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... the community for sociability. The ringing of the front-door bell interrupted "The Suwannee River," and Peggy, who was nearest the door, jumped up to answer the summons, while Hobo, a little ahead of her as usual, stood with his nose to the crack, gravely attentive, as if to satisfy himself as to the intentions of the new arrival. This time the open door revealed Rosetta Muriel, struggling to lower a refractory umbrella, with her hat ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... the porch to look up. The green and red rock wall sheered ponderously near. The waterfall showed first at the notch of a fissure, where the cliff split; and down over smooth places the water gleamed, to narrow in a crack with little drops, and suddenly to leap ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... points!" he cried, as he knelt to take aim. Every one was well aware of the doctor's power of shooting, and waited the result with bated breath. The savage seemed to bend backward for the cast of the spear. At that moment the crack of the doctor's rifle was heard, and the right arm of the ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... trenches, cutting up their barbed wire entanglements, killing any human life that could not hide below the ground. The din of guns was unceasing, and made a great symphony of staccato notes on a thunderous instrument. I could distinguish the sharp crack of the field batteries and the deeper boom of the heavier guns. When one of these spoke there was a trembling of earth, and through the sky a great shell hurtled, with such a rush of air that it seemed like an express ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... in peace till the confirmed invalids are destroyed. At the best it will be a difficult work. Our countrymen, you will permit the name, my friends, have unexpected possibilities in their blood. And even this India will be a hard nut to crack. It is assumed that Russia has but to find Britain napping, buy a passage from the more northerly tribes, and sweep down on the Punjab. I need not tell you how impossible such a land invasion is. It is my opinion that when the time comes the attack will be by sea ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... some subconscious feeling. At any rate, he held it aloft and gazed at it in the light. As he did so a strange thing happened. Reflected in its surface on the glass, yet distorted like a convex mirror, he could see the door of the closet open just a crack and the evil faces of ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... Harry, champion, by acclamation, of the College heavyweights, broad-shouldered, bull-necked, square-jawed, six feet and trimmings, a little science, lots of pluck, good-natured as a steer in peace, formidable as a red-eyed bison in the crack of hand-to-hand battle! Who forgets the great muster-day, and the collision of the classic with the democratic forces? The huge butcher, fifteen stone,—two hundred and ten pounds,—good weight,—steps out like Telamonian Ajax, defiant. No words from Harry, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... bow is covered, tuck the end of the weaver through the wale and under the second row and clip the end, leaving it just long enough to stay in place. The handle bow needs to be damp enough to be flexible, but unless the winding weaver is well soaked it will crack and make trouble. ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... I from the building's top Hear the rattling thunder drop, While the devil upon the roof (If the devil be thunder-proof) Should with poker fiery red Crack the stones and melt the lead; Drive them down on every skull, While the den of thieves is full; Quite destroy that harpies' nest, How might then our isle ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... as the Arctic Circle, mountain ranges, some of great altitude, are everywhere visible. There are also many large lakes, surrounded by the swamps, and impenetrable forests, that formerly rendered Alaska so hard a nut for the explorer to crack. Only a few miles north of the coast range fertile soil and luxurious vegetation are replaced by Arctic deserts. Here, for eight months of the year, plains and rivers are merged into one vast wilderness of ice, save during the short summer when dog-roses bloom and the coarse luxurious ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... this,' sais I, as I gave Old Clay a crack of the whip, to push on. 'There is some critters here, I guess, that have found a haw haw's nest, with a tee hee's egg in it. What's in the wind now?' Well, a sudden turn of the road brought me to where they was, and who should they be but French officers from the Prince's ship, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... all off by then, seein' as how I hadn't rung the bell at any crack. That's why I was so free with the hot air. Mr. Pepper, he squints at me good and hard, and then pushes ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... money-making enterprises of the Roman world. They maintained luxurious headquarters in the most congested business districts of the capital. They had offices adjacent to each of the circuses, they possessed huge congeries of buildings utilized as stables for their crack racers and barracks for their charioteers, and provided with spacious courtyards for training their teams. Outside of Rome they had similar offices and training-stables in every city and in most towns of any size or wealth. Besides they owned countless stud-farms, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... within the hut. Only from a crack under the door could any light enter. For an instant after the taunting of the voices of the men who had locked them in reached their ears, the trio of ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... was. On such nights it was as though a fit of fleshly madness were passing over Paris. The girl was rather nervous certainly, for the most modish gentlemen were always the most obscene. All the varnish would crack off a man, and the brute beast would show itself, exacting, monstrous in lust, a past master in corruption. But besides being nervous, that trollop of a Satin was lacking in respect. She would blurt ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... about time for the boys to start for home. The General took each of them aside, and talked for a long time. He was speaking to Willy, on the edge of the clearing, when there was a crack of a twig in the pines. In a second he had laid the boy on his back in the soft grass and whipped out a pistol. Then, with a low, quick call to Hugh, he sprang swiftly into the pines toward ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... Even at that late hour I personally knew that the clique had strength in reserve, and had I enjoyed the support of my company, would willingly have stood for a compromise. But it was out of the question to suggest it, and, trusting to the new administration, we politely told them to crack their whips. ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... began to perceive that her nephew was something to be proud of, and to understand how much was sacrificed, while George Rivers expressed his opinion to her that Norman would be a crack speaker in the House, and he hoped she would say everything to hinder his going out, for it was a regular shame to ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... against its confining surface. The danger in thrown ware comes from an uneven pressure on the clay resulting in a lack of solidity; the pieces are not always equally firm at all points and in consequence sometimes crack." ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... of the expiring conversation, and seizing forcibly upon the topic of the weather, inserted that useful wedge into the rapidly closing crack, and waited for Verty to strike the ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... Lausaune, pride of the Pays de Vaud. The clepsydrae that measure the centuries as they drop from the dizzy cliffs—the glaciers, by the descent of which "time is marked out, as by a shadow on a dial," and which thunder out the high noon of each revolving year with their frozen tongues, as they crack beneath the summer's sun—have registered a new centennial circle, and at the very hour of its completion, Switzerland vindicates her ancient renown in these fair pages, at once pledge and performance, of another of her honored children. May the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... therefore, during the first year or two after it is planted in the fields, maize is sown between the matas, or young shoots, to screen them from the too great influence of the sun. When the leaves are ripe, that is to say, when on being bent they crack or break off, the gathering commences. The leaves are stripped from the branches, a task usually performed by women, and it requires great care lest the tender leaves and young twigs should be injured. In some districts, the Indians are so very careful in gathering the coca, that, instead ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... brush, old wood, and sods, and converting them into ashes or charcoal, is one which we could often adopt with decided advantage. Our premises would be cleaner, and we should have less fungus to speck and crack our apples and pears, and, in addition, we should have a quantity of ashes or burnt earth, that is not only a manure itself, but is specially useful to mix with moist superphosphate and other artificial manures, to make them dry enough and bulky enough to be easily and ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... a usual plan with people who are prospectively fashionable. They do nothing with the drawing-room, library, and reception-room until the daughter of the house is pronounced ready. The plastering, after a dry of eighteen years, has had plenty of time to settle, and is not apt to crack the costly papers or ruin the elaborate frescoes; and the wood-work no longer in danger of warping or ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... showing aversion, but the boy gazed straight at her with an insolent stare, as at one who had dared him. He told the same boy who had told him what Maria had said, that he thought Amy Long was the prettiest girl in school, and Maria was homely enough to crack a looking-glass, and that came back to Maria. Everything said in the school always came back, by some mysterious law ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... think the service was all the better for it. Nowadays, in your crack ships, a mate has to go down in the hold or spirit-room, and after whipping up fifty empty casks, and breaking out twenty full ones, he is expected to come on quarter-deck as clean as if he was just come out ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... tied, bridled, saddled and mounted my mustang in exactly nine minutes from the crack of the gun. The time of the next nearest competitor was twelve minutes and thirty seconds. This gave me the record and championship of the West, which I held up to the time I quit the business in 1890, and my record has never been beaten. It is worthy of passing remark that ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... an hour," the large young man told the girl, "the real fireworks should be starting. What's coming up now is just small debris from the nuclear blast. When the shockwaves get down far enough to crack things open, the gas'll come up, and then steam and ash, and then the magma. This one ought to be twice as good as the one we shot three months ago; it ought to be every bit as good as Krakatoa, on Terra, in ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... resumed, but above the sound was a guttural voice that shouted hoarsely in accents of dismay. "Eighty-seven-G!" Schwartzmann was exclaiming, "—Mein Gott! It iss our own ship, the Alaskan! Our crack flyer!" ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... happened. 'Why, now that this weight is lifted off my heart, I could see a path in an untravelled forest! Good-bye, you dear, darling, cruel boy! I must run, for every moment is precious to mamma.' And with one strangling hug, which made Dicky's ribs crack, ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... band, affording more blare than music, proclaimed the time had come for a start, and the crack of Mayor Jones' revolver gave the signal for a race through the sand ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... from among her dead. Grey night falls on your going and black night on your returning. You go Under the thunder of the guns, the shrapnel's rain and the curved lightning of the shells, And where the high towers are broken, And houses crack like the staves of a thin crate filled with fire; Into the mixing smoke and dust of roof and walls torn asunder You go; And ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... unworthiness, of helplessness, of cowardice, rushed back upon him. Then, abruptly, there came upon him this thought—"Vere believes I have power over Hermione." And then followed the thought—"Gaspare believes that I have power over her." And the ice seemed to crack. He saw fissures in it. He saw it melting. He saw the "thing" it had covered appearing, being gradually ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... his time over the simple operation. His impulse towards unreserve puzzled him, and several seconds of silence passed before he spoke again; silence, emphasised by broken snatches of talk and laughter; by the sharp crack of guns; and the whirring of a hundred wings, like the restless murmuring in the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... occupy positions that you must attack and from which they can escape. If I could have had my own way on arrival I should have pushed through Bethulie to Bloemfontein, but the fat was in the fire before I got out. Kimberley I believe will be saved. Ladysmith is a terrible nut to crack, but I hope it will (? be relieved). Then I would propose to attack Bloemfontein from Kimberley, and I think an army holding Bloemfontein based on Kimberley will be better off than one which holds Bloemfontein but has allowed Kimberley to be again invested. Time, after all, is in our favour. ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... undergo another species of purification," said Solomon Eagle, who was present during these proceedings; "one that shall search every nook within it—shall embrace all those columns, and pierce every crack and crevice in those sculptured ornaments; and then, and not till then, will it be ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... eighty yards. I had my old Ceylon No. 10 double rifle, and I took a steady shot at a large dark-colored bull. The satisfactory sound of the ball upon his hide was followed almost immediately by his blundering forward for about twenty yards and falling heavily in the low bush. I heard the crack of the ball of my left-hand barrel upon another fine beast, but no effects followed. Bacheet quickly gave me the single two-ounce Manton rifle, and I singled out a fine dark-colored bull, who fell on his knees to the shot, but, recovering, hobbled off disabled, apart from the herd, with a foreleg ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... should be then? He answered, In the hands of a few, who should be despised and undervalued of all[221], but especially by these ministers who buried Christ; but after that he shall get up upon them, and at the crack of his winding sheet as many of them as are alive, who were at his burial, shall be distracted and mad with fear, not knowing what to do; then, John, there shall be brave days such as the church of Scotland never saw the like, but I shall ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... red at the unexpected compliment, but before she had time to enjoy it, or to reply, there came a sudden knock at the dining-room door, and Janey's black face peered in at the crack. ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... the gravel below. Henrietta's neat limpid accents and Charles Verity's grave ones. The flourish and crack of a whip and scrambling start of the little chestnut horses. The rhythmical beat of their quick even trot and thin tinkle of their collar bells receding into ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the spurs into Velox's side, and was off. It was time, for his pursuers were shouting, "Halt! Halt!" and then the sharp crack of rifles was heard, and balls went whizzing by Turner's head. But he was soon at the turn, and with one wild yell of mingled triumph and hate he turned to the right, plunged into the thick woods, and was lost to ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... detected a faint splitting noise, like the crack of young ice in forming, under his feet. In an ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... a little crack beginning to extend out each side from the wedge. The crack ran along across the end of the log, and thence down the side, and grew wider and wider every moment. At last, the wedge was driven in as far as it would go, and still the ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... prisoner forward to the fire! Now, hark ye, dog of a land-shark; you are as surely a dead man as though you were laid out with the tapers burning. See here'—he lifted a torch, and showed by its red light a great crack in the floor across the far end of the cave—'you can judge of the Black Drop's depth!' he said, raising an empty keg and tossing it over into the yawning gulf. For ten seconds we stood silent before a dull distant ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... second story on the alarm, charged three hundred dollars for it, and went his way. By and by, one night, I found a burglar in the third story, about to start down a ladder with a lot of miscellaneous property. My first impulse was to crack his head with a billiard cue; but my second was to refrain from this attention, because he was between me and the cue rack. The second impulse was plainly the soundest, so I refrained, and proceeded to compromise. I redeemed the property at former rates, after deducting ten per cent. for use of ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... that it is discreditable to acknowledge one's self in the wrong, and always more becoming to fight than apologize. "The code" has been abandoned in the Northern States and in England in the regulations of the relations of individual men, and a duellist is looked on, if not as a wicked, as a crack-brained person; but in some degree in both of them, and in a great degree in all other countries, it still regulates the mode in which international quarrels are ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... the daughter of a Philistine. Going down toward Timnath, a lion came out upon him, and, although this young giant was weaponless, he seized the monster by the long mane and shook him as a hungry hound shakes a March hare, and made his bones crack, and left him by the wayside bleeding under the smiting of his fist and the grinding ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... Killed him first crack. He was mighty good eating, too. But there wasn't much game. Too many people on ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... after a particular pattern, sent over to China a specimen dish, ordering that it should be exactly copied for the whole service. It unfortunately happened that in the dish so sent over the Chinese manufacturer discovered a crack; the consequence was, that the entire service sent over to the party ordering it had a crack in each article, ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... should be scalded or blown to atoms by a sudden freak of Kilauea, though I don't see that he was capable of preventing either catastrophe! A slight grass shed has been built over a sulphur steam crack, and within this there is a deep box with a sliding lid and a hole for the throat, and the victim is supposed to sit in this and be steamed. But on this occasion the temperature was so high, that my hand, which I unwisely experimented ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... crashing to the floor. He had made a start a good deal like that when I told him how the Rackbirds had been swept out of existence when I had opened the flood-gate that let out the waters of the lake, and I had heard the chair crack then. Now, while he had been telling me about his finding that man in the sand, with his load of gold, I had been listening, but I had also been thinking, and almost any man can think faster than another one can talk, and so by ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... all other walrus hunts I was in, I had a hard time in trying not to take a crack at the floats. They were black, and jumped around in the weirdest way, so that they appeared to be alive. I knew that if I shot one, I would never hear the last of it, so ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... all before. They think they're going to stop in time, but they never do. Old prostration catches 'em first every crack. You think an hour a day exercise would be kind of a waste, ain't that right? Kind of a dead loss off'n ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the same time rolling with fierce violence. As rapidly as possible we bailed with our kettles, but the effort was useless. At length, as we neared the end, an immense billow broke upon our port bow with a resounding crack. The little craft succumbed. With a quick careen she turned upside down, and we were in the foaming current. I threw up my hand and fortunately grasped a spare oar that was fastened along the outside of the boat. This ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... moment, after skillfully simulated passes made by the magnetizer, Mr. David suddenly becomes as rigid as a stick of wood, and falls in pivoting on his heels (Fig. 1). Did not Mr. Harmington run to his assistance, he would inevitably crack his skull upon the floor, but the magnetizer stands just behind him in order to receive him in his arms. Then he lifts him, and places him upon two chairs just as he would do with a simple board. He places the head of the subject upon the seat of one of the chairs ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... blowing a trumpet. The barrel-organ accompanying the carrousel sent through the air its shrill jerky notes. The lottery-wheel made a whirring sound like that of cloth tearing, and every moment the crack of the rifle could be heard. And the slow-moving throng passed on quietly in front of the booths resembling paste in a fluid condition, with the motions of a flock of sheep and the awkwardness of heavy animals who had escaped ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... A Nut to crack for the readers of Professor De Morgan's 'Budget of Paradoxes.' By James Smith, Esq. Liverpool, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... going on as usual along one of the straight, dusty, unlovely roads that lead to the city of Rubens. It was full midsummer, and very warm. His cart was very heavy, piled high with goods in metal and in earthenware. His owner sauntered on without noticing him otherwise than by the crack of the whip as it curled round his quivering loins. The Brabantois had paused to drink beer himself at every wayside house, but he had forbidden Patrasche to stop a moment for a draught from the canal. Going along thus, in ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... some shop to escape a street mob that was pursued by soldiers. Also, a bomb burst near me, once, in some still street, where, look as I would, up and down, I could see no human being. But my next sharp recollection begins with the crack of a rifle and an abrupt becoming aware that I am being fired at by a soldier in an automobile. The shot missed, and the next moment I was screaming and motioning the signals. My memory of riding in the automobile is very hazy, though this ride, in turn, ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... The scholars shouted with laughter to see the terror of the dupe, who, feeling abashed at the needless fright, made no very strict investigation, and Nig once more escaped punishment. She had provided herself with cigars, and puffing, puffing away at the crack of the drawer, had filled it with smoke, and then closed it tightly to deceive the teacher, and amuse the scholars. The interim of terms was filled up with a variety of duties new and peculiar. At home, no matter how powerful the heat when sent to rake hay or guard the grazing herd, ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... crawl out between the logs, that much is certain; but the door is almost ready to drop from its hinges, and has a good deal of play back and forth behind the bar. If he had a thin, stout stick he could slip it through the crack, lift the bar and ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... gave a noble even so much as a Damiens-scratch which didn't kill or even hurt, he got Damiens' dose for it just the same; they pulled him to rags and tatters with horses, and all the world came to see the show, and crack jokes, and have a good time; and some of the performances of the best people present were as tough, and as properly unprintable, as any that have been printed by the pleasant Casanova in his chapter about the dismemberment of Louis ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a long, slim fellow, with a small, snake-like head. And he always knew that if he could squeeze his head through a crack he could get his body through ...
— The Tale of Peter Mink - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the bed, crept to the unclosed door and peeped through the crack. Boris was lying asleep on the sofa. His tangled hair hung down on his forehead, and his pale face wore the grief-stricken and at the same time helpless expression with which sound sleep overspreads a face. On the table stood the champagne bottle and a half-emptied glass. The candle had burned very ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... rope snap back to his hand he could not realize at first just what had happened. The crack of the gun had been no louder than the snapping of a twig in that storming of the river, and the only explanation he could find was that the rope had struck some superlatively sharp edge of the rock and been sawed in two. But ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... and growled and barked like mad. Bimeby he got tired, and come back lookin' kind o' skeered, and says I: 'Ye're a purty dog, ain't ye?' Jest then I hearn the thing nigher, and I begun to hear the brush crack. I knowed I'd got to meet some new sort of a creetur, and I jest stepped back and took my rifle. When I stood in the door agin, I seen somethin' comin'. It was a walkin' on two legs like a man, and it was a man, or somethin' that looked like one. He ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... other than a nation of mere lovers and would-be imitators of Charles Lamb. The moralistic type of humor, the crack of Juvenal's whip, as well as the delicate Horatian playing around the heart-strings, has characterized our humor and satire from the beginning. At bottom the American is serious. Beneath the surface of his jokes there is moral earnestness, there is ethical passion. Take, for ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... spasmodic jars. Then somebody shouted, there was a crash, and the end of a broken warp, flying back, tore up the dazzling water. The windlass stopped, and a few moments later a clump of mangroves swayed. Kit heard green wood crack, as a rope that had stretched and strained began to move. Then Mayne ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... Chatham. At the last moment the seconds managed to arrange matters between their principals, and the affair ended without bloodshed. This was fortunate for Willis, who was little used to fire-arms, whilst Marryat was a crack shot. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... to be all plain sailin' enough.' It wasn't my business to point out to 'em that they'd prob'ly find Mr Forbes a hard nut to crack, you see, sir; so I makes out to be quite satisfied with their plans, and to be quite ready to join in with 'em; and then I was took into the fo'c's'le and introjuced to the rest as havin' joined 'em, and everybody said how glad they was to have me, and that now there'd ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... several of those lofty trees as we came along. This bill is evidently formed for the purpose of eating this kanary-nut, which no other bird can do. By-the-by, I picked up one. Here it is. See! it is so hard that a heavy hammer alone can crack it." ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... of you through the crack of the door for the last 'arf hour; and you've not done a dam' stroke all the time. You make out yer time sheet, and go to the office at nine o'clock and git yer money; we can't afford to pay you ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... for one brief moment. Then there was a red flash under the apple trees followed by the sharp crack of a rifle. There was another brief moment of silence, and then the young girl sighed softly, leaned forward, and ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... Oil', perhaps he'll be good now; with it we'll submit This fine German rouge. I fear he is pale." "Monsieur Antoine, don't rail At misfortune. He treated me well and fairly." "And you prefer him to Bourbons, admit it squarely." "Heaven forbid!" Bang! Whack! Squeak! Squeak! Crack! CRASH! "Oh, Lord, Martin! That shield is hash. The whole street is covered with golden bees. They look like so many yellow peas, Lying there in the mud. I'd like to paint it. 'Plum pudding of Empire'. That's rather quaint, it Might take with the ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... deck!" brought the sleeping watch from the bunks below, and the carpenter, steward, and sailmaker from the steerage. The foresail ripped from its bolt ropes with a deafening crack, and tore to ribbons in the gale. As the ship lay into the wind, I could hear the captain's voice louder than the very storm, "Meet her!—Meet her!—Ease her off!" But the reply of the man at the wheel was lost in the ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... light was there in the great hall through which Leothric ascended, for it only entered through arrow slits here and there, and in the world outside evening was waning fast. The stairway led up to two folding doors, and they stood a little ajar, and through the crack Leothric entered and tried to continue straight on, but could get no farther, for the whole room seemed to be full of festoons of ropes which swung from wall to wall and were looped and draped from the ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... Yeomanry. Creed's former master's face wore that dare-devil look with which he had been wont to say: "D—-n it, Creed! lend me a pound. I've got no money!" On the other hand, in a green frame which had once been plush, and covered by a glass with a crack in the left-hand corner, was a portrait of the Dowager Countess of Glengower, as this former mistress of his appeared, conceived by the local photographer, laying the foundation-stone of the local almshouse. During the wreck of Creed's career, which, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... this, as on every other night, my trusty gun lay close beside me. I seized it, and, half-rising, so that the fire behind me afforded light for a steady aim, I leveled it exactly between the eyes. I fired, the bullet sped on its deadly errand, and the crack of the noble rifle, thundering against the steep rocks, returned with loud ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... and peeping in at that crack, saw a man down on his knees working at the lock of the safe, while another stood close beside him, holding a dark lantern, open, so that the rays of light fell full and strongly upon the lock his ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... ingenious machine. I should beg to recommend wheels to be substituted for legs to it, for its easier conveyance from one part of the ship to the other, and that he would sacrifice beauty to strength, as a slight mahogany jim crack is not well calculated to the severity of heat we are exposed to, in climates ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... recited and the patient stroked with the bundle of herbs, one of his ears and both his arm-pits are moistened with a blood-red spittle produced by the chewing of betel-nut, pepper, and lime. Then they take hold of his fingers and make each of them crack, one after the other, while they recite some of the words of the preceding incantation. Next three men take each of them a branch of the volju tree, bend it into a bow, and stroke the sick man from head to foot, while they recite another incantation, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... gate against the post! Her heart-strings like to crack: For, much she fear'd the grisly Ghost Would ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... watched the hungry wolves eat up his nicely browned fat ducks. His foot pained him more and more. He heard them crack the small round bones with their strong long teeth and eat out the oily marrow. Now severe pains shot up from his foot through his whole body. "Hin-hin-hin!" sobbed Iktomi. Real tears washed brown streaks ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... people remained below-ground expecting a repetition of that never-to-be-forgotten crashing explosion, followed by the sickening noise of the splinters tearing through the air, sometimes just over one's head, like the crack of a very long whip, manipulated by a master-hand. The smallest piece of one of these fragments was sufficient to kill a man, and scarcely anyone wounded with a shell ever seemed to survive, the wounds being nearly always terribly severe, ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... making of those Fields had taken maybe a million years, and the "dump" thereof had been cast into the "Crack," whence came the Earth-Current, and which had bottom beyond all soundings. And this Underground Country had its own winds and air-currents; so that, to my memory, it was in no ways connected to the monstrous ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... have admired me, but to have respected me also. I was to have been the knight without fear, but, rarer yet, without reproach—Galahad, not Launcelot. I had learnt myself to be a feeble, backboneless fighter, conquered by the first serious assault of evil, a creature of mean fears, slave to every crack of the devil's whip, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... web, she left the loom; She made three paces thro' the room, She saw the water-lily [16] bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look'd down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; "The curse is come upon me," ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... wise, Prudent, and skill'd in learned rhetorick— Think'st thou 'twere sad to gaze upon the look, That sudden on the harlot's painted features, Set in the stale attraction of forc'd smiles, Darkens so wildly—that, like one amaz'd, From the crack'd glass she staggers, to her brow Lifts her wan, jewell'd finger—tries to think? The wanton provocation of her features Chang'd all to sickly twilight, blank dismay— And when thought comes, to see the poor wretch quiver, Her eyes' fire turn'd to water—those blue eyes, Where once sweet fancies ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... think so, my Lord. If you knew me to be wrong you would not be so sore with me. Nevertheless I am under deep obligation for kind-hearted hospitality. If an American can make up his mind to crack up everything he sees here, there is no part of the world in which he can get along better." He had already written a long letter home to his friend Mr. Josiah Scroome, and had impartially sent to that gentleman not only his own lecture, but also a large collection ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... losengeth," [flatters] was the careless answer. "Fare you well. I'll not hinder you. As for Satan, though it pleaseth you to count me in with him, I'll be no surety for his doings. Master Foljambe, go you after this crack-brained dame of mine, or tarry you here with me and drink a cup ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... the slope. He straightened himself in his seat with both hands on the reins, and Agatha held her breath when she felt the light vehicle tilt as the wheels on one side sank deep in a rut. Then something seemed to crack, and she saw the off-side horse stumble and plunge. The other beast flung its head up, Hawtrey shouted something, and there was a great smashing and snapping of undergrowth and fallen branches as they drove in among the birches. Then the team stopped, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... of any engagement at all," he said. "I made it plain as a pikestaff to them both. It mustn't be thought I countenanced their crack-brained troth-plighting. 