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More "Cracking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mingled promiscuously with drinking cups, in which quivered leaves of gold, skulls placed upon vellum checkered with figures and characters, huge manuscripts piled up wide open, without mercy on the cracking corners of the parchment; in short, all the rubbish of science, and everywhere on this confusion dust and spiders' webs; but there was no circle of luminous letters, no doctor in an ecstasy contemplating the flaming vision, as the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... coming to him to seek help for an orphan's home. It was a pathetic mess at times, but so are all defiant variations from the accustomed drift of things. In the hardy language of Napoleon, one cannot make an omelette without cracking ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... town buzzed: motor cars, surrounded by curses, insinuated their way through the crammed streets; whips were cracking, men were quarrelling but all had their faces turned towards the road to Rashka, which we realized would be as full as at straphanging time in the Tube. The boys passed us, then we passed them. They passed us again. Hundreds ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... a tremendous shock, as if the earth had quaked and opened beneath me, and this was followed by a deafening uproar, the clashing of stones, the cracking of wood and glass, the grating and crushing of iron, and the pitiful cries of men, women, and children. The great mass of rock broke through the protecting barricade and rushed right upon the engine. The huge, steam-vomiting leviathan was ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... welter of incandescence, where now only the stone chimney stood—and this, too, was already cracking and swaying—Brevard had found his tomb, together with the two Air Trust spies. All that pleasant, necessary place was now a mass of white-hot ruin; all those books and pictures now had ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... the mother, sitting suddenly up. A direful cracking resounded under the bed-clothes as she did so, but in the excitement of the moment its possible ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... the atmosphere having about this time become considerably lower than before, the cracking of the timbers was very frequent and loud for a time; but generally ceased altogether in an hour or two after this fall had taken place in the thermometer, and did not occur again at the same temperature during the winter. The wind blowing fresh from the northward, with a heavy ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... himself, so as not to fall, he stood there weak and faint, while the dogs, on the other side of the wooden partition which now separated him from death—and what a death! erect upon their hind legs, like rampant, heraldic animals, tried to break through, cracking, in their gory jaws, long strips of wood torn from the barrier which kept them ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... She heeded not the cracking timbers and the roaring sea. Her heart was with the unfortunate man who lay cold and still beneath the invading waters. She was ready to go with him to the home in the ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... the ribald words with my knife, and then we went up through the companion to the poop, and looked along the deserted deck, whose once white planking was now cracking and discolouring under the fierce rays of the torrid sun, to which it had been exposed for ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... their breath, when there was a sharp cracking of musketry, the man with the torch fell prostrate, and several cries arose from the column. The watchers on the roof of Gubbins' house had been quick to discern ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... tosses them in the air, but being made heavy at the base, they come to the ground always retaining an upright posture. The straw figures are furnished with fire-works, which are made to take fire when the birds escape from within, and it sometimes happens that the bull has the flaming and cracking figure upon his horns. Sometimes the bull is maddened by fire-works being fastened on him, which go off in succession. The crackers being expended, the animal usually stands gazing around with rolling tongue, panting sides, and eyes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 352, January 17, 1829 • Various
... five miles south-east of Tunbridge Wells, to show that it was once a very considerable monastery. The founder was Sir Robert de Turneham, one of the knights of Richard Coeur de Lion, famous for cracking many crowns with his "fauchion," and the founder also of Combwell Abbey at Goudhurst, not far distant. Edward I. and Edward II. were both entertained at Bayham, while a fortunate visit from St. Richard, Bishop of Chichester, put the Abbey in possession ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... hold in her cracking brain, and wabbled out into new scenes of mud and wetness, but she came up to the young man with the most rain-washed and careless of smiles. "Won't you come back and meet my father? He's terribly grateful to you—as I am. And may we—— You've worked so hard, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... interview with Jos. Larkin was always in her mind. The bleached face, so meek, so cruel, of that shabby spectre, in the small, low parlour of Redman's Farm, was always before her. There he had spoken the sentences which made the earth tremble, and showed her distinctly the cracking line beneath her feet, which would gape at his word into the fathomless chasm that was to swallow her. But, come what might, she would not abandon the vicar and his little boy, and good Dolly, to the arts of ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... had arrived in a bay of rocks. Sailors have given them the name of "gun-stones"; perhaps because the sound of the breakers reminds one of the cracking ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... their hollow cheeks, the dark markings under their eyes and, above all, the terrible look of suffering and despair that was beginning to reveal itself in the eyes themselves. Yet not a word of discouragement or complaint passed their black and cracking lips; they simply lay about, moving as little as possible, and endured silently. As for me, I could think of nothing, do nothing to help them. ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... hickory nuts, beechnuts and chestnuts. As settlement progressed, the demand on hickory as wood for wagon parts increased while the use of the thick-shelled nuts for food decreased except by the country boy or girl who wandered from tree to tree in the fall collecting nuts for cracking by the fireside ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... from the cat, did nothing to it, indeed, beyond occasionally coaxing it from the stool to his knee, and there letting it purr, climb to his shoulder, and rub its head against his cheek; though there was no ear-splitting cracking off of firearms, no diffusion of sulphurous gunpowder perfume, no noise, no boasting during his stay—that still Caroline sat in the room, and seemed to find wondrous content in the stitching of Jew-basket pin-cushions and the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... tasted the blood his teeth drew from his own skin as he recited that formula. Then he scrambled up. His feet tangled in the net, and he went down again, his head cracking on a protruding root. ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... free, untrammeled life, the life of a circus-boy, standing up on top of somebody's head (you could pretend he was your daddy. Who'd ever know the difference?) and your leg stuck up like five minutes to six, and him standing on top of a horse—and the horse going around the ring, and the ring master cracking his whip—aw, say! How ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... black creatures, as large as the palm of Dicky's hand, all locked in deadly combat. They writhed and struggled and embraced, their long, curling legs fastening on each other with a sound that was actually like the cracking of bones. It takes a little courage to stand and watch such a proceeding, for you feel as if the hideous fellows might turn and jump for you; but they were doubtless absorbed in their own battle, and we wanted to see the affair to the end, so we ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... approaches maturity loses its polished appearance and becomes more distinctly grained. This change, if it does not go too far, does not detract from its appearance and value. To examine a head, do not untie the top, but part the leaves at the side. If there are signs of cracking or breaking it is ready to cut. The heads should be cut with about an inch of stalk and two or three full circles of leaves. A long thin-bladed knife is ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... as if they burnt his fingers, and flinging his plumed hat on the table, as who should say, Lie there, authority! he swallowed a hearty cup of wine to the happiness of the married couple, and began to amble about the room, mumping, laughing, and cracking jests, neither the wittiest nor the most delicate, but accompanied and applauded by shouts of his own mirth, in order to encourage that of the