'T was by reason of my final 'Nay' that Will went off. He 's gone out of her life, and she 'm free as the air. I tell you this because you may have heard different, and you mix with the countryside and can contradict any man who gives out otherwise. And, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... spot in the wainscotting; then, wagging his bushy tail with a satisfied air, he would return to his master as if to tell him to concentrate his attention on this spot. The sergeant then began to examine the wall and the woodwork; he tried to insinuate his sword into some crack; there was no sign of an opening. Still, a door might have been there, for the flowers carved on the woodwork would hide a skilfully constructed sliding panel. The essential thing was to find the spring that made this panel ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... slipping back, it is no culture properly so called, but a sham, a mask of wax, a varnish with cruel glitter; and what a double wrath will be poured on him who cracks the wax and the varnish, not only because of the rude awakening, but because the crack shows ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... into another catastrophe, and his skating exposed itself as of anything but a graceful and "swan-like" style; where, too, Mr. Pickwick revived the sliding propensities of his boyhood with infinite zest until the ice gave way with a "sharp, smart crack", and Mr. Pickwick's hat, gloves, and handkerchief, floating on the surface, were all of Mr. ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... is done these same bees set themselves to work to carefully close up every opening which is round about the lower part of the hive. Finally when every crack has been carefully looked over, filled up and covered with propolis, they begin to varnish the whole of the interior sides. By this time guardians are placed at the entrance of the hive, and very soon a number of the working bees start on their first ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... it's rather too bad when these great singers marry themselves into silence before they have a crack in their voices. And the husband is a public robber. I remember Leroux saying, 'A man might as well take down a fine peal of church bells and carry them off to the steppes," said Sir Hugo, setting down his cup and turning ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... divided into two equal parts—the starboard and the port watches. Now form a straight line, toe the crack, and call your numbers in order, beginning ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... don't know how to work it off. Irene keeps doing; but Pen just sits in her room and mopes. She don't even read. I went up this afternoon to scold her about the state the house was in—you can see that Irene's away by the perfect mess; but when I saw her through the crack of the door I hadn't the heart. She sat there with her hands in her lap, just staring. And, my goodness! she JUMPED so when she saw me; and then she fell back, and began to laugh, and said she, 'I thought it was my ghost, mother!' I felt as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... nick-nacks is unquestioned. Ornaments, I admit, are ornamental; and works of art afford intellectual amusement of the highest order. But then perfection is their only merit; and a crack or a flaw destroys all the pleasure of a sensible beholder. Yet I have not a statue that is not a torso, nor a Chelsea china shepherdess with her full complement of fingers. I have not a vase with both its handles, a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... and then our new mayor, Mr. Jourdan, chevalier de St. Louis, the vicar, Mr. Loth, and the new commandant, Mr. Robert de la Faisanderie, in his embroidered uniform, would wait for them at the gate, and when they heard the postilion's whip crack they would go forward, smiling as if some great good fortune had arrived, and the moment the coach stopped, the commandant would run and open ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... a place, And Prussia's monarch show'd his lamp-black face. The morn was cold: he views with keen desire A rusty grate, unconscious of a fire; An unpaid reckoning on the frieze was scored, And five crack'd teacups dress'd ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... helped to organize the procession. Their reminders are even beginning to take form as records of achievement; annals very far from meager, for achievement piles up faster since Democracy set the gate of opportunity on the crack, and we pack more into a half century than we used to. And women, more obviously than men, perhaps, have "speeded up" in response to the democratic stimulus; their accomplishment along social, political, industrial, and above all, educational lines, since the first woman's college ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... face, like as if he couldn' make it all out. As the tide rose him up nearer, I crawled away further up. Seemed to me he an' the boat was after me like a sick dream, an' I grinned every time the timbers gave an extry loud crack. At last her bottom was stove, an' she filled very quiet an' went down. The wind was fresher by this an' some heavy clouds comin' up. Then it rained. I don't rightly know if this was the same day or no: can't fit in the days an' nights. ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it turned out very well, Reuben. Aside from putting the first crack in Mavis Greenfield's defenses, it shook up Dr. Al to the point where he decided to collect as much as he could tonight, cash the checks, and clear out. So he set himself up for the pinch. We probably gained as much as three or four ...
— Ham Sandwich • James H. Schmitz
... some straggling cottages: and the carriage begins to rattle and roll over a horribly uneven pavement. As if the equipage were a great firework, and the mere sight of a smoking cottage chimney had lighted it, instantly it begins to crack and splutter, as if the very devil were in it. Crack, crack, crack, crack. Crack-crack- crack. Crick-crack. Crick-crack. Helo! Hola! Vite! Voleur! Brigand! Hi hi hi! En r-r-r-r-r-route! Whip, wheels, driver, stones, beggars, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... I'll take a crack at being patrol leader," Tim repeated. "I have two votes already, Ritter and Wally Woods. My own, of course, is three. All I need is another. Now, how ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... Rector could not swim, or would be disabled by his lameness. And . . . was he sorry? He had not answered this question when the crash came—the ferry-boat striking the very stem of the keel, her gunwale giving way to it with a slow grinding noise, then with a bursting crack as the splinters broke inwards. As it seemed to him, there were two distinct bumps, and between them the boat filled slowly and the mare slid away into the water. He heard voices shouting on board the keel. The water rose to his knees and he sank in it, almost on top of Mr. Wesley. At once ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... mother, "there's someone outside." There was a step, as of someone retreating after peeping through a crack in the door, but it was not old Poley's step; then, from farther off, a cough that was like old Poley's cough, but had a rack ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... said at last. "It's a rather hard problem to crack. I wish there was some one in the family we could go to ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... the crack of a rifle sounded on the still night air. It was followed by another shot, and another, until four distinct reports had rolled ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... you are a real Kerry man of respectable convictions, and self-respecting into the bargain, you will never let the man who is drinking with you entertain any opinions but your own at election times. If he contradicts you, it's up with your stick and a crack on his skull, and as that only tickles him up—having much the effect of a nettle under a donkey's tail—you then go outside and mutually destroy as much of each other as can be effected in a fight. Some weeks later, when the vanquished is able to crawl away from the dispensary doctor, and ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... found in the Political Police, or acting as mere ciphers whose existence is a purely hopeless, airy, trivial one. Again, stout individuals never take a back seat, but always a front one, and, wheresoever it be, they sit firmly, and with confidence, and decline to budge even though the seat crack and bend with their weight. For comeliness of exterior they care not a rap, and therefore a dress coat sits less easily on their figures than is the case with figures of leaner individuals. Yet ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... advanced in justification of their name is, that reading is not impossible. Reading-parties do not confine themselves to England, or even the United Kingdom; sometimes they go as far as Dresden. When a crack tutor goes on one, which is not often, he takes ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... Pum! Crack! The chair finished the word. So the lesson ended in fisticuffs, scratchings, slaps. The corporal caught her by the hair; she grabbed his goatee, but was unable to bite because of her loose teeth. He let out a yell, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... in a velvet coat, He kiss'd a maid and gave her groat; The groat was crack'd and would not go. Ah, old man, ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies • Anonymous
... said something that thou hast told her—that Pastor Tappau defiled his hands by whipping the witch Hota. What evil thought has got hold of thee? Talk to us, and crack not thy skull ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... both palms, still staring at the half facetious words of introduction which the plump newspaper man had penciled across that card, when the door of the small office in the front of the gymnasium was pushed open a crack, some scant fifteen minutes after his peremptory summons had gone out over the wire, and made ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... law, and have got the job to run this case.' Sez she, a-squinting them venomous eyes of her'n, till they looked like knitting needles red hot: 'I leave the sarching to be done by the cunstable—when you are 'rested and handcuffed for 'betting of murder.' Then my dander riz. Sez I, 'Crack your whip and go ahead! You know how, seeing you is the offspring of a Yankee overseer, what my marster, Gin'l Darrington, had 'rested for beating one of our wimen, on our 'Bend' plantation. You and your pa is as much alike, as two shrivelled ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... rapidly. The branch began to creak. Our hero doubted if it would sustain their double weight. However, he trusted to the wary instinct of the ocelot, which kept coming right forward. Jack was about eight feet from the end of the branch when it gave a very ominous crack. In fact, he saw the white splinters show where it joined ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... immediately stumble upon the simple remedy. I know when later, at the club, I explained it to an architectural friend, he confessed that the notion had not occurred to him, adding, with some shame, that he had more than once left a considerable crack under a door as ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... words the kind Father took pity upon his little Bluebird. And what do you think? He made a baby earthquake which heaved a rocky point of land up through the waves, just big enough for a little bird's perch. It was a tiny reef, and a crack in the rock held but a few drops of the rain which began to fall; but it meant at least a moment's safety and draught of life for the weary bird, and glad enough ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... rang a jangling bell again and again and at last gained the attention of an old gardener working in the vineyard above, an unkempt, unshaven, ungainly creature dressed in scarce decent rags of brown, who was yet courteous-minded and, albeit crack-voiced, with his yellow-fanged mouth full of gracious polysyllables. He hobbled off to get a key and returned through the still heat of the cobbled yard outside the monastery gates, and took them into cool airy rooms and showed them clean and simple ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Young Man got to his feet and stood on the bulge of the rug. Then he jumped into the air and landed solidly on his heels. There was a sharp crack as the shell of the insect broke under ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... black Indian, Pompey. He was known to be a crack marksman. They watched for him. Daniel Boone glimpsed him, high up in a tree; waited for a chance, took quick aim—and down from the tree crashed Pompey, dead before he struck the turf. After the siege they found him, shot through the head by Daniel Boone's long-barreled ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... transacting in the city. As he was passing through a street in that part of the town inhabited only by the meaner sort, he heard some people talking very loud; and going close to the house whence the noise proceeded, and looking through a crack in the door, perceived a light, and three sisters sitting on a sofa, conversing together after supper. By what the eldest said, he presently understood the subjeft of their conversation was wishes: "For," said she, "since we have got upon wishes, mine shall be to have the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... I'd like to know. I'm not sure; I'm only guessing. But even if he knows it he won't tell me until he gets good and ready and thinks I don't want to hear it. What he thinks he's going to get at by prowling around is something he can get me in the crack of the door with." ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... much if anybody was creeping about outside the fence. The boards were close together, with scarcely a crack half an inch wide anywhere. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... tempting twigs of a young willow thicket; but before he could gather one mouthful, that nameless fear came over him again, that obscure forewarning of doom, and he sprang forward toward the cover of the firs. As he sprang, there was a movement and a flash far down a wooded alley—a sharp, ringing crack—and something invisible struck him in the body. He had been struck before, by falling branches, or by stones bounding down a bluff, but this missile seemed very different and very small. Small as it was, however, the blow staggered him for an instant; then he shuddered, and a surge of heat ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... it was impossible to hear plainly, so stepping to the door, she put her ear down close to a crack through which the light was streaming. She listened intently to all that was taking place, although at first it was difficult to make out any sense from the babel of voices. Occasionally she could hear Norman's voice urging the men to be quiet or to leave the house. That ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... town appears, in the shape of some straggling cottages: and the carriage begins to rattle and roll over a horribly uneven pavement. As if the equipage were a great firework, and the mere sight of a smoking cottage chimney had lighted it, instantly it begins to crack and splutter, as if the very devil were in it. Crack, crack, crack, crack. Crack-crack- crack. Crick-crack. Crick-crack. Helo! Hola! Vite! Voleur! Brigand! Hi hi hi! En r-r-r-r-r-route! Whip, wheels, driver, stones, beggars, children, crack, crack, crack; helo! ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... must now know that Juan Lanas, the blind man, with the change of district and dwelling did not change his judgment and if he was crack-brained at San Garcia, he remained crack-brained at Toledo, consuming in this resort his money upon worthless drugs and quacks which did not cure his blindness and impoverished him more and more every day, ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... recommend a fortnight's heavy gale in the South Atlantic as a cure for a blase state of mind. It cannot be described; the sound, the sense of being hurled along without the smallest regard to 'this side uppermost'; the beauty of the whole scene, and the occasional crack and bear-away of sails and spars; the officer trying to 'sing out', quite in vain, and the boatswain's whistle scarcely audible. I remained near the wheel every day for as long as I could bear it, ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... Quaaludes is the North American slang term for methaqualone, a pharmaceutical depressant. Stimulants are drugs that relieve mild depression, increase energy and activity, and include cocaine (coke, snow, crack), amphetamines (Desoxyn, Dexedrine), phenmetrazine (Preludin), methylphenidate (Ritalin), ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... come laden with my sin; Nor could aught ease the grief that I was in Till I came hither: What a place is this! Must here be the beginning of my bliss? Must here the burden fall from off my back Must here the strings that bound it to me crack? Blest cross! blest sepulchre! blest rather be The man that there was ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was clear and cloudless, the sun unusually warm. So warm, indeed, that long clefts, caused by the unequal expansion of the ice, appeared here and there. The man from the plane had not gone more than fifty yards when he halted sharply. With a crack like thunder, a cleft had opened at his very feet—a rift ten feet deep in places, apparently bottomless in others, and very long. Not wanting to go around it, he slid down one side and, with an ice pick, started to hack a foothold in the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... at its ends to two short pieces of platinum wire, which pass through the glass of the bulb and around which the glass is fused. As platinum has almost exactly the same coefficient of heat-expansion as glass, the wires do not cause the glass to crack. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... first uncertain whether to advance or retreat, now resolved to enter for the moment into the whim of the scene, though internally fretting at Mac-Morlan for sending him to consult with a crack-brained humourist. He therefore advanced with three profound congees, and craved permission to lay his credentials at the feet of the Scottish monarch, in order to be perused at his best leisure. The gravity with which he accommodated himself to the humour of the moment, and the deep and ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... manuscript must have been written at the time when Mr. Brummel was the leader of the London fashion.] a nobody's son: a low creature, who can no more dance a minuet than I can talk Cherokee; who cannot even crack a bottle like a gentleman; who never showed himself to be a man with his sword in his hand: as we used to approve ourselves in the good old times, before that vulgar Corsican upset the gentry of the ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fact that his mother would not permit him to buy them. Mrs. Dobbs used some artificial dyes which stained the eggshells a horrible purple or a less horrible red, and John had a feeling of sickness when he looked at them. Mrs. MacDermott said that if the eggs were to crack during the process of boiling, the dye would penetrate the meat and might poison anyone who ate it; and even if the shells remained uncracked, the dye would soil the fingers and perhaps soil the clothes. She ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... sweeping river—all the landscape of his bliss, the prison of his intolerable shame. A fierce peremptory longing seized him to kill his bliss and his shame at one stroke. Four words would do it. He had but to stand up and cry aloud, "I am an Englishman!" and the whole beautiful hideous dream would crack, shiver, dissolve. Only four words! Almost he heard his voice shouting them and saw through the trembling heat her body droop under the stab, her love take the mortal hurt and die with a face of scorn. ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... May-day, And shouted and tippled the tumblers galore. A print of their masther Is often in plasther O' Paris, put over the door of a tap; A fine chubby fellow, Ripe, rosy, and mellow, Like a peach that is ready to drop in your lap. Hurrah! for brave Bacchus, A bottle to crack us, He's a friend of the people, like bowld ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... the sharp crack of the drivers' whips followed by the squealing cry of quivering flesh (a cry wherein was none of the human) the which, dying to a whine, was lost in the stir and bustle of the great galleass. But ever and always, beneath the hoarse voices of the mariners, beneath the clash of armour ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... his plan into his brother's by determining to get on the scene early enough to have first crack at the treasure. He meant to get away with that, leave his brother to deal with Alwa's men, circle round, and then attack his brother from ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... black, With rain and hail, so much could not be spanned; Fell thunderbolts often on every hand, And verily the earth quaked in answer back From Saint Michael of Peril unto Sanz, From Besencun to the harbour of Guitsand; No house stood there but straight its walls must crack: In full mid-day the darkness was so grand, Save the sky split, no light was in the land. Beheld these things with terror every man, And many said: "We in the Judgement stand; The end of time is presently at hand." ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... that he cracks his whip? Does he pitend to be angry? If he pitends to be angry, why do all the others pitend that they think he doesn't pitend, but only,—Why does the gentleman crack ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... as many men came out from behind the shoulder of the mountain in sharp pursuit. The pursued were bent low over the necks of their horses; from the crowd of pursuers there came each instant a puff of smoke followed by the sharp crack of the report; and each instant a horse fell, or ran wildly with empty saddle, as the balls ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... seeds exposed to sea water. Why has nobody thought of trying the experiment before, instead of taking it for granted that salt water kills seeds? I shall have it nearly all reprinted in "Silliman's Journal" as a nut for Agassiz to crack. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... and started; I didn't go over a quarter of a mile till I saw four Bison cows, and they all had calves with them. I crawled up in shooting distance and killed one of the calves. At the crack of my gun the cows ran away. I commenced dressing the calf and here came four of my Sighewash Indians running to me, and when they saw what I had killed, I believe they were the happiest mortals that ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... rather dear; but they are the only kind worth while. Those little yellow things would soak and crack, and never look comfortable in the kitchen-closet. I give you very fair warning, I shall always want the best of things but then I shall take very fierce and jealous care of ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... him and saw her lover to the door; when the sound of his steps had died away on the stairs she ran out on to the balcony to see him get into the tilbury, to see him gather up the reins, to catch a parting look, hear the crack of his whip and the sound of his wheels on the stones, watch the handsome horse, the master's hat, the tiger's gold lace, and at last to stand gazing long after the dark corner of the street had eclipsed ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... eagerly—for a decent interval to elapse. Thanks to aunt Mary's coaching, Annie did not knock again, but stood in pretty decision with her eyes straight before her. A leisurely footstep sounded within; the latch lifted with dignity, the door opened a crack at first, then more widely; and, outlined against a blacker background, stood the tall, stern, forbidding figure ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... a roar, and made him the most fascinating of debauchees, was now mellowed into a cloudy enthusiasm, the sable of which was still copiously blended with rainbow colours. His brain had received a slight though incurable crack; there was a certain exasperation mixed with his unsettled fervour; but he was not wretched, often even not uncomfortable. His religion was not real; but it had reality enough for present purposes; he was at once a sceptic and a mystic, a true disciple of Boehm ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... applause with a 'Good boy. She's a homer.' Then he led the gallery to the first green. He was puffing when he pulled up at the eighteenth hole, but he felt better than if he had stolen second base. 'I'd like to take a crack at that golf ball,' he said. 'You can put me down for a trial the first chance I get. Wouldn't mind togging up in kilts just to give the Prince of Wales a run for his money.'" For the sake of giving prominence to it, this ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... sailing her, sir," said the captain, a little nettled, "and sailing her on the edge of a hurricane. You had better take the lady below, sir: when it comes it will come with a crack." But Reyburn laughed at him again, and passed over to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... expect such foresight on Maurice's part. But for herself, whenever she got an apple or a nut, she put it carefully aside. It was not that her little teeth did not long to close in the juicy fruit, or to crack the hard shell and secure the kernel. But far greater than these physical longings was her earnest desire to keep true to her solemn promise to the dead—to find, and give her mother's message and her mother's gift to the beautiful, wayward English girl who yet ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... eyebrows in a suggestive manner, as if to say, "You see, my spy has been warned." It seemed as if it would be impossible to hold any conversation at all, but, fortunately, they were put into adjoining cubicles, and Barbara found a crack, which she ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... opposition to the government, owing to the wars with France, meant social ostracism; and he had refused a peerage. The son had enjoyed the usual advantages of the young Englishman in his position. He had been educated at Eton and at the university of Cambridge. Three years in a crack cavalry regiment at a time when all England was under arms could have done little to lessen his feeling for his caste. A Gretna Green marriage with an heiress, while he was yet a minor, is characteristic of his impetuous temperament, as ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... they must all manage to break the bonds that held them there and escape from the death-trap before the fatal swinging menace reached them. The stroke of nine, booming out in that house, would be like the Crack o' Doom to ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... cannot Believe this crack to be in my dread mistress, So sovereignly being honourable. Leo. I have lov'd thee—Make that thy question, ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... destined to failure, for the men were of a type different from that of English Eddie, who was lying dead as the meet reward for treachery to his fellows.... When, at last, his question issued from the close-shut lips, it came like the crack of ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... them what food they would have eaten themselves that day. It served only to excite their restlessness, to hold them there at the crack of the door, snuffling and slobbering. The outer circle slept, the inner watched. Then they would shift, like sentries. They had a horrible sort of system. Most of that dreadful afternoon Miss Blake paced the floor, trying to strengthen ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... Austrian Division against Lagow, and the Fourth Austrian Landwehr Division, supported by the Forty-first Honved Division, against Ivaniska; they moved along roads converging on Opatow. The Twenty-fifth Austrian Division, commanded by the Archduke Peter Ferdinand, was composed of crack regiments, the Fourth Hoch and Deutschmeisters of Vienna, and the Twenty-fifth, Seventeenth, and Tenth Jaeger battalions. The Russians were outnumbered about 40 per cent. The supposedly demoralized Russians were not expected to give any battle short of their ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... solitary specimens, being such a novelty, and standing out so plainly on the flat scene, had been picked up by farmer or cowboy and taken home. Thus each of the several stones in those parts was engaged in holding open the barn door or the ranch gate, or was established in the back yard to crack pecan nuts on, much to the improvement of flatirons. If a man had stolen one and used it openly, he would sooner or later have been found out. But why do we speak ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... mathematics and architectural drawing at the Lakeview Hall school that the girls were attending. "You can be sure that neither Dr. Prescott nor I would take any chances on that score. A heavy logging team went over it yesterday, and the ice didn't even creak, let alone crack. And every day that passes of this kind of weather makes it ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... their admiration. He rode a large white horse, and although rendered a prominent mark for the rifles of the sailors, he always escaped unhurt. He would ride boldly out in full view of the vessel, patiently wait for someone to expose himself, when the sharp crack of his rifle would be followed by the report made to the captain, "A man ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... we reluctantly kept away on our course, having the gratification of hearing a clear well blown bugle on board the schooner play up "Yankee Doodle." As the brig fell off, our long gun was run out to have a parting crack at her, when the third and last shot from the schooner struck the sill of the midship port, and made the white splinters fly from the solid oak like bright silver sparks in the moonlight. A sharp, piercing cry rose in the air—my soul identified that death-shriek with the voice that I had ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... and after a tiresome march reached the battle-field about dark. Our forces had suffered a bloody repulse, and had just finished burying our dead under a flag of truce. The burial parties with their bloody stretchers were returning, and the sharp crack of the rifle began again to be heard, and so continued with more or less fierceness ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... jobs on hand to-night," said the leader of the gang. "There's a crib to be cracked an' a guy to be croaked. Red, you an' Gypsie an' the Gunney will crack the crib. It's dead easy. Only an old man an' his wife. The servants are out except one an' he's fixed. I'll give you the layout presently. The other job's harder. Kid, I'll put you in charge, an' as it's got to ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... stupidity extended to an utter ignorance of music, which he only prized as the means of gaining the large sums which his extravagance craved. His wife once complained of the piano, saying, "I can not possibly sing to that piano; I shall crack my voice: the piano is absurdly high." "Do not fret, my dear," interposed the husband, soothingly; "it shall be lowered before evening: I will attend to it myself." Evening came, and the house was crowded; but, ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... but their eyes blazing with such immensity and intensity of purpose it has been said the Germans fled, as before spirits, when they saw these men) had not only blocked the roundabout road to Paris; they had broken the morale of Von Buelow's crack troops. Without this brilliant maneuver and superb execution the successes of all the other armies ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... feller made a stake out'n a silver prospect, and he takes it into his head to go back to Nebrasky and hunt up his wife, that he'd run off and left some time prev'ous. As the date gits clost for him to leave, he got glummer and glummer. He'd skerce crack a smile. The night before the stage was comin' to git him, he was settin' in a 'dobe with a dirt roof, rared back on the hind legs of his chair, with ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... engaged in this propaganda. I could easily, to quote De Quincey's words, 'bray their fungous heads to powder with a lady's fan, and throttle them between heaven and earth with my finger and thumb.' But we want to know just how far their doctrines, or whatever they call their crack-brained fantasies, have taken root in the minds of the people, and what the minds are like, and what the outcome of it all is to be. If we go to the East End, and I don't see why we shouldn't, as soon as we find ourselves settled there I shall begin to go about ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... versatility from the lapse of ages as any; yet still, to say that it has experienced some change, would not be hazarding a very improbable opinion. Who knows but the "clamorous smack" wherewith the Jehu of an eight-horse wagon salutes the lips of his rosy inamorata, (scarcely less audible than the crack of his heavy thong on Smiler's dull sides,) may have been perfectly consistent with the acme of politesse some centuries bygone. We speak here somewhat confidently. Hear what an amorous votary of the Muses in the olden time, Robert Herrick, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... ended at the brink of a deep crevice in the ground. Seems to be an earthquake-type split in solid rock, with the sand sifting over this and the far edge like pink silk cataracts. The bottom is in the shade and can't be seen. The crack seems to extend to our left and right as far as we ...