company. Whilst his Majesty was in the midst of this gay humour, and a call to the banquet was anxiously ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... two ways in which inserted joints may be made. The first method is the easier, and works well with flint glass; but when one comes to apply it to soda glass there is a danger of the glass becoming too thick near the joint, and this often leads to a cracking of the joint ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... to the food already on hand, the boys started in to have a real good dinner. They were enjoying it thoroughly and cracking all kinds of jokes when they suddenly heard a ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... I cried in fierce and angry tones. "Do you not see that the walls of the shaft are in motion? Do you not see that the solid granite masses are cracking? Do you not feel the terrible, torrid heat? Do you not observe the awful boiling water on which we float? Do you not remark this mad needle? Every sign and portent ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... landscape. A rumbling, cracking noise is heard among the mountains. Shadows of clouds sweep across the scene. Ruodi, the fisherman, comes out of his cottage. Werni, the huntsman, descends from the rocks. Kuoni, the shepherd, enters, with a milkpail on his shoulders, followed by ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... protect myself from the wind, which was blowing violently, lashing the lake into foam, I made a bower of pine boughs, crept under it, and very soon fell asleep. How long I slept I know not, but I was aroused by the snapping and cracking of the burning foliage, to find my shelter and the adjacent forest in a broad sheet of flame. My left hand was badly burned, and my hair singed closer than a barber would have trimmed it, while making my escape from the semi-circle of burning trees. Among the disasters of this fire, there was ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... growth of bark from the sides of the cut, is just at the time the sap is rising. There will be some outflow of sap, but of no particular loss to the tree. As soon as the large wounds have dried sufficiently, the exposed surface should be painted to prevent cracking ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... one loses the other. But the true philosopher, who has studied life itself without being bound by any system of thought, sees that the kernel is within the shell, and that, instead of crunching up the whole nut like a gross and indifferent feeder, the essence of the thing is obtained by cracking the shell and casting it away. All emotion, all sensation, lends itself to this process, else it could not be a part of man's development, an essential of his nature. For that there is before him power, life, perfection, and that every portion of his passage thitherwards is crowded ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... moved slowly around in the dark. They could hear the sounds of several horses feeding and the barking of the dogs. Then, quite unexpectedly, came the cracking of a board, a yell of alarm from Nat Poole, ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... perforations, as if made by shot or pistol-balls, were found in many places; but there were no corresponding marks on the opposite sides of the walls or partitions. Portions of the paper-hangings were stripped off, and small slivers ripped up from the floors. It struck the frames of looking-glasses, cracking off small pieces of the wood, but only in one instance breaking the mirror. It cut a velvet band by which one was hung; and it was found on the floor, the mirror downward and unbroken, as if it had been carefully laid there. In the attic, fragments of the old ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... many a thrilling story of his early life. During the winter that had just passed, Frank, in company with his cousin Archie Winters, of whom more hereafter, paid a visit to Uncle Joe. One cold, stormy morning, as they sat before a blazing fire, cracking hickory-nuts, the farmer burst suddenly into the house, which was built of logs, and contained but one room, and ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... to have them, these brides, for the rest of our journey, in all stages and of all ages! Thus far none others had appeared as determined as were these two honey-mooners, that all the world should share their bliss. They were cracking filberts with their disengaged fingers, the other two being closely interlocked, in quite scandalous openness, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the ground that he had been away in the Isle of Dogs cracking a crib, wrote suggesting that the Germans and Moroccans should combine with a view to playing the Confidence Trick on the Swiss general, who seemed a simple sort of chap. "Reminds me of dear old Maclean," wrote ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... at Tupelo. Our principal occupation at this place was playing poker, chuck-a-luck and cracking graybacks (lice). Every soldier had a brigade of lice on him, and I have seen fellows so busily engaged in cracking them that it reminded me of an old woman knitting. At first the boys would go off in the woods ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... heels, with bowed heads and sidelong, hang-dog looks, the dejected gait and bearing of the vanquished to whom had been left not even so much as a knife with which to cut their throat. The harsh, curt orders of the guard urging them forward resounded like the cracking of a whip in the silence, which was unbroken save for the plashing of their coarse shoes through the semi-liquid mud. Another shower began to fall, and there could be no more sorrowful sight than that band of disheartened soldiers, shuffling along ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... moment or two Pepper hung at the extremity of the branch to which he was clinging, when all at once there came an ominous cracking and the end broke away, but fortunately it had swung so low toward the ground that he dropped at the foot of the tree, not much the ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... coachman driving two showy, high-stepping horses along the street, or, better still, over a level country road, with his long whip curling in the air, which whip he now and then flirts so as to make a sharp, cracking noise over the horses' heads, and occasionally brings down with a light flick upon the flanks of the right or left horse,—the carriage, shining with varnish and plate, rolling along swiftly and smoothly,—the little boy is apt to think that coachman must ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... dissolved. Peel the apples, carefully remove the cores, leaving the apples whole; place them in the syrup, and simmer until perfectly tender, but not broken. When done, lift them out into a glass dish (which should have been previously warmed to prevent cracking), press them slightly with a spoon so as to make a smooth surface slightly raised in the centre, and stand them on one side to get cold. When the apples are cold, strain the syrup into a small stewpan, and reduce over a moderate heat for fifteen or twenty minutes. Cut the bananas into quarter-inch ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... house. The blinds were all drawn down over the front windows, to keep out the sun. The little slip of garden was left solitary—baking and cracking in the heat. The square was silent; desolately silent, as only a suburban square can be. I walked up and down the glaring pavement, resolved to find out her name before I quitted the place. While still undecided how to act, a shrill whistling—sounding doubly ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... the sheep in the corral furnished daily the milk necessary to the colony. The cart, or rather a sort of light carriole which had replaced it, made frequent journeys to the corral, and when it was Pencroft's turn to go he took Jup, and let him drive, and Jup, cracking his whip, acquitted himself ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... any other. The seedlings differ in traits of vigor, hardiness, susceptibility to disease, time of beginning to bear, productiveness, and longevity, and the nuts vary in size, form, thickness of shell, ease of cracking, and in kernel characteristics. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... cart, with a can of milk in it, drawn by a goat came in sight around the corner, and who should be pulling it but Nanny, with the big, clumsy Mike Rooney cracking the whip at her and every once in a while giving her a stinging cut which had caused Nanny to cry ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... not so simple. A man may fall into habits which are no indication of what he regards as useful to him. Such habits have not been formed independently of his will, and yet they may appear to be purposeless, or even detrimental. Who wishes to have the inveterate habit of cracking the joints of his fingers or of biting his finger-nails? What purpose ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... believed. The winter had been long but the hunting and trapping had kept him busy enough. The days had seemed too short to become dreary and he had slept long during the nights, seldom awakening at the rumblings of the maddened pent-up waters or the sharp explosions of great trees cracking in the fierce cold. But he was glad of the prospect of renewed hard work upon his claim, of promising toil to expose further the great silver-bearing veins of calcite that wound their way through the harder ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... warnings to Othello not to believe him! But dearer still than such simplicity is that sense of the sudden earthquake shock to the foundations of morality which sends a pallid crowd of critics into the street shrieking that the pillars of society are cracking and the ruin of the State is at hand. Even the Ibsen champions of ten years ago remonstrate with me just as the veterans of those brave days remonstrated with them. Mr Grein, the hardy iconoclast who ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... the raps by a theory that the 'medium' produces them through cracking his, or her, knee-joints. It may thus be argued that Sister Anthoinette discovered this trick, or was taught the trick, and that the tradition of her performance, being widely circulated in Montalembert's ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... funny little noise. He looked around and what do you think he saw? Another egg was cracking because another little chicken was going pick, peck inside. Soon out of the shell came a little baby brother. And then he heard another funny little noise, and another shell broke and out of the shell came a little baby sister. And then he heard another little ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... I composed and preached sermons, I should by no means confine myself to the Vicar's threadbare subjects— should preach the Wrath of God, and sound the Last Trump in the ears of my Hell-doomed congregation, cracking the heavens and dissolving the earth with the eclipses and thunders and earthquakes of the Day of Judgment. Then I might refresh them with high and incomprehensible Doctrines, beyond the reach of Reason—Predestination, ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... owed his escape that day. He sprang from a narrow passage full in Tavannes' view, and, hair on end, his eyes starting from his head, ran blindly—as a hare will run when chased—along the street to meet Count Hannibal's company. The man's face was wet with the dews of death, his lungs seemed cracking, his breath hissed from him as he ran. His pursuers were hard on him, and, seeing him headed by Count Hannibal's party, yelled in triumph, holding him for dead. And dead he would have been within thirty seconds had Tavannes ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... to distinguish the words uttered, but could make out nothing. They were moving slowly together, in close vicinity to myself, for their feet stirred the dry leaves, and I could hear the boughs cracking as they forced their ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... was not to be deterred and addressed the rest: "This gentleman old friend of mine; never agreed with solemn old Colonel, but they wouldn't listen to me. Very black night in India; ghazees coming yelling up the hill; nothing would stop them. Rifles cracking, Nepalese comp'ny busy with the bayonet, and in the thick of ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... alone, and he swung along at a cracking pace, for he could walk as well as he could run, and a finer three-quarter had never been known at Rushmere. He was a tall, powerful lad, nearly nineteen years of age, five foot ten and a half inches in his stockings, and turning the scale at ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... Thus, a certain fungus has the property of ejecting its seeds with great force and rapidity, and with a loud cracking noise, and yet it is no bigger than a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... plaster between the concrete layers was put down on 4-ft. strips and finished similarly to the surface of a granolithic walk. This layer consisted of 1-2 mortar finished with a 4-1 mortar. To keep the plaster from cracking it was covered with strips of coarse burlap soaked in water; this precaution was not entirely successful, some cracks appeared and had to be grouted. Three gangs, each consisting of 1 plasterer and 1 helper, did the plastering, each gang laying about 700 sq. yds. per day. The cost of the plaster ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... horses, and a gayly dressed postilion mounted on one of the horses of each pair, makes a very grand appearance, you may depend, in coming, upon the gallop, into the streets of a town—the postilions cracking their whips, and making as much noise as they can, and all the boys and girls of the street coming to the doors and ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... soul will be united to thy body and then thou wilt have twin hells; body and soul will be tormented together, each brimful of agony, the soul sweating in its utmost pores drops of blood, thy body from head to foot suffused with pain, thy bones cracking in the fire, thy pulse rattling at an enormous rate in agony, every nerve a string on which the devil shall play his diabolical tune ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... as this meant a most energetic demonstration of savagery on his part, following a fawning and submissive manner, while madame, wearing a large sombrero and a man's coat, moved about in the cage, cracking a whip. ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... right. Rifles were cracking and Indians yelling all around their little habitation. It at once occurred to Tom that here was hope as well as danger. If the Indians should be driven back by the whites, he could communicate with the latter and the little garrison of the root fortress would be rescued. At present, ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... frosts and the snow and ice came. There were several varieties, including large ones two inches long, and the fine little ones known to boys throughout the Mississippi Valley as the scaly bark. Paul procured two stones, and, cracking several of them, found them delicious to the taste. Already in his Kentucky home he had become familiar with them all. The hogs of the settlers, running through the forest and fattening upon these nuts and acorns, known collectively as "mast," acquired ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... father. Each burrow contains several cradles, with the father and mother invariably present. What are the two inseparables doing? They are watching their brood and, by dint of assiduous repairs, keeping the little sausages, which are in constant danger of cracking or drying ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... dug his spurs into his horse and cantered, elbows flapping, broad-brimmed hat drawn over his eyes. For hours he had been fighting the demon of thirst. His tongue was dry, his lips cracking. The trail continued to be marked with its double stones, but it did not enter the cool canyon ahead. It turned and skirted the base of the bare mountain slope. The man's eyes sharpened. He knew very definitely what he was looking for, and at last he saw it, a circle of flat stones, some twenty ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... over me I perceive that the rain has found an inlet through a gotera in the roof. A gotera is a hole in the tiles, formed during the day by the action of the baking sun upon the mortar, which yields to its cracking influence and leaves an aperture. Rising hurriedly in the dead of night, I remove my catre to a dry corner, and at the same time place a basin beneath the spot from whence the drops of rain issue. Once more I awake under the same moistening influence. A fresh gotera ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... down the street, the driver standing at the back, cracking a whip; he wore an immense geranium flower stuck in the lapel of his coat. Firm as a rock he stood, bending back a little in the swaying cart. Andreas craned his neck to watch him all the way down the road, even ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... she said to herself; and she pined for a little amusement 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 ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... at least on a tentative basis. A schedule for Persian walnuts is very much needed as indicated by the recent contest in which confusion occurred related to there being no recognized standards of evaluation. With the Persian walnut such matters as the method of cracking and the importance of such characters as sealing of nuts, recovery of whole halves and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... A fowl roasted or boiled, as we eat them in England, is wasted, compared with this delicious guiso de potto which one gets in any rancho in the Banda Orient. After the meats we sat for an hour cracking walnuts, sipping wine, smoking cigarettes, and telling amusing stories; and I doubt whether there were three happier people in all Uruguay that morning than the un-Scotched Scotchman, John Carrickfergus, his un-ding-donging native ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... the rest had not yet observed. Indeed the road wound considerably and was bordered by a thick screen of poplar trees. Nevertheless, a dull sound began to grow momentarily louder, and soon there was a noise of wheels, mingled with shouts of laughter and the cracking of whips. Then suddenly five carriages came into view, driving one behind the other. They were crowded to bursting, and bright with a galaxy of ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... run amok—his glistening weapon within a foot of his escaping victim; the Christian native hiding away in fear, and the European off in pursuit of the common foe; there is a tramping of feet, a cracking of firearms; the Moro is biting the dust, and the memory is brought abruptly back from imagination's flights to full realization ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the day before yesterday: a queer omnium gatherum party—Prince Louis Napoleon, General Montholon, Lord Lyndhurst, Brougham, Sir Robert Wilson, Leader, and Roebuck. Droll to see Lyndhurst, the most execrated of the Tories, hand-and-glove, and cracking his jokes, with the two Radicals. After dinner I had a talk with him. He said the Duke had been all against the motion on the 28th, but that unless they had agreed to it, the party would have been broken up; said he did not care about coming ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... our luncheon as fast as we could (a very bad habit, which I don't mean to keep up for man or brother), and even though the others had begun long before we did, we finished while they were still cracking nuts and peeling apples, their spirits somewhat subdued by ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... benches had been drawn up in an orderly semi-circle about the fire-place. Beyond them she observed the figure of a man kneeling before the fire, using a bellows with great effect. The big logs were snapping, and cracking, and spitting before ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... my shirt tail as well as I could. I then went into the dance, and told the fiddler to play me a jig. Che, che, che, went the fiddle, when the banjo responded with a thrum, thrum, thrum, with the loud cracking of the bone player. I seized a little Sambo gal, and round and round the room we went, my money and my buttons going jingle, jingle, jingle, seemed to take a lively part with the music, and to my great satisfaction every eye ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... however, put Mark in a serious position. He found the thin ice cracking loudly under his feet. He glanced ahead. There was a ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... her, put my arm about her, feeling her softness and her suppleness, and wondering, supposing I held her close to me with one arm while pressing her from me with the other, how long before I should hear the cracking ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... out, there were none, or none to throw me back. At the stream-side, holding by an elder-bough, I tested the ice with my weight, proved it firm, crossed without so much as cracking it, and breasted a bare grassy slope, too little to be called a down, where a few naked hawthorns chafed and creaked in the wind. Above it was an embankment rounded like a bastion, up the left side of which I crept—or, you might almost say, crawled—and, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... country. A very large number of them are real contributions to sociology, and of considerable value too. Besides all this, the United States possesses, what no other nation does, several professed jesters—that is, men who are not only humorous in the ordinary sense of the term, but make a business of cracking jokes, and are recognized as persons whose duty it is to take a jocose view of things. Artemus Ward, Josh Billings, and Mark Twain, and the Rev. P. V. Nasby, and one or two others of less note, are a kind of personages which no other society has produced, and could in ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... Biddy! sorrow take ye! are ye in it?—And you are, and we cracking our vitals calling you. What is it you're dallying ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... you saw those men digging away in the cave, cracking rocks and the like of that?" ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... well for Wassef the camel-driver if he had not taken the turban from his head, for before he could reach Yusef with his dagger, he went down, his skull cracking like the top of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fully five minutes passed and Snap had about made up his mind that the fox had gotten scared and turned tail, when he heard a cracking of brushwood directly in ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... deputy, "you're wanted for cracking the skull of a farmer named Leigh. There's a doubt if Leigh will live and you may be charged ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... him sair, that day, I trow, Wi' Sir George Hearoune of Schipsydehouse; Because we were not men enow, They counted us not worth a louse. Sir George was gentle, meek, and douse, But he was hail and het as fire; And yet, for all his cracking crouse[147], He rewd the raid o' ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... roper, nor more than an average rider, according to ranch standards. Of course a man on a ranch has to ride a good many bad horses, and is bound to encounter a certain number of accidents, and of these I had my share, at one time cracking a rib, and on another occasion the point of my shoulder. We were hundreds of miles from a doctor, and each time, as I was on the round-up, I had to get through my work for the next few weeks as best I could, until the injury healed of itself. When ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... street that runs at right angles to the river, a cart came crawling; its high-piled white load of snow was faintly visible before the brown horses (they were yoked tandem) came into view. This cart was driven down to the water-edge, and was there upturned, with much shouting and cracking of whips on the part of the men engaged, and with a good deal of straining, slipping, and stumbling on the side of ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... "Thou didst never fret, or plunge and kick, but thou wouldest have whisked thy old tail, and spread abroad thy large chest, with pith and power, till hillocks, where the earth was filled with tough-rooted plants, would have given forth a cracking sound, and the clods fallen gently over." The latter part of this paraphrase is taken from Chambers. What pure English words could have rendered these things as compactly ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... guest,—"a house, or castle," says the author of "Letters from the North," written previous to the year 1730, "belonging to a gentleman whose hospitality knows no bounds. It is the custom of that house, at the first visit or introduction, to take up war freedom, by cracking his nut, as he terms it; that is, a cocoa-shell, which holds a pint, filled with champagne, or such other sort of wine as you shall chuse. You may guess, by the introduction, of the contents of the volume. Few go away sober at any time; and for ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... Lincolns and the Berks assembled the prisoners who were trooping out of the trenches in all directions, the infantry on whom devolved the honor of capturing the village, waited. One saw them standing out in the open, laughing and cracking jokes amid the terrific din made by the huge howitzer shells screeching overhead and bursting in the village, the rattle of machine guns all along the line, and the popping of rifles. Over to the right where ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... very pleasant conveyance, it is nearly as light as a curricle, and has a head and windows, which exclude rain. It is drawn by two or three horses, and proceeds at a tolerably good pace. The postilions are provided with boots of a very inconvenient size, and with whips which they are perpetually cracking, not much to the comfort of the ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... All the skie was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seene above 40 miles round about for many nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking and thunder of the impetuous flames, ye shreiking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like an hideous storme, and the aire all about so hot and inflam'd that at the last one was not able to approach it, so that they were forc'd ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... atmosphere was chilling to literature then, there was little applause for poetic or literary skill. There were no encouragements when Washington Irving wrote as "Knickerbocker," when Richard Henry Dana wrote "The Buccaneer," "The Idle Man," and "The Dying Raven." There was something cracking in his wit, exalted in his culture. He was so gentle in his conversation, so pure in his life, it was hard to spare him. He seemed like a man who had never been forced into the battle of the world, he was so ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... "spit! spit!" persisted the blue-coats' rifles. "Boom!" said again the field-piece on yonder side the water. Its shell came rattling through the air to burst on this side, out of the flashing and cracking of rifles and the sulphurous bomb smoke arose cries of men getting mangled, and I whimpered and gnawed my lips for joy, and I watched the boat, but no second shot came aboard, and—"Boom!—hurry-hurry-hurry- hurry"—ah! ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... much impressed by Germany's piteous lamentations over the brutality of the blockade. In these appeals to America optimists detect signs of cracking. Cooler observers explain them as evidence of ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... against the captain, and a sovereign contempt for him into the bargain. By the aid of liquor he wormed out their story. This was the marrow of it: The captain had been their pal, and, while they were all three cracking a crib, had with unexampled treachery betrayed them, and got them laid by the heels for nearly a year; in fact, if they had not broken prison they would not have been here now. In short, in less than half ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Children's time is lost in a tiresome heaping up a Pack of dry and unprofitable, or pernicious Notions (for surely little better can be said of a great part of that Heathenish stuff they are tormented with; like the feeding them with hard Nuts, which when they have almost broke their teeth with cracking, they find either deaf or to contain but very rotten and unwholesome Kernels) whilst Things really perfected of the understanding, and useful in every state of Life, are left unregarded, to the Reproach of our Nation, where all other ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... roofs with sheet metal, laid on the rafters and nailed down at the edges, so as to be considerably concaved between them, the joints on the rafters being covered by inverted caps or troughs. The concave form of the sheet is designed to prevent the sheet metal from cracking, to which it is subject by expansion and contraction when laid ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... the live air is full of droning hums And cracking whips and whispering snakes of fire, And a loud buzz of conversation comes From Simpson's party putting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... cracking and fall of some slight scaffolding behind them arrested their attention. Hurlstone turned quickly. A light smoke, drifting from the courtyard, was mingling with the fog. A faint cry of "Dios y Libertad!" ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... of the duty he was on. Even Mike was fain to obey the order to be silent, as the sound of a voice, indiscreetly used, might betray the passage of the party to some outlying scouts of the enemy. Caution was even used in treading on dried sticks, lest their cracking should produce ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... how to tell you. For several nights, I seemed to hear, both in the park and out of the park, round the pavilion, unusual sounds, sometimes footsteps, at other times the cracking of branches. The night before the attack on me, when I did not get to bed before three o'clock in the morning, on our return from the Elysee, I stood for a moment before my window, and I felt sure I ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... bear it no longer. They were singing now—a terrible thing with a refrain of oaths and GEE-UPS, and whistling noises like the cracking of whips—a bullock drivers' camp ditty. Bridget shudderingly decided that a row in Whitechapel could be nothing to this in the matter of bad language. She got up and paced the sitting-room in her dressing-gown, wondering when her husband would come and rescue her from these beasts. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... prepared commercially either is dried, when it will be found to be somewhat hard, or is mixed with the milk of the coconut or with glycerine, which keeps it soft. Much more satisfactory coconut can be secured by procuring a coconut, cracking open the shell, removing the flesh, and then grating or grinding it. Coconut of this kind will be found to be very delicious and will make excellent cake. In case coconut becomes dry and hard before it is used, it can be softened by steaming it in the ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 4 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... hunting. He rose early, ate his breakfast of corn-cake, honey, and tea, and then rode about his estates; his evenings he passed with his family around the blazing hearth, retiring between nine and ten. He loved to linger at the table, cracking nuts and relating his adventures. In personal appearance, Washington was over six feet in height, robust, graceful, and perfectly erect. His manner was formal and dignified. He was more solid than brilliant, and had more judgment ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... the whip, the bridle, etc., may be chosen. These the leader jots down on a piece of paper and then begins to tell a thrilling story. "The stage coach left the old Stag Inn, amidst the thundering of the horses' hoofs and the cracking of the driver's whip." Some member will probably have chosen to be the horses, another the whip, and as their names are mentioned they must rise, twirl round and sit down again. Then the narrator continues: "For some miles all went well, then a bridle gave ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... with a start. Her ears were filled with a strange, rushing, cracking noise. A rosy glare danced ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... to appear possessed of the solemnity necessarily emanating from his lofty and responsible office. This solemnity, however, met its Waterloo in his frank and stupid eyes, not to say his trilogy of cheerful chins—so much so that I felt like crying "Wie gehts!" and cracking him on his huge back. Such an animal! A contented animal, a bulbous animal; the only living hippopotamus in captivity, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... roasting-trays has an important bearing on several questions to which reference will be made further on. A round basket-tray, either loosely or closely woven, is evenly coated inside with clay, into which has been kneaded a very large proportion of sand, to prevent contraction and consequent cracking from drying. This lining of clay is pressed, while still soft, into the basket as closely as possible with the hands and then allowed to dry. The tray is thus made ready for use. The seeds or other substances to be parched are placed inside of it, together with a quantity of glowing ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... lightnings blast the hostile shores; Beneath the storm their shatter'd navies groan; The trembling deep recoils from zone to zone— Thus the torn vessel felt the enormous stroke, The boats beneath the thundering deluge broke; Tom from their planks the cracking ring-bolts drew, And gripes and lashings all asunder flew; Companion, binnacle, in floating wreck, With compasses and glasses strew'd the deck; The balanced mizen, rending to the head, 460 In fluttering fragments from its bolt-rope fled; The sides convulsive shook on ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... place to sleep—on a Glacier which moves about ten feet a day—it is cracking, bursting exploding, trembling, groaning and together with the Glacier Bears and howling dogs, and Siberian wolves, and rolling around to keep from freezing is very soothing. Now I have fought buffalo flies in Michigan, Bed Bugs in Wisconsin, Lice in Wyoming, ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... the creek," said the Major, sharply, and he touched spurs to his horse. How they raced through the woods, cracking brush and whisking around trees, and how they thundered over the turf and clattered across the road and on! For a few moments the Major kept close to Chad, watching him anxiously, but the boy stuck to the ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... of the Delaware, banqueting on their seeds; grows corpulent with good feeding, and soon acquires the unlucky renown of the ortolan. Whereever he goes, pop! pop! pop! the rusty firelocks of the country are cracking on every side; he sees his companions falling by the thousands around him; he is the reed-bird, the much-sought-for tit-bit of ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... taste, because we can't all sit on Woolsack at once; and mention of it excites feelings of emulation, almost of animosity, towards other new-fledged Barristers. I am conscious, for instance, of distinct repulsion towards man on my right, who is cracking nuts, and who must be a son or nephew of our Chairman, judging by the familiarity with which he treats latter. Probably his uncle will flood him with briefs—and that will be called "making his own ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... imprisoned in one of his side pockets that had a flap; but, desirous of fondling the furry little object, he had incautiously inserted his bare hand once too often; for its long teeth, so useful for nut-cracking, went almost through his thumb, and gave his such an electric shock that in the confusion the frightened animal managed to escape once more to its ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... the 17th of August, a day of foot-racing and jumping in bags and wrestling, all hands present, as at a sort of "Isthmian games," ended with a gale, a cracking up of ice, and the "Investigators" thought they were on their way home, and Kellett thought he was to have a month of summer yet. But no; "there is nothing certain in this navigation from one hour to the next." The "Resolute" ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... to make sure I will give this youngster a slight injection. Pity you hadn't held him with the double arm-lock instead of cracking him over the head. Herr Kapitan Schwalbe won't want to be troubled with a passenger with ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... necessary to remove the lower part of the mould, this being done in supporting the entire affair by the middle. The piece and what remains of the mould are, in reality, suspended in the air. All these preparations are designed to prevent cracking. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... adjustment of the shell-lac stem was a matter requiring considerable care, especially as, in consequence of its cracking, it had frequently to be renewed. The best lac was chosen and applied to the wire i, so as to be in good contact with it everywhere, and in perfect continuity throughout its own mass. It was not smaller than is given by scale in the drawing, for when less it ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... the Georgian Government has suffered from limited resources due to a chronic failure to collect tax revenues. Georgia's new government is making progress in reforming the tax code, enforcing taxes, and cracking down on corruption. Georgia also suffers from energy shortages; it privatized the T'bilisi electricity distribution network in 1998, but payment collection rates remain low, both in T'bilisi and throughout the regions. The country is pinning its hopes for long-term growth on its role as ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the boy's shoe. She rose slowly with a very white face and with her hands pressed to either temple, as if she were afraid of her head cracking open. She could say nothing but the same words over ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... opinion; and now for the clerical. It was expressed by a Presbyterian divine, the Reverend Dr. J.S. Ramsey, who stood over the coffin of "Matt", and without cracking a smile declared that he had been "a statesman who was always on the right side of ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... was intended to be the Governor's mansion, and, as he walked along, certain thoughts concerning the Governor's daughter would keep whirling through his head, so that almost he forgot where he was, and took to smiling and cracking jokes to himself. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... my chimney had been wrenched from its foundations, and the upper part of it had now toppled over. I could hear, through the storm, the bricks banging and sliding upon the slanting roof. Continuous sounds of cracking and snapping came to me through the closed front windows, and these were caused, I supposed, by the destruction of the stakes of my vines as the heavy ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... general desolation. The latter building had a remoteness of prosperity far beyond the others, having been a wayside Spanish-American posada, with adobe walls of two feet in thickness, that shamed the later shells of half-inch plank, which were slowly warping and cracking like dried pods in ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... only to be picturesque, to kill one another in tourneys, to rear with painful labour beautiful elaborate cathedrals, and yet had so much time on their hands that they could pass half their lives cracking unhallowed sconces in the Holy Land and, in that part of their ample leisure which they devoted to study, spell 'flourishes' as 'Florryschethe'. But if any one still anxious for literal truth should insist—'Is not the impression ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... she looked in at an open door, and received the impression of vast extent, emptiness, and the scent of hay. She entered, looking about from side to side. At the opposite end of the great room, was an open door through which the sun shone, and as she approached it, she heard a voice and the cracking of cornstalks outside. ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... market, is a large square, having an area enclosed with rails in the centre: here the Indians usually congregate, and within this a curious-looking group or two may commonly be found. To see the tribe at toilet is not a little amusing: some hair-hunting, catching and cracking this game, with a keen sporting look and an obvious relish of the pursuit quite varmint; others mixing red or white paint for the adornment of the nose, cheek, or eye, as custom or ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... me!" groaned the Witch, cracking her finger-bones. "And all this by reason o' the ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... them, out of mortification, would not catch or kill the vermin which devoured them; in which they far surpassed the Jews, who only spared them upon the Sabbath day." This interesting fact is supported by the authority of a Kabbi, who is quoted in Latin to the effect that cracking a flea and killing a camel are equally guilty. Dr. Edersheim evidently refers to the same authority in a footnote. On the whole this regulation against the killing of vermin must have been very irksome, and if the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... spring, Hans said, "Keep all the money and get a walking-stick that weighs a hundred-weight made for me that I may go a-travelling." When the wished-for stick was ready, he left his father's house, went forth, and came to a deep, dark forest. There he heard something crunching and cracking, looked round, and saw a fir-tree which was wound round like a rope from the bottom to the top, and when he looked upwards he saw a great fellow who had laid hold of the tree and was twisting it like a willow-wand. "Hollo!" cried Hans, "what art thou doing up there?" ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... not already know! I do not think he told us all: if he did tell us all then I don't think much of the idea. The General had a cigarette in his mouth and his hands in his pockets the whole time he was speaking; he was quite jovial, cracking jokes all the time. He impressed upon us the importance of sending messages back when we reach our objectives; he said that if we do not do so it will mean his coming up to the front line himself for information ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... to him "If you pour milk every day at my roots I will grant you a boon." So thenceforward the Goala every day poured milk at the roots of the tree and after some days he saw a crack in the ground; he thought that the roots of the tree were cracking the earth but the fact was that a snake was buried there, and as it increased in size from drinking the milk it cracked the ground and one day it issued forth; at the sight of it the Goala was filled ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... restlessly, "you're entitled to what you get in this life. And I'm going to get all I can, money and fun, and everything else. Morals are for sapheads. The preacher's God says I can't have certain things without His cracking down on me. Watch me beat Him at his own game." It was all a make-believe and the Doctor saw that ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... this paradise was not relished by the convicts. The regimen was strict, the food everywhere abounding, was not for them, and the vicinity of the wild Chunchos was not reassuring. Often a peon would appear in the market-place of Marcapata wrapped merely in a banana leaf, which, cracking in the sun, reduced all pretence of decent covering to an irony. This evidence of the spoliation of a Chuncho would be received in the worst possible part by the gobernador, who would beat the complainant back to his servitude, remarking with ingenuity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... of your modern forty-mile-an-hour iron horse, there can be no question that the ten-mile-an-hour of those days, behind a spanking team with clattering wheels, and swaying springs, and cracking whip, and sounding horn, felt uncommonly swift and satisfactory. Laronde shut his eyes and enjoyed it at first. But the strength engendered by excitement soon began to fail. The long weary journey helped to make things worse, and when at last they arrived at the ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... Strong warningly. "There are too many of you in a bunch!" But ere he had finished the sentence there came another loud cracking, and in a twinkle a section of the ice went down, plunging fully a dozen lads into the icy ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... summer they laid a mat of fresh moss all round it, and dressed it up with green boughs and the numberless beautiful wild flowers of the Tyrol country. In winter all their joys centred in it, and scampering home from school over the ice and snow they were happy, knowing that they would soon be cracking nuts or roasting chestnuts in the broad ardent glow of its noble tower, which rose eight feet high above them with all its spires and ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... last Viggo had him cornered, but just as he would have caught the goose, Peter stretched out his left leg and meant to trip Viggo, but his skate caught in a frozen twig and—thump! there lay Peter Lightfoot, the ice cracking ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... ten inches on a side, and is fastened to the second layer by bolts at the corners and one in the middle of each square. The surface is flush. (See Fig. 9.) The end sought by the above system is to break up the shot by the hard steel face and to restrict any starring or cracking of the metal