— The Dope on Mars • John Michael Sharkey
... straw, 'twas warm and soft, His chair, a three-legged stool; His broken jug was emptied oft, Yet, somehow, always full. His mistress' portrait decked the wall, His mirror had a crack; Yet, gay and glad, though this was all His ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the clear, cold water from a cup made of a basswood leaf, they washed faces and hands, and went to the flat rock for breakfast. The butternuts were not quite ripe; they stained fingers, and they were hard to crack—with just a stone for a hammer—but there were "lots of them," as ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... every step: "Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward! Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak! Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can! Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason To draw and kill you. Take your billy out. I'll crack your boar's head with a piece of brick!" But never a word the hog-eyed one returned But trod about the court-house, followed both By troops of boys and watched by all the men. All day, they walked the square. ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... courage. He calmed down at once, and soon began to make apologies. Mr. B. then told him kindly, but firmly, that, if he wished to walk in the same path with him, he must walk as straight as the crack on the floor before them; adding that he would not walk with anybody who would jostle him by walking so crooked as he had done. He was perfectly tamed, and Mr. B. said he never had any more trouble ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... the beginning; and God has surely not been so cruel to the world as to leave it till now in the dark. Our hopes are not set on any new, untried remedy. This bridge across the Infinite for us is not a frail plank on which no one has yet walked, and which may crack and break when the timid foot of the first passenger is on the centre, but it is a tried structure upon which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... step towards the door, and I slipped away from where I had been standing. I saw the door of another room near me, and I opened it and went in quickly. I closed the door behind me, but I did not shut it. I looked through the crack and saw Mr. Holymead making his way downstairs. He walked as if he didn't see anything, and I watched him till he went through the curtains on the stairs at the bend of the staircase and I could ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... arrange our stateroom before we are ill," she says presently, in a state of hopeful anticipation, and we retire to No. 49 in the Steamship San Miguel, which all who have taken this journey know to be the best double room on the "crack" steamer of the line. We put up hangers, divide pockets and racks, and prepare for a three weeks' occupancy. Having finished our work, we go to the stern to get a whiff of the stiff breeze blowing from ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... be the performers in this ingenious theatre, it is the unaccustomed stranger who is forced into the position of actor. As he toils up the steep and slovenly streets, faced with shabby buildings that crack and blacken behind their ill-adjusted fronts of stucco and distemper, he cheapens rapidly in his own view: he feels painfully like the hapless supernumerary whom he has seen mounting an obvious step-ladder behind a screen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... "I'll crack thy numskull for thee, you mandy chap!" said Mrs. Nunsuch, as she helplessly danced round with him, her feet playing like drumsticks among the sparks. "My ankles were all in a fever before, from walking through that prickly furze, and now you ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... railways. He settled down to the slow process of entrenching his own lines securely and extending the entrenchment further and further round the south side of Petersburg. Lee was thus being forced to extend the position held by his own small army further and further. In time the lines would crack and the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... by even the little conversation ceased, and they sat quite silent, waiting and waiting, perhaps awed by their own silence. Sometimes one would bravely try to crack a joke, and they laughed, but it sounded strained. They were plainly nervous, these brave men that fought like lions in the open when led to an attack, heedless of danger and destruction. They felt under a cloud in the security of the trenches, and they were conscious ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... challenge, shots, curses, but it was in his dreams, as if in another world, where insults and attacks do not arouse one's sensibilities. Then—nothing! A dense shadow, a night of profound sleep. He was awakened by a ray of sunshine which filtered through a crack in the window and shone upon his eyes. The morning light again brought into relief the whiteness of the walls which during the night seemed to sweat the shadows and barbaric mysteries of ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... brings back a blinding flash of light, or the over-powering blow of an explosion with the intensity of the image in proper relation to the impression. I believe that it is not necessary to go so far, for example, and hold that not even the sparkling of a star, the crack of a pistol, etc., are kept in memory with more than partial implication of the event. Maudsley points out correctly that we can have no memory of pain—"because the disturbance of nervous elements disappears just as soon as their integrity is again established.'' Perhaps, also, because ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... The young man had waited composedly for his coming, but as his assailant advanced, had shot out his left hand. There was a sharp crack and the yellow-faced man, reeling, dropped face downwards on the carpet without a sound. In his fall his foot caught a small table on which a vase of chrysanthemums stood, and the whole thing went over with a loud ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... the muddy brown eggs crack open one by one, and out come the young Dabchicks, pretty, little, fuzzy brown balls. They shake themselves, and look at each other, and say how-d'-ye-do to their mother and father; and then, without any more ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... nut to crack," Cuthbert said, laughing. "With such arms as you have in the forest the enterprise would be something akin ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... Bandy-legs, whose quick eyesight had discovered the approach of the other chum, "and chances are he's bringing some news, because he carries the map on his face. 'Touch-and-Go Steve' we call him, because he's ready to fly off his base at the first crack of the gun; but he's sure got plenty now to excite him. Hello! Steve, how's things ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... dome must be renewed eight or ten times in a century. Winckelmann attributes their rapid decay to the corrosive action of the sirocco wind; Fea to the variations in temperature, which cause the lead to melt in summer, and crack ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... shrilleth high, The hard brands shiver on the steel, The splinter'd spear-shafts crack and fly, The horse and ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... we pin our faith on! Thus it is that criticism,—literary criticism, at any rate,—is a lost art,—YOU know that. A man must either be dead (or considered dead) or in a 'clique' to receive any open encouragement at all from the so-called 'crack' critics. And the cliquey men are generally such stupendous bigots for their own particular and restricted form of 'style.' Anything new they hate,—anything daring they treat with ridicule. Some of them have no hesitation in saying they prefer Matthew Arnold (remember ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... gathering strength to throw, Discharged the ponderous ruin at the foe. Where to the hip the inserted thigh unites, Full on the bone the pointed marble lights; Through both the tendons broke the rugged stone, And stripp'd the skin, and crack'd the solid bone. Sunk on his knees, and staggering with his pains, His falling bulk his bended arm sustains; Lost in a dizzy mist the warrior lies; A sudden cloud comes swimming o'er his eyes. There the brave chief, who mighty numbers sway'd, Oppress'd had sunk to death's eternal shade, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... not 'spin his brains' but something much better." He "has got hold of another clue—that of Nature and history—and long may he spin it, 'even to the crack of doom!'" Scott's success lies in not thinking of himself. "And then again the catch that blind Willie and his wife and the boy sing in the hollow of the heath—there is more mirth and heart's ease in it than in all Lord Byron's Don Juan or Mr. Moore's ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... At the crack of the gun one of the largest mountain lions we have ever seen (you can imagine how large he appeared to the bold hunter) sprang from a cliff of rocks, and landed not over thirty feet from Curnutt, in an attitude looking anything but friendly, and ready to contest ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... applications of the black-snake in a public sort of way. The black-snake, I may explain, could be wielded by a strong but unskilled arm. It was different, however, with the cattle-adder. That had to be handled by an expert, one who could stand off twenty paces, more or less, and crack the long lash with such astonishing precision that the tip end of it barely touched the back of the culprit, the result being a nobby assortment of splotches that looked for all the world like hives after ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... chair as a cold ring was pressed against the back of his neck through the crack of the window. At the same instant Carp had tilted back and raised one knee. The gun that rested on his leg was peeping over the table ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... the window; Will followed her, seizing her hand with a spasmodic movement; and so they stood, with their hands clasped, like two children, looking out on the storm, while the thunder gave a tremendous crack and roll above them, and the rain began to pour down. Then they turned their faces towards each other, with the memory of his last words in them, and they did ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... you out of your mind, my dear Sylvie?" he cried. "Can those who have no teeth crack nuts? Thank God I've got some common-sense ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... importance. The scouts reported only a regiment of cavalry ahead, but a powerful detachment of French artillery on the road from Jouchery. The German leader detached 2,000 of the Death's Head Hussars, his crack cavalry, to cut off, or at all events to delay, the French guns. He was aware that the artillery would have no anticipation of this and, in the surprise, the guns might be captured. Meantime, he hurried his advance ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... or pin drill. Where the cutters are secured, as usual, by a key, all mechanics know that it is very difficult to set a cutter twice alike; and the notch, which is filed in the cutter, to prevent it from moving endways, is a great source of weakness, often causing the cutters to crack in hardening, as well as after they are put to work. The inclosed sketch will ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... COLEMAN is a handsome, finely built man of about thirty-two. He is a West Pointer, is a good oarsman, a crack shot, and a good fellow all around. No finicking about him, no nerves. Just a sane, ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... flying thick. The British guns are at present quiet, but the French 75's are barking furiously. It is a delight to hear their sharp, clean bark. The enemy's machine-guns have also been very active this afternoon, the crack, crack, crack, of the Turkish one being easily distinguishable from the noise made by ours. The day of our ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... disgustedly and was soon back with a gloriously messy batch of clay which he dashed painstakingly into the crack and into sundry other cracks that ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... midwinter snowfall! Yes! where whole trains of wagons are stopped and whole camps snowed up, until all hands perish of cold and hunger. Don't tell me! You don't know nothin' about snow here." And she stopped talking to put another nut between her teeth and crack it. ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... and bridegroom were to have four weeks' motoring in the north of England. When the honeymoon was officially over they were to make country-house visits in Scotland for the shooting season. Sidney Vandyke boasted of being a crack shot, and Diana hoped to be proud of her American ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... barked for the hundreth time when he heard a twig crack just back of him. It had a different sound from the noisy crack of Jack Frost, and Reddy stopped a yap right in the middle and whirled about to see what it might be. There was Bowser the Hound almost upon him, his eyes flashing fire, his great, red jaws wide open, and ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... I'll teach you: think yourself a baby; That you have taken these tenders for true pay Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, Wronging it thus) you'll ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Major Hunt-Goring, his eyes boldly passing her to rest upon Violet. "Managed to crack my thumb tinkering at my old motor. Dr. Wyndham tells me that you have been kind enough to ask me to lunch. How do you do, Miss Campion? Charmed to meet you! Someone told me you were yachting ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... whisperings seemed to come forth from space. Sometimes they sounded so low that she could scarcely hear them; at others they were so loud that she could almost distinguish the words uttered by the unseen. Was it merely a phenomenon caused by the wind blowing through some crack in the ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... Herminius darted back; And as they passed, beneath their feet They felt the timbers crack; But when they turn'd their faces, And on the farther shore Saw brave Horatius stand alone, They would ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of different kinds of rocks, and very sparingly scattered through the soil. We had scarcely reached the summit of this hill, when it was enveloped in thick clouds, from which the lightning flashed, and the thunder pealed close to us, and crack after crack reverberated along the valleys. It soon passed away, however, and left us well drenched, but the western horizon was still black with clouds. From this hill we proceeded to another, which at first sight I had thought was of volcanic origin, but proved ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... little wooden cubicle partitioned off from the sculpture-lined gallery. Kim laid himself down, his ear against a crack in the heat-split cedar door, and, following his instinct, stretched out ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... speaking, Colonel Conger, slipping around to the rear, drew some loose straws through a crack, and lit a match upon them. They were dry and blazed up in an instant, carrying a sheet of smoke and flame through the parted planks, and heaving in a twinkling a world of light and heat upon the magazine within. ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... on the platform outside and a lank, good-looking countryman glanced cautiously in through the crack in the door. Observing Molly, he spat a wad of tobacco over the hitching rail by the steps, and stopped to smooth his straw-coloured hair with the palm of his ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... but let me tell you a story. In a sea fight in the reign of Charles the Second, there was a very bloody engagement between the English and Dutch fleets, in the heat of which a Scotch sea-man was very severely bit by a louse on his neck, which he caught; and stooping down to crack it between his nails, many of the sailors near him had their heads taken off by a chain-shot from the enemy, which dashed their blood and brains about him; on which he had compassion upon the poor louse, returned him to his place and ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... the Justice, "or by St. Christopher, you shall crack the cocoa-nut full of salt-and-water, according to the statute for such ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... just as well pleased, Jack," he remarked, "though I had it made up to give the brute all that was coming to him. Once let me get a fair crack at him with this stick, and he'll go daffy, I warrant you. I'll put all the vim into the blow that stands for a home-run hit on the diamond. But remember, I don't like dog, and I'm not aching for a ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... tells the enraged listeners at last, without circumlocution, that he is the Apostle of the Gentiles, that Jesus has made him so against his will, and that therefore he must do the work appointed him, though his heart-strings crack with seeming ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... To the dullest old cit, And makes him of politics crack—O! The lawyers i' th' hall Were not able to bawl, Were it not for a ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... everything that the world considers most desirable. Mark, we have seen, had been educated at Harrow and Oxford, and it may be said, therefore, that he had received his patrimony early in life. For Gerald Robarts, the second brother, a commission had been bought in a crack regiment. He also had been lucky, having lived and become a captain in the Crimea; and the purchase-money was lodged for his majority. And John Robarts, the youngest, was a clerk in the Petty Bag Office, and was already assistant private secretary ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... to parish, one of the churchwardens of X complained to the churchwardens of Y that his late importation from the Y pulpit was not very satisfactory. 'And yet,' he said, 'you all cracked him up enormously.' 'Yes,' replied the churchwarden of Y, 'and you will have to crack him up too before ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... rumbled through the streets, and jolted over the stones, and at length reach the wide and open country. The wheels skim over the hard and frosty ground; and the horses, bursting into a canter at a smart crack of the whip, step along the road as if the load behind them—coach, passengers, cod-fish, oyster-barrels, and all—were but a feather at their heels. They have descended a gentle slope, and enter upon a level, as compact and dry as a solid block of marble, two miles long. Another crack ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... arose, folded our camp-stools, and started. We wished to move without sound; but the woods were dry, and every dead stick snapped with a crack; every fallen leaf rustled with a startling sound; every squirrel under whose tree we chanced to pass first shrieked, and then subsided into a sobbing cry or a scolding bark, according as his fur was gray or red. ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... spirit that on this life's rough sea Loves t'have his sails fill'd with a lusty wind, Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack, And his rapt ship run on her side so low That she drinks water and her keel plows ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... moment a shrill and terrible scream was heard in the direction of the house, followed by the sharp crack of a rifle. Ethan and Fanny, appalled by the sounds, looked towards the house. They saw Mrs. Grant rush from the back door, and then fall upon the ground. Two or three Indians followed her, in one of whom Fanny recognized Lean Bear, the stalwart chief she had endeavored to conciliate. He bent ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... clung to the pommel and shouted. The trees flew by; great clods of mud were flung up by the horse's feet. From far up the road could be heard the creaking of a lumber team and the crack of ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... wheels, and wheels that squeak and roar, Big buttons, brown wigs, and many capes of buff ... Someone's bound for Sussex, in a coach-and-four; And, when the long whips crack, Running at the back Barks the swift Dalmatian, whose spots ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... turkey eggs under the mother hen and waited day by day for them to hatch. And sure enough, one day the eggs began to crack and the little turkeys began to stick their heads out of the shells. Some of the little turkeys came out from the shells all right, but some of them ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... twinkling of an eye I had proof that I was right. There was a kind of slushy roaring above, a sharp crack or two as of some monster whip, and a sudden gust filled the gully. There was just time for me to throw myself sideways into a convenient cleft, and to draw feet up as close to chin as possible, when that hollow which had seemed my path, and ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... him. "If that's what it takes to make it edible, you're going to be an epicurean delight in just about one second if I hear another word about my cooking. And that's also the second crack about my noble ancestors in the past five minutes. I've always wondered about the surgical techniques my great-great-great grandpop used when he lifted a paleface's hair. One more word, Clay Ferguson, and I'll have your scalp ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... trained men. There were the Cazadores, a Mexican edition of the Chasseurs, organized by Bazaine under French drill masters. There was Mendez's seasoned brigade. There was Arellano's artillery, though numbering only fifty pieces. There were the crack Dragoons of the Empress, the Austro-Mexican Hussars, and a squadron of the Municipal Guards. There were veterans who had fought at Cerro Gordo, and steadily ever since in the civil wars. There was the ancient Battalion de Celaya, mainstay ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... passed; the carriage drew up before the inn door, the host delivered his most obsequious bow, fair Rosa bade farewell to her lover, the prince and Gulielmo entered the stately vehicle, and, with a loud crack of the coachman's whip, the ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... is the pueblo "priest" who performs the los-kod' ceremony. He kills a chicken or pig, and then petitions Lumawig as follows: "Lo-mos-kod'-kay to-ki'." This means, "May there be so many camotes that the ground will crack and burst open." ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... life? A story or a song; A race on any track; A gay adventure, short or long, A puzzling nut to crack; A grinding task; a pleasant stroll; A climb; a slide down hill; A constant striving for a goal; A cake; a bitter pill; A pit where fortune flouts or stings; A playground full of fun;— With many any of these things; With others all in one. What's life? To love ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... lids as she raised them to answer were slightly reddened at the edges, testifying to the acridity of Calcutta's road dust, and a dry crack crept into the silver voice with which she said matter-of-factly, "We are never too exhausted to attend to our ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... pleasure, our successor—Marquis San Saturnino—made his appearance, and we had to prepare for our departure. One consolation, however, remained. I had just then been appointed to the high rank of cornet in the crack dragoon regiment "Royal Piedmont." I had never seen its uniform, but I cherished a vague hope of being destined by Fortune to wear a helmet; and the prospect of realizing this splendid dream of my infancy prevented me from regretting my Roman ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... And he, taking the counters and ranging them closely on the board, and crooking his fingers, uttered his reply to Calligenes: "If the cornfield gets sufficient rain, and does not breed a crop of flowering weeds, and frost does not crack the furrows, nor hail flay the heads of the springing blades, and the pricket does not devour the crop, and it sees no other injury of weather or soil, I prophesy you a capital summer, and you will cut the ears ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... when you do you'll learn that once fairly out on a round, it would take the crack of doom to stop a true golfer. Halloa! ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I crack this 'ere egg, I'd like to state that eggs is four bits apiece. Only two hens left—" She broke off short, and turning upon Handsome, who had been gradually sidling up until his elbows almost touched hers, she repulsed him ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... Midshipman Farley was standing close to a tiny crack between the edge of his room door and the jamb. He was ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... tried when the wind fell light. One day, too, a perfect calm came on, and the brig lay, her sides lapping the glassy sea, as she rolled in the slowly-heaving, sluggish swell, and her sails flapped lazily against the masts. In vain old Higson whistled for a wind till his cheeks were ready to crack; not that he really believed the proceeding would produce a breeze, or that he had any notion of the origin of the custom; but he had always done so when there was a calm; and he wanted a wind, and the wind, if he whistled ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... Arts;" and A.A. Willitts speak on "Sunshine," himself the best illustration of his subject; and Mr. Milburn, by "What a Blind Man Saw in England," almost prove that eyes are a superfluity; and W.H.H. Murray talk of the "Adirondacks," till you can hear the rifle crack and the fall of the antlers on the rock. But in the very midst of all this have a religious discourse that shall show that holiness is the lost art, and that Christ is the sunshine, and that the gospel helps a ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... Spain, the ould wulf, for her tricks in the Gulf, Her robbery, murdher, and worse, Her debt, she must see, is put down C.O.D., Wid Cuba relaysed from her curse. Ay, FISH, you may sweat, an' SUMNER may threat, An' burst his crack'd head in the row; The People have spoke, that's fire an' not smoke! An' this must be finished, an' now. Arrah what do you ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... that of Dr. Thomas Manton's library, in March, 1678. From 1676 to 1682, no less than thirty sales were held, and these included, in addition to the four already mentioned, the libraries of Brooke, Lord Warwick, Sir Kenelm Digby (see p. 120), Dr. S. Charnock, Dr. Thomas Watson, John Dunton, the crack-brained bookseller, Dr. Castell, the author of the 'Heptaglotton,' Dr. Thomas Gataker, and others. The business of selling by auction was so successful that several other auctioneers adopted it, including such well-known ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... fact the people now rushed to the scaffold. In the twinkling of an eye, they pulled off the cloth and tore it into pieces; then the beams and planks, pulled by strong arms, or cut with axes, began to crack, then a crash, and a few moments later there was not a trace left ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... there, and all the way back, The harness strains, and the coach-springs crack, The horses snort, and plunge, and kick, Till the coachman thinks he is driving Old Nick; And the grooms and the footmen wonder, and say, "What makes the old coach so heavy to-day?" But the mealy-faced boy peeps in, and sees A man sitting ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... got a crib for you to crack to-night. It's Judge Hallers' house. (A loud bumping noise is heard from the direction of the counter.) ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... porous material. This coats the ware with sodium silicate. To glaze china, it is dipped into a powder of feldspar and SiO2 suspended in water and vinegar, and then fused. If the ware and glaze expand uniformly with heat, the latter does not crack. ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... all time. The step was a big limestone rock. She opened the door and put the hot lid of the skillet on it to cool. Stood it up sideways. Then they heard a noise at that door. It was pegged. So she went along with the cooking. It wasn't late. He found a crack at the side of the stick and dirt chimney, put the muzzle of the gun in there and shot her through her heart. The man flew. She struggled to the edge of the bed and fell. The children was asleep and I was afraid to move. The moon come up. I couldn't get her on the bed. I put a pillow under her ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... quicker. The axe-biade hums, Stand well back, there, before she comes! Hark! How the splinters crack and pop— (Chip! . . Chop! . . Chip! . . Chop!) Listen! Listen! She's creaking now! Look, high up, at that trembling bough! Another second, and down she'll smash, Shaking the earth with a mighty crash; Look at her! Look at her! (Chip! Chop! Chip! . . ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... chop boxes of stores intact; and a cigar box without a crack in it, and also without a cigar. It looked as though it had been carefully opened, emptied, and laid down. There was no end to the surprises of this search: things brayed to pieces as if with a pestle and ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... stateroom before we are ill," she says presently, in a state of hopeful anticipation, and we retire to No. 49 in the Steamship San Miguel, which all who have taken this journey know to be the best double room on the "crack" steamer of the line. We put up hangers, divide pockets and racks, and prepare for a three weeks' occupancy. Having finished our work, we go to the stern to get a whiff of the stiff breeze blowing from the southeast. The air is sweet and sun-laden, ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... wrothy again. "Best element," said he, sneeringly. "He is losing his time fooling with that crowd. All we radicals have to do is to crack our whips and they ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... lend ye, after I've had a crack wi' Crossthwaite aboot ye, gin I find his opinion o' ye satisfactory. Come to me the day after to-morrow. An' mind, here are my rules:—a' damage done to a book to be paid for, or na mair books lent; ye'll mind to take no books without ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... molar) was worn entirely below the enamel except for a small space at the front; the dentine was polished until it resembled a piece of agate. Mr. De Lancey Gill first remarked the fact that wear of this character denotes that the individual did not gnaw bones, crack nuts, or indeed bite hard on any substance. If he had done so this thin shred of enamel would have broken off. Two large rocks which lay on the head and body seem to have been thus placed before the grave ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... black with many a crack, All black and bare, I ween; Jet-black and bare, save where with rust Of mouldy damps and charnel crust They're ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... idea! We shall provide ourselves with a night's shelter and the means to entertain our friends as well Hasten to collect our wardrobe, mignonette, while I crack my throat to ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... leaf, and the men noticed how his hand trembled; and he stood waiting for it to be taken by Hardock, who had sunk on his knees and was holding the candle sidewise, so that a little of the grease might drip into a crack where he meant to stick the candle ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... Page, sitting fully dressed in the darkness of her bedroom, got quietly to her feet and went to the door leading to her office. With wildly beating heart she stood listening, seeking to peer through the crack of the door she had left ajar. She had heard the faint, expected sound of some ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... motioned to the man to be silent. He then set off rapidly down the mountain. His white comrade, unwilling to leave him, ran after him, and reached his side just as he leveled his gun at a big Indian standing tiptoe on a log and peering into the thick woods. At the crack of Ben's rifle the savage bounded into the air and fell. The others set up a fierce yell, and, as the fearless Negro said, 'skipped from tree to tree like grasshoppers.' He bawled out: 'Take dat to 'member Ben—de black white man!' and the ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... (was it an ill omen that there should be a worm in it?) when a steward handed me a twisted note from the executioner. "The rule for conductor's dinner speech is, rise with the raisins! Hope you won't find your lecture too hard a nut to crack. Yours sympathetically, Corkran. Bang on the table to make them stop gabbling. Or shall I do it for you? If you haven't by the time ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... call'd her Prude. "To arms, to arms!" the fierce Virago cries, And swift as lightning to the combat flies. All side in parties, and begin th' attack; Fans clap, silks rustle, and tough whalebones crack; 40 Heroes' and Heroines' shouts confus'dly rise, And bass, and treble voices strike the skies. No common weapons in their hands are found, Like Gods they fight, nor dread a ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... stood round, with intense admiration depicted on their countenances, while Billy was performing in public for the first time. "Watch now there his double shuffle—how he slips his little feet about just as if they were on ice!—and hear what a crack he gives his fingers. It won't be long before he'll take the shine out of many a big fellow who fancies that he ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... was a large house, and for this refuge the British dashed madly. The first man to reach the door tried the knob. The door was locked. From behind came the plod of the heavy German feet and the sharp crack of rifles. ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... Crack goes the whip, and off we go; The trees and houses smaller grow; Last, round the woody turn we swing: Good-bye, good-bye, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... catarrhal condition of nose, throat and alimentary canal, with constipation and much flatulence in the bowels. My teeth are decaying quickly, my nails have got softer, and I have become anaemic and generally debilitated, being unable to properly assimilate my food. All my joints crack when moved, and the knee joints creak as well. Is this a uric acid condition, or do you think it merely due to a lack of nourishment, causing a lack of synovial fluid? The joints are not swollen and not painful, they merely crack. My whole system seems to be over-acid, ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... of course greatly interested in our gallant armament of rapid-fire guns, and when the quartermaster, who is a crack shot, hit an improvised target in the water several times in succession with a one-pounder in the stern of the ship, the Filipinos were astounded, and stared at him in even greater admiration than they had shown for the formidable little weapon. Two ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... mace, or mack; Or moskeneer, or flash the drag; Dead-lurk a crib, or do a crack; Pad with a slang, or chuck a fag; Bonnet, or tout, or mump and gag; Rattle the tats, or mark the spot; You cannot bag a single stag; Booze and the ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... picture we must have presented, the captain steering the schooner and listening with greedy ears to every word which fell from my lips, as, seated directly fronting him, my back supported by the binnacle, I read in a clear and distinct voice, and with due emphasis, the crude absurdities of a crack-brained ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... came up from below. A roar of laughter and the babble of male voices was mixed with the rumble of wheels and the pistol-like crack of ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... to do, namely, to keep the boat away dead before it; and away went the lugger, still heading to the southward and westward, but with the wind now dead aft instead of over the starboard bow. But they had scarcely been scudding five minutes when there occurred a sudden rending crack of timber, and the mainmast, weakened by an unsuspected flaw in the heart of it, snapped, about midway between the heel of it and the sheave, and went over the bows, broaching-to the lugger with the drag of the mainsail in the water, and nearly filling ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... The boat plunged like a bucking broncho, at the same time rolling with fierce violence. As rapidly as possible we bailed with our kettles, but the effort was useless. At length, as we neared the end, an immense billow broke upon our port bow with a resounding crack. The little craft succumbed. With a quick careen she turned upside down, and we were in the foaming current. I threw up my hand and fortunately grasped a spare oar that was fastened along the outside of the boat. This enabled me to pull myself above the ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... trees were cracking like pistols in the frost, a mournful howling rose all around their little cabin. Light footfalls sounded on the crust; there were scratchings at the very door and hoarse breathings at every crack; while the dogs, with hackles up straight and stiff on their necks, fled howling under beds and tables. And when Mooka and Noel went fearfully with their mother to the little window—for the men were far away on a caribou hunt—there were gaunt white wolves, five ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... may come and see how strong ice is. Not only does it burst glass bottles, but it will even crack ...