to the limit of the squares or scales struck. The bolts are of high carbon ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... steps, our sunken eyes seeking vainly for the kindly shade of some tree in this arid desolation. And always was my mind obsessed by that dream of gurgling brooks and bubbling rills; and now I would imagine I was drinking long, cool draughts, and thrusting leathern tongue 'twixt cracking lips, groaned in sharper agony. So crept we on, mile after mile, hoping the next would show us some blessed glimpse of water, and always disappointed until at last it seemed that ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... coated with a tree varnish, ash, and clay, polished in laths and covered with faintly raised designs and colours between, and brought to a polished surface. The best is so elastic that one side of a tumbler or box can be pressed to meet the other without cracking the colour inlay. They seem to cost a good deal, but when you examine them, the intricacies of the designs of figures and foliage account for the price. The groups of sellers on the shore were interesting, but there was altogether loo much ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... nothing was to be heard but shrieks, outcries, and wild lamentations. The sky was one vast lurid canopy, like molten brass, day and night, for four days, while the whole city presented a scene of indescribable and awful din; the cracking and thundering of the flames, the frenzied screams of the women and children, the terrific falling of spires, towers, walls, and lofty battlements, the frightful explosions of the houses, blown up by gunpowder in the vain hope of stopping the progress of the ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... even thirty miles an hour, with its gradual start and gentle pull up, has but a slight effect on him now compared with the splendid swing of the well-appointed mail coach of old as it swept round the bend of a road, and, with red-coated driver and guard, cracking whip, flying dust and stones, and reeking foam-flecked horses, dashed into town and pulled up, while at nearly full speed, amid all the glorious crash and turmoil of arrival! No doubt the passing of an express train within a yard of your nose is ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... daily task being finished, he reposed with his family. No retrospect of the happiness of former days, compared with existing misery, disturbed his slumber, nor horrid dreams occasioned him to wake in agony at the dawn of day. No barbarous sounds of cracking whips reminded him, that with the form and image of a man his destiny was that of the beast of the field. Let the advocates for the bloody traffic state what they had to set off on their side of the question against the comforts and independence ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... advancing rapidly; they could now hear the cracking of the whip with which the servant urged on the tow-horse. And now it stopped, at an easy landing-place, barely fifty paces from the terrace. Madame de Lamotte landed with her son and the stranger, and her husband descended from ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... but sooner or later, without the slightest sound hinting his approach, suddenly a great yellow body flashes out of the darkness and upon the cringing lure. For an instant there are the sinister sounds of savage snarls, rending flesh, cracking bones and screams of pain and fear, and then a dull red flash heralds the rifle's roar, and the tawny terror falls gasping his life ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... insistent; rumbling, shrieking, rattling, roaring. Huge wagons, loaded with purple-stained cases of Algerian wine, bumping over the stones; strings of bells wound round the great horns of horses' collars jingling like sleigh-bells in winter; whips in the hands of fierce-eyed carters cracking round the heads of large, sad mules; hooters of automobiles and immense motor diligences blaring; men shouting at animals; animals barking or braying, snorting or clucking at men; unseen soldiers marching to music; a town clock ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... we were for this preparing Late last fall, Neither time nor trouble sparing To please you all, Zounds! these niggers raised the shindies, Cracking crowns and court-house windies, Sent us sharp to the West Indies, ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... the Constable, "are there left no ancient servants of the House, that could speak out as well as you?" "Humph!" answered the huntsman—"men are not willing to babble when Randal Lacy is cracking his thong above their heads. Many are slain, or starved to death—some disposed of—some spirited away. But there are the weaver Flammock and his daughter Rose, who know as much of the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the foot-brake, and all heard the wheels and the chains scrape over the stones and dirt. But the car could not be stopped, and two seconds later crashed into the tree limb, a branch of which came up, striking the wind-shield and cracking it. ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... though the room were peopled with faint images of WILLIAM'S dream, the phantom circus music is heard, with its elfin horns; and, through the music, voices call "Hai! Hai!" The sound of the cracking of a whip is heard, and the blare of a clown's ten-cent tin horn. The phantom voice of the CLOWN (very ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... Gloria. "Good-by!" And she kissed Will on the mouth in full view of all of us, he blushing furiously, and Kagig cracking ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... with a bustle right through a great town, Cracking the signs and scattering down Shutters; and whisking, with merciless squalls, Old women's bonnets and gingerbread stalls, There never was heard a much lustier shout, As the apples and oranges trundled about; And the urchins ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... remember," said Catharine, "the fine pink mussel-shell that Hec picked up in the little corn-field last year? It had a hole in one of the shells too, [Footnote: This ingenious mode of cracking the shells of mussels is common to many birds. The crow (Corvus corone) has been long known by American naturalists to break the thick shells of the river mussels, by letting them fall from a height on to rocks and stones.] and when my uncle saw it, he said it must have been dropped by some ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... that in tunneling, as well as in back-filling open cuts, the material backing up the haunches is more or less loosened and therefore is not at first compact enough to prevent the spreading of the haunches when the load comes on the arch. This causes cracking, but, as soon as the haunches have been pressed out against the solid material, the cracking usually ceases, unless the pressure has been sufficiently heavy to ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... what you will, Peggy!" he cried, his big voice cracking and sobbing and resonant with pain. "Ah, my dear, think what you will, but don't grieve for it, Peggy! Why, if I'm all you say I am, that's no reason you should suffer for it! Ah, don't, Peggy! In God's name, don't! I ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... who, looking long and steadily to windward, gives a sign with his gauntleted hand, whereon divers of the officers go off hot-foot, some to muster the long files of arquebusiers, others to overlook the setting of more sail and the like. And now was a prodigious cracking of whips followed by groans and cries and screaming curses, and straightway the long oars began to swing with a swifter beat. From where I stood in my bonds I could look down upon the poor, naked wretches as they rose and fell, each and all at the same moment, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... granted, however, that the inclosing cement is porous, and admits the finer parts of the surrounding fluid. In order to reach the muscles, this cement must be broke with large hammers; and it may be truly said, the kernal is not worth the trouble of cracking the shell. [These are found in great plenty at Ancona and other parts of the Adriatic, where they go by the name of Bollani, as we are informed by Keysler.] Among the fish of this country, there is a very ugly animal of the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... saw in the doubtful twilight a post- chaise and four come out of the gateway of the Red Horse inn, heard the whips cracking and the horses pawing the ground when the driver stopped on the highroad, close to the tree on the roots of which Friar Ange was sitting. It was not an ordinary post-chaise, but a very large, clumsy vehicle, having room to seat four, and a small coupe in front. I looked at it for a minute ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... being effected, and the gang-plank arranged, they came off, chained in pairs, and were marched, still singing, to a shed prepared for them, we could not keep back the tears. The overseer, a great strong man, cracking his "blacksnake" from time to time, to enforce authority, excited our strong indignation. All this is an impossibility now, thank God, but then it was a cruel, dreadful reality. Like cattle, they were penned for the night, and were to be kept there for a day or two, till another boat