— Daddy Takes Us Skating • Howard R. Garis
... you! Tug hadn't been at Richmond School for nothing; and MILLED away one, two, right and left—like a little hero as he is, with all his dear mother's spirit in him. First came a crack which sent a long dusky white hat—that looked damp and deep like a well, and had a long black crape-rag twisted round it—first came a crack which sent this white hat spinning over the gentleman's cab and scattered among the crowd a vast number of things which the cabman ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Not bad, I suppose, considering that I must have been rather a hard nut to crack. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... me—[to Milton] Thou art wise, Prudent, and skill'd in learned rhetorick— Think'st thou 'twere sad to gaze upon the look, That sudden on the harlot's painted features, Set in the stale attraction of forc'd smiles, Darkens so wildly—that, like one amaz'd, From the crack'd glass she staggers, to her brow Lifts her wan, jewell'd finger—tries to think? The wanton provocation of her features Chang'd all to sickly twilight, blank dismay— And when thought comes, to see ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... hae a cup o' tea in a crack,' Teen said blithely. 'I've gotten a new teapot, Liz; the auld yin positively fell to bits. Wull ye no' bide an' drink ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... horrors, why would the Rickettses and Mrs. Jones's three boys choose the path through the shrubbery to approach the house! The morning room, where Helen was taking her tea, looked out on the shrubbery, and although it was now quite dark in the world of nature, those dreadful rough boys would crack boughs, and stumble and titter as they walked. Polly's face grew hotter and her hands colder; never did she bless her sister's rather slow and unsuspicious nature more than at this moment, for Helen heard no boughs crack, nor did the stealthy, smothered laughter, ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... opposition to the troops. Not less inconsistent with the original pretext was the despatch of a battalion to Newry and Dundalk. At the latter place there was already a brigade of artillery, with eighteen guns, which would prove a tough nut for "evil-disposed persons" to crack; and although both towns would be important points to hold with an army making war on Ulster, they were both in Nationalist territory where there could be no fear of raids by Unionists. Yet the urgency ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... serve the vengeful purposes of the Duchess, could not be opened from within. Rinaldo laid his cheek against the wall in various spots; nowhere could he feel the warmer air from the passage. He had hoped he might find a crack that would show him where there was an opening in the wall, but nothing, nothing! The whole seemed to be of ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... surmounted the Brule Rapid—Pusitao Powestik—short but powerful, with a sharp pointed rock at its head, very troublesome to get around. Above this rapid the bank consists of a solid, vertical rampart of red sandstone, its base and top and every crack and crevice clothed with a rich vegetation—a most beautiful and striking scene, forming a gigantic amphitheatre, concentred by the seeming closing-in of the left bank at Point Brule upon the long straight line of sandstone ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... a little hesitation, "considerin' the circumstances, I should say that in a case like this about fifteen hundred a year, a first-rate house with not a loose shingle on it nor a crack anywhere, a good garden and an orchard, two cows, a piece of meadow-land on the other side of the creek, and all the clothes a woman need have, ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... Who but a first-rate genius could accomplish this feat in such a style? Bob could crow like a cock, bark like a dog, mew like a cat, neigh like a horse, bray like an ass, or gobble like a turkey-cock. Unquestionably, I have never heard him equalled as an imitator of birds and beasts. Bob's crack feat, however, was performing the Screw-pin Dance, of which we have only this to say, that by whatsoever means he became acquainted with it, it is precisely the same dance which is said to have been exhibited by some strolling Moor before the late Queen Caroline. It is, indeed, very strange, ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... perfect fluency, distinctness, and command of language," and that you showed great self-possession: was the latter the proverbially desperate courage of a coward? But you are a pretty fellow to be so desperately afraid and then to make the crack speech. Many such an ordeal may you have to go through! I do not know whether Sir William [Hooker] would be contented with Lord Rosse's (38/2. President of the Royal Society 1848-54.) speech on giving you ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... is groaning, and I am bound to obey her. She had a dream last night she was in a flood, and had to cross a plank or summut. I quieted her till supper; but then landlord came round and warned all of us of a crack or summut up at dam. And so now I am taking this little lot up to my brother's. It's the foolishest job I ever done: but needs must when the devil drives, and it is better so than to have my old gal sour her ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Then with a crack of whips we started, and it was with satisfaction that I heard the trampling of hoofs bite into the sod and the bright steel edges rip through the matted roots. Soft earth and tangled grasses filled the iron scoop behind, the air vibrated with the strident clang of rails, and the locomotive ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... buckwheat cakes an' syrup,—maple syrup, mind ye, for Father has his own sugar-bush, and there was a big run o' sap last season. Mother says, 'Ezry an' Amos, won't you never get through eatin'? We want to clear off the table, for there's pies to make, an' nuts to crack, and laws sakes alive! the turkey's got to be stuffed yit!' Then how we all fly round! Mother sends Helen up into the attic to get a squash while Mary's makin' the pie-crust. Amos an' I crack the walnuts,—they ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... to be turned and for the crack of the whip that lifted the heels of the sorrel above the dashboard before she plunged, then, with amazing speed, of mind as well as of body, he wrenched every sign from the post and pitched them out of sight behind a neighboring ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... a bush in the wilds of Kapa'a, The paddlers bend to their work, as the flower-laden Shrub inclines to the earth in Maile-huna; They sway like reeds in the breeze to crack their bones 5 Such the sight as I look at this tossing grove, The rhythmic dip and swing on to Wailua. My call to the witch shall fly with the breeze, Shall be heard at Pua-ke'i, e-he, e-he! The flower-stalk Laukona beguiles man to ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... desired quantity of black walnuts from remnants of the old forest. After a few years these trips to the woods became less glamourous and the pickeruppers more critical. Many of the wild nuts were small and hard to crack. Perhaps a friend's Thomas tree in full bearing with its heavy crop of huge, tasty nuts inspired a wish to grow bigger and better producing trees near ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... take that purse: Now crack thy lungs, and split the sounding brass; Thou blow'st for Hector. [Trumpet sounds, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... in his ears, he felt the crack of a whip around his chest, the red mist reappeared before his eyes, he again saw the corpses of his wife and daughter, and beside them the usurper with the friar laughing and holding his sides. Forgetting everything else, he turned aside ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... days began to shorten, Edwards and I began to plan our escape. We had the maps, the one he had bought at Vehnemoor and the one I had made. We had the compass, which we had kept hidden in a very small crack in the sloping roof of the hut, and the Red Cross suits had come, and were dark blue and quite unnoticeable except for the piece of brown cloth sewed on the sleeve. Mine had Russian buttons on it, which I had put on to have for souvenirs—and ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... them wait upon God; patiently let them wait upon men, and patiently let them bear the fruits of their own transgressions; which though they should be none other but a deferring of the mercy wished for, is enough to try, and crack, and break their patience, if a continual supply and a daily increase thereof be not given by ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... lad," the farmer said as they parted. "I tell ye, from what I've heerd, this London be a hard nut to crack. There be plenty of kernel, no doubt, when you can get at it, but it be hard work to open the shell. Now, if so be as at any time you run short of money, just drop me a line, and there's ten pound at your service whenever you like. Don't you think it's an obligation. Quite the other way. It would ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... hastened to reply; "I'm doing a loaf this afternoon. I thought I heard my oar crack this morning, so came for some ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... in the holsters at Woodhull's saddle. He made a rush for a weapon—indeed, the crack of the blow had been so sharp that the nearest men thought a shot had been fired—but swift as was his leap, it was not swift enough. The long, lean hand of the bearded Missourian gripped his wrist even as he caught at a pistol grip. He turned ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... undermined by the rats, and only upheld by great bars of wood which were reared against its walls, and had propped it up so long that even they were decaying and yielding with their load, and of a windy night might be heard to creak and crack as if the whole fabric were about to come toppling down. The house stood—if anything so old and feeble could be said to stand—on a piece of waste ground, blighted with the unwholesome smoke of factory chimneys, and echoing the clank of iron wheels and rush of troubled water. Its internal accommodations ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... on me has neither taste nor feeling; the sight of fetters still gives him a start; crack a whip in his neighbourhood, and his ears tingle; the treadmill is an abode of awe to him. He is now insufferable—insults his new equals, and whips his old fellows to see what that side of the transaction feels like. He ends by finding ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... said, catching his hand in hers, as she read, while all around them the sounds of summer—the distant clack of a reaper, the crack of a whip, the locusts droning, the whir of a young partridge, the squeak of a chipmunk—were tuned to the harmony of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... In Palestine Who gave a certain kiss. More, fine friends, do you give who live In a land not far from this! For what he had done He hanged himself— Shame made a sick heart crack. But you will muster and ride again— ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... continual crack of voices our jay-like crew swung on, swaying and thumping in the strange ecstasy of irreflection, happy to be moving they knew not where, nor greatly why, under the visiting sun, to the sound of murdered music. Whenever the band stopped playing, discipline ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had better stop that,' said Big Klaus, 'for if you say it once more I will give your horse such a crack on the head that it will drop down ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... on a bit, he came to a smithy, and he turned in and asked the smith if he'd be good enough to crack that nut for him. ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... little laugh; "and now we must be getting on. Good-by, and thank you for saving our lives, even if you have had a crack at ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... madly on, until, dreadful to say! He came where the railroad was just in his way— And alas! and alack! He tripped on the track And then with a terrible, sudden ker-thwack! Triangular Tommy sprawled flat on his back— And the train came along with a crash, and a crack, A din, and a clatter, a clang, and a clack, A toot, and a boom, and a roar, and a hiss, And chopped him up all into pieces like this— If you cut out papers just like them, why, then, If you try, you can put ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... to be sure," continued Benson: "there is a dead silence till pug is well out of cover, and the whole pack well in: then cheer the hounds with tally-ho! till your lungs crack. Away he goes in gallant style, and the whole field is hard up, till pug takes a stiff country: then they who haven't pluck lag, see no more of him, and, with a fine blazing scent, there are but few of us ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... that's why I want to pin him first. I might hit him a good crack, but snakes are hard to kill, and he might throw his head about and bite even then, though I arn't quite sure even now that they don't sting ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... and watched the golden grate Turn at length black; Heard the cooling iron crack: Shadows, shadows, Watching the ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... was rather tight for me, and was much too small for him. He put it on, nevertheless, but with great difficulty, bursting all the seams. Saveliitch uttered something like a smothered howl, when he heard the threads crack. As for the vagabond, he was well pleased with my present. He re-conducted me to my kibitka, and said, with a profound bow: "Thanks, my lord, may god reward you. I shall never forget ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... A few years before, the Governor, having compromised himself by acts of injustice, was assassinated, after receiving one of these “death-warnings” peculiar to Sardinia. “During the night he heard a pane of glass crack, and on examining it in the morning he found the fatal bullet on the floor. The custom of the country is that, whenever the vendetta alla morte, revenge even to death, is to be carried out, the party avenging himself shall give his adversary timely ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... sat there a long time when the noise of wheels and the crack of a postillion's whip roused the dogs chained in the stable. Odo's heart began to beat. What could the sounds mean? It was as though the flood-tide of the unknown were rising about him and bursting open the chapel door to pour in on his loneliness. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... shepherds in white satin who ought to be the performers in this ingenious theatre, it is the unaccustomed stranger who is forced into the position of actor. As he toils up the steep and slovenly streets, faced with shabby buildings that crack and blacken behind their ill-adjusted fronts of stucco and distemper, he cheapens rapidly in his own view: he feels painfully like the hapless supernumerary whom he has seen mounting an obvious step-ladder behind a screen of rock-work on his way to a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... realist or detailist of the Ruskin type has for years been insisting that a spade was a spade and should be painted to look like a spade; that a spade was not a spade until every nail in the handle and every crack in ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... The women of this nation go and gather these shells, and make a powder of them, which they mix with the earth, of which they make their pottery, or earthen ware. However, I would not advise the use of these shells indifferently for this purpose, because they are naturally apt to crack in the fire: I have therefore reason to think, that those found at the Nachitoches have acquired their good quality only by the discharge of their salts, from continuing for so many ages out of ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... the Maoris use ladders for descending on their villages above to their canoes in the rivers below. Lovely indeed are these cliffs; first, because of the profusion of fern frond, leaf, and moss, growing from everything that can climb to, lay hold of, or root itself in crack, crevice, or ledge, and droop, glistening with spray-drops, or wave whispering in the wind; next, because of the striking form and colour of the cliffs themselves. They are formed of what is called "Papa." This is a blue, calcareous ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... about each other for a short space; the American, apparently whenever he chose, stepped in and landed left and right on the other's jaw with a sound like the crack of a whip. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... the next morning. The villages were poor, and most of the houses were of boards rudely nailed together for ends, and for sides straw rudely tied on; they had no windows, and smoke came out of every crack. They were as unlike the houses which travellers see in southern Japan as a "black hut" in Uist is like a cottage in a trim village in Kent. These peasant proprietors have much to learn of the art of living. At Tsuguriko, the next stage, where ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... stones inside began to shake, And make his old ribs crack and ache; And the gladsome flock, as they sped away, Could hear him ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... shot rang out above the chatter, and an old woman in a white cap screamed and tumbled over on the pavement,—rolled about, kicking indecorously with both hands and feet. A second crack,—the little girl who stood beside Hicks, eating chocolate, threw out her hands, ran a few steps, and fell, blood and brains oozing out in her yellow hair. The people began screaming and running. ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... probability is," said Billy, "that they are in the crack. It would be just about impossible for a girl to climb out of one of 'em. If they have got out, though, it's just a matter of finding their trail again. We'll have 'em! It's just this chance crack that ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... about this falling off in quality, however, although unquestionably, choice sorts, as Delaware, Iona and Dutchess, suffer more or less in quality. It is commonly agreed, also, that varieties, the fruits of which crack badly, as the Worden, suffer more from cracking on ringed than ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... far over the gunwale, grasping the rice-plants at the same time, and hauling his little craft through them, in the way that sailors call "hand over hand." This expedient most probably saved his life. While bending over the gunwale, he heard the crack of the rifles, and the whizzing of two bullets that appeared to pass just behind him. By this time the whole of the ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... everything was green. Green emeralds studded the rocks, green crystals hung from the ceiling or formed rows of pillars, even the copper which made the walls of the cave had a coating of green. Wayland broke off a huge projecting lump and left the cave, which instantly closed up so that not a crack remained to tell ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... sport was at its height, the sliding was at the quickest, the laughter was at the loudest, when a sharp, smart crack was heard. There was a quick rush towards the bank, a wild scream from the ladies, and a shout from Mr. Tupman. A large mass of ice disappeared, the water bubbled 15 up over it, and Mr. Pickwick's hat, gloves, and handkerchief ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... in some shop to escape a street mob that was pursued by soldiers. Also, a bomb burst near me, once, in some still street, where, look as I would, up and down, I could see no human being. But my next sharp recollection begins with the crack of a rifle and an abrupt becoming aware that I am being fired at by a soldier in an automobile. The shot missed, and the next moment I was screaming and motioning the signals. My memory of riding in the automobile is very hazy, though this ride, in turn, ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... stuck by the old man. We hid your revolver and money- belt under the seventh palm, on the beach to the right of this shack. If I'd known you had twenty double eagles on you all this time, I'd have cracked your skull myself. The crack you've got is healing, and if you pull through the fever you'll be all right. If you do, give this woman twenty pesos I borrowed from her. Get her to hire a boat, and men, and row it to Amapala. This island is only fifteen miles ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... Gentleman who said more Good of you, than, let me tell you, any Man living deserves. The Success of one of these Incidents was, that the next time that one of the Adversaries spied the other, he hems after him in the publick Street, and they must crack a Bottle at the next Tavern, that used to turn out of the others Way to avoid one anothers Eyeshot. He will tell one Beauty she was commended by another, nay, he will say she gave the Woman he speaks to, the Preference in a Particular for which she her self ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... sight of him, forgot about Lije, and came charging through the weeds. Sandy had no more time for hesitation. He dropped his unwieldy musket, and clambered into a blackened and branchy hackmatack, so small that he feared the rush of the bull might break it down. It did, indeed, crack ominously when the headlong bulk reared upon it; but it stood. And Sandy felt as if every branch he ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... that 'man is common clay—woman porcelain.' Alas! there is but little genuine porcelain. It is a pity that you couldn't contrive to have a few jars before matrimony, to crack off some of the glazing, and show the true ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... it may harmonize with low conditions; no more that need to shun the company of all healthful and heroic thoughts, such as are fit, indeed, to brace the sinews of a sincere social order, but sure to crack the sinews of a feeble and faithless conventionalism. Base men there will yet be, and therefore base politics; but when once our nation has paid the debt it owes to itself and the human race, when once it has got ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... of the Association the practice prevailed among certain clubs of offering inducements to crack players in order to secure them as members. The clubs which could afford this grew disproportionately strong, and in the face of continual defeat the weaker clubs were losing interest. In 1859 a rule was made forbidding the ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... of you," said Major Hunt-Goring, his eyes boldly passing her to rest upon Violet. "Managed to crack my thumb tinkering at my old motor. Dr. Wyndham tells me that you have been kind enough to ask me to lunch. How do you do, Miss Campion? Charmed to meet you! Someone told me you were yachting ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... is not so easy to dispel suspicion. This war has been a shock to reasonable men the whole world over. They have been forced to realise that after all a great number of Germans have been engaged in a crack-brained conspiracy against the non-German world; that in a great number of cases when one does business with a German the business does not end with the individual German. We hated to believe that a business could be tainted by German ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... from the house mightily pleased with himself, and proud of his commission. He swung his crab-tree-staff recklessly in his glee—so recklessly that he imperiled the shins of more than one angry passer-by—and vowed he'd crack the ribs of Robin Hood with it, though he was surrounded by every ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... emergency. The dark head appearing on the crest of a roller, and then swooping down on the other side, was already half-way to the sloop. Sharkey dwelt long upon his aim before he fired. With the crack of the gun the swimmer reared himself up in the water, waved his hands in a gesture of warning, and roared out in a voice which rang over the bay. Then, as the sloop swung round her head-sails, and the pirate fired an impotent broadside, Stephen Craddock, smiling ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with them and they were glad they had done so, for as they made their way through a patch of brush a beautiful deer sprang out and dashed off. Jack had the rifle at his shoulder in a minute and the creature bounded into the air, as the crack of the report sounded, ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... sense that first Youth was already fled. For one of them, in fact, it was positively his thirtieth birthday; poor soul, how decrepitly he flitted in front of motor trucks. As for the other, he was far decumbent in years, quite of a previous generation, a perfect Rameses, whose senile face was wont to crack into wrinklish mirth when his palsied cronies called him the greatest poet ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... boys! he's at the ford!" came a sudden shout from the camp, followed by the crack of a rifle. Two or three more shots rang out, and from the bound his horse gave Will knew one bullet had reached a mark. He rode into the water, then turned in his saddle and aimed like a flash at a man within range. The fellow staggered and fell, and Will put spurs to his horse, ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... games, taking with him the Twelve Peers of France, his daughter Alinda, his niece Rosalynd, and all the most famous beauties of the Court. Rosalynd, "upon whose cheeks there seemed a battle between the graces," was the centre of attraction, "and made the cavaliers crack their lances with more courage." The tournament being over, the Norman offered himself as general challenger at wrestling. While he is in the full career of success, Rosader alights from his horse, and presents himself for a ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... bee-hunter, striking his own hand into the open palm which the other had extended, with a report but little below the crack of a rifle, "I have just two things to say—Firstly, that the Captain has told you my meaning better than I can myself; and, secondly, if you want a skin, either for your private use or to send abroad, I have it at your service, and that is the skin of ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... infinite power on their side and join in the mad slaughter of His own beloved children. And those slaughtered are the workers, and their folks at home naturally wonder why the one big international peace organization on earth, the Church, at the crack of the war demon's whip, deserts its principles of 'Thou shalt not kill,' and 'Peace on earth,' and helps to stampede its followers in ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... boulevards. The proprietor is Jules; he may have a surname but no one seems to know what it is; to one and all he is "Jules," a capital patron who, having been a waiter himself, knows how to look after the personal tastes of his customers. These include the officers of the grenadiers, the crack Belgian regiment, whose barracks are close by, judges and barristers from the Palais de Justice, members of the King's household (the royal palace being nearly opposite), actors from the Moliere Theatre, sportsmen who foregather here on race-days, and the better-class Bohemians. ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... years of wrong! Ah, fair and fatal decoration, serving as a mark for a hidden foe! The sharp crack of a rifle broke the stillness of the night, and with those hopeful words upon his lips, the young man sealed his ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... on ould College Green? They fancy we're Radical rum 'uns! Allaygiance we owe to our QUEEN! But we're fly to their thraitorous dodges; Our loyalty's edge would they dull? Fwit! We'll pour like a flood from our Lodges, And crack every "National" skull! Ri fol ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... revealed the hiding place of Dave. He was crouched behind the rocks which he had piled up across the cut where it entered the slope of the hill, and his long barrelled six-shooter was thrust out through a crack just wide enough to ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... inhabitants of that western Eden with which he had become so enraptured. Strolling along one day, he met with a tall, gaunt Yankee, who knew him, and invited him into his log-cabin for a social glass and a 'crack' after it. This semi-savage-looking fellow had been a soldier, and delighted, like his guest, in the title of captain. He had been fighting in Mexico and California with the 'Injuns.' As he of Doty Island had a proposal ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... lower door of the tower opened a crack. An old, old woman, and not at all a pleasant looking woman, appeared ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... school, when her pupils had said their good-bys and were straying homeward laden with their books and slates, the little girl stayed behind. And, sitting in the very place to which in former years she had raised reverent eyes, she looked round the building, every crack and corner ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... arrive the lively din is incessant. Nothing is heard but laughter, conversation, songs, and anecdotes, all rising in a loud key, among the louder humming of the spinning-wheels and the stridulous noise of the reeds, as they incessantly crack the cuts in the hands of the reelers, who are perpetually turning them from morning to night, in order to ascertain the quantity which every competitor has spun; and she, of course, who has spun most wins the kemp, and is ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... It was a dreary, unaccustomed sort of crack in his weather-beaten face. "I had coffee, too," he replied in ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... night. There is the rumble of some avalanche, as, after a drifting storm, a mass of snow, too heavy to keep its place, slides and tumbles from the mountain peak. There is also, now and then, a loud crack of the ice in the nearest glacier; and, as many declare, there is a crackling to be heard by those who listen when the northern lights are shooting and blazing across the sky. Nor is this all. Wherever there is a nook between the rocks on the shore, where ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... gnew and he sed it must come natural to me. He sed i wood scare a gorilla white. then he lerned us how to fite and sed we must snarl and fite when he was out on the platform telling the peeple about us and then we wood rush in and crack a whip and fire a pistol in our faces and ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... like the glassy bubble, Which costs philosophers such trouble; Where, one part crack'd, the whole does fly, And wits are crack'd ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... a dozen of apples, not a pound.... No, there are a lot of them, and all little. You put them in the mouth and crack." ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... I said, when I saw that, "get to arms; for here they come to speak with us. Maybe we shall have to fight—and these are no easy nuts to crack!" ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... began artfully to turn the conversation away from me to the elder confederates of his crew; these were all spoken of under certain singular appellations which might well baffle impertinent curiosity. The name of one was "the Gimblet," another "Crack Crib," a third, the "Magician," a fourth, "Cherry coloured Jowl." The tallest of the present company was called (as I before said) "Spider-shanks," and the shortest "Fib Fakescrew;" Job himself was honoured by the venerabile nomen of "Guinea Pig." At last Job explained the cause of my appearance; ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... moment came a flash of lightning, followed by a crack like that of a cosmic whip-lash, and a long reverberating roar ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... standing there hatless, and dealing furious blows with a heavy hammer. He did so with a right good will. He first threw himself back, then took a spring, and finally fell upon the sonorous bronze as if he wanted to crack it. One might have thought he was a blacksmith striking hot iron—but a frock-coated blacksmith, short and bald, working in a ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... autocrat of the situation. He is lord of all the humble passengers, and they feel their inferiority. They may have knowledge and skill in some things, but they are of no use here. At all the stables the driver is king; all the people on the route are deferential to him; they are happy if he will crack a joke with them, and take it as a favor if he gives them better than they send. And it is his joke that always raises the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... relieve mild depression, increase energy and activity, and include cocaine (coke, snow, crack), amphetamines (Desoxyn, Dexedrine), phenmetrazine (Preludin), methylphenidate (Ritalin), ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the midst of the general confusion, 'I'm not at all wet, I'm not.' Happily, the children don't know what fear is. The maids, however, were very frightened, as some of the sea had got down into the nursery, and the skylights had to be screwed down. Our studding-sail boom, too, broke with a loud crack when the ship broached-to, and the jaws ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... direction, and then spring forward, at least twenty feet, and far in advance of his competitors. Two more such springs, and we would be enfolded in his embrace. Again he raised his black, shining form, and was about to repeat the attempt, when we heard the sharp crack of Mr. Brown's revolver. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Canna, cannot. Canny, careful, shrewd. Cantie, cheerful. Carline, old woman. Cauld, cold. Chalmer, chamber. Claes, clothes. Clamjamfry, crowd. Clavers, idle talk. Cock-laird. See Bonnet-laird. Collieshangie, turmoil. Crack, to converse. Cuist, cast. Cuddy, donkey. Cutty, jade, also ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his performance upon the others of his family, who sat round him on their podgy haunches in a respectfully wide circle, and marvelled fearfully at his robust prowess. They had all yapped before, but this deep, resonant bark—fully one in three had no crack in it—this was an achievement indeed. After a while the grey bitch pup came and tentatively chewed Finn's backbone, with a vague idea that ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... labels can be made for bottles and cans. They are easy to put on and to take off. If the garden hose, the rubber tube of your bath spray, or your hot water bag shows a crack or a small ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... "The wind's in your face, Jim. The horses won't scent you. Go slow. Don't crack a stone. Keep close under the wall. Try to get up as high as this at the other end. Wait till daylight before riskin' a loose slope. I'll be ridin' the job ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... I let the nun sit and wait. If her principles forbade idleness, I was glad to have a crack at her principles. Then I began to dictate steadily and severely. I found that the dismissal from my mind of all conjectures regarding the personality of my secretary was of great service to me, and I was able to compose much faster ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... down from the window-seat; he buttoned his gown down to his shins, pulled his hat over his ears and hurried through the galleried courtyard into the comfortless shadows of the street. There was no doubt that Norfolk was coming; round the tiny crack that, two houses away, served for all the space that the road had between the towering housefronts, two men in scarlet and yellow, with leopards and lions and fleurs-de-lis on their chests, walked between two in white, tabarded with the great lilies of ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... it is one of the articles of faith of a few crack-brained fanatics in this country, and of many ill-informed and prejudiced editors upon the Continent, that the British Government was ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
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