should take ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... no best game. Some like one, some another. Soccer is a cracking good game, and can be played any time that the ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... in a trick that recalled to French the beautiful Eton lad, cracking his brains in pupil-room over a bit of Latin prose, Roger glanced, frowning, from one to the other of these three men who felt for him, whose resentment of the wrong that had been done him, whose pity for his calamity showed plainly enough through ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... have been used in the United States for the production of water gas, which, after or during manufacture, is mixed with the vapors and permanent gases obtained by cracking various grades of paraffin oil, and "fixing" them by subjecting them to a high temperature; and in considering the subject of enrichment of coal gas by carbureted water gas, I shall be forced, by the limited time at my disposal, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... "Then why make me say it again? This Fort was right. At least one intelligent man lived in your world, I'm pleased to know. The sky is a dome holding the sun, the stars and the wandering planets. The problem is that the dome is cracking like a great, ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... the moon was shining brightly. We was all at a revival meeting out from Blythewood, then called Dako, S. C. First, we heard a low murmur or rolling sound like distant thunder, immediately followed by the swaying of the church and a cracking sound from the joists and rafters of the building. The women folks set up a screaming. The men folks set up a hollering: 'Oh Lordy! Jesus save me! We believe! Come Almighty King!' The preacher tried to quiet us, but we run out the church in the moonlight, men and women crying and praying. ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... aroused by the sudden cracking of a knot in the torch. I saw that it would last but a few hours more. I determined to put it out, for I might be allowed no more light, and even a few minutes of this torch every day would be a great boon. So I took it from its place, and was about to quench it in the moist earth at the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... house gable could see that the innocent had climbed to the top of the peat-stack in some elvish freak, and sat there cracking his thumbs and singing with all ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... you, I know,' said Geoffrey, cracking one between his teeth; 'never let to eat any thing but what's wholesome, and always reading, or doing something stupid. I believe you are helping Rose to play with that doll now. Put it into the fire; that is the way to treat dolls. Stupid ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... was vainly attempting to set the cannon which were sinking into the soaked plough-land. One could hear the hoarse angry voices, the cracking of whips, and the heavy, strained snorting of horses. In front of them lone officers wandered in drenched cloaks in the rain; still farther behind the curtain of rain and the thick fog there rumbled cannons and it was impossible to tell whether they ...
— The Shield • Various
... believe that a caterpillar could be so magnificent; but indoors in the cardboard box he lost his sun-burnished colour and half his glory. Immediately afterwards he spun his cocoon, and there he stayed for seven long months, so that the moth thus suddenly appearing, without any cracking or opening of the cocoon, appeared to be created on the spot. At first, indeed, some thought it was a moth that had entered by the window, there being no rent or place of exit from the perfect case. Within, however, was the broken and blackened skin of the caterpillar and the detached ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... put Mark in a serious position. He found the thin ice cracking loudly under his feet. He glanced ahead. There was ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... his hands into the big mittens strung to his shoulders, and nodding grimly went through the door. Ten minutes later he was cracking the new dog-whip over the backs of his yelping team, and mounting the high bank heading ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... ovules, and partially divided by a replum into two cavities. In this case there was nothing to indicate the presence of floral envelopes (figs. 94, 95). A similar occurrence has been brought under my notice in some grapes which were observed to be cracking before they were perfectly ripe, and in which adventitious fruits were found within the parent grape, occupying the position of seeds (figs. ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... going off in his ears, and they hurt most awfully. And when it had done cracking his earache had gone away. And Dorothy had brought him a trumpet from Rosalind's party and Michael a tin train. And Michael had given him the train and he wouldn't take the trumpet instead. Oughtn't Michael to ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... fort, my little party carrying rifles and sidearms but no packs; and there waited across the ditch in the sunshine my Indians, cross-legged in a row on the grass, and gravely cracking and munching the sweet, green hazelnuts ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... the wounded took a pride in cracking jokes, and they did so in words to which circumstances lent a poignant picturesqueness. These jests drew a laugh from us which was ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... of wriggling his long chin into his ample neckerchief. He could not ask you how do you do, or say in answer to that question, "I thank you, sare, very well," without stamping prettily with his foot, as if cracking a snail, and tossing his chin into the air as if he were going to balance a ladder upon it. Then, though his features were compressed into a small, monkeyfied compass, they were themselves, individually, upon a magnificent scale. It was as if there had been crowded half a ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... food they had gathered, and that was not much. They eagerly inquired the distance to food, which I thought they might possibly reach that night. Meanwhile I had opened my sack of hard bread and had given each a cracker, at the eating of which the sound resembled pigs cracking dry, hard corn. ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... and the crowd filed out, "wise-cracking" about the picture and commenting favorably on the heroine's figure. There were shouts to this fellow or that fellow to come on over and play bridge, and suggestions here and there to go to a drug ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... the commandments cracking?" she laughed. "I've just been coveting one of those suits as hard ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... far from here," said the foreman, and hardly had he said this than Theodore Roosevelt heard a cracking of fallen twigs and a breaking of the brush and lower limbs of the trees as the buck rushed through the thicket. He ran with all speed in the direction and took station behind ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... she was down at last. Doors opened from it into the ground-floor ware-rooms; glancing in, she saw vast, dingy recesses of boxes piled up to the dark ceilings. There was a crowd of porters and draymen cracking their whips, and lounging on the trucks by the door, waiting for loads, talking politics, and smoking. The smell of tobacco, copperas, and burning logwood was heavy to clamminess here. She stopped, uncertain. One of the porters, a short, sickly man, who stood aloof ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... negroes came last. They were still astride of the bulwarks when Sakr-el-Bahr gave the word. Up the middle gangway ran a bo'sun and two of his mates cracking their long whips of bullock-hide. Down went the oars, there was a heave, and they shot out in the wake of the other ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... anticipations would have been absolutely required of him. He pictured the scene to himself; he lying fermenting in the barrel, like a curious vintage; the bear sniffing querulously round it, perhaps cracking it like a cocoa-nut, or extracting him like a periwinkle! Of these chances he had been deprived by the interference of the crew. Friends are often ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... and the prince made all haste to get on horseback; Kate jumped up behind, and home they rode. When the morning sun rose they came in and found Kate sitting down by the fire and cracking her nuts. Kate said the prince had a good night; but she would not sit up another night unless she was to get a peck of gold. The second night passed as the first had done. The prince got up at midnight and ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... as Chippy saw the waggon an idea popped into his mind, and he hurried forward to meet the great vehicle. He kept among the bushes so that the driver did not see him. The latter, indeed, from his high perch, was too busy cracking his whip over his team to urge them to the ascent to see that small, gliding figure slipping through the gorse. So Chippy dodged behind the waggon, swung himself up by the tail-board, and climbed in as nimbly as a cat. The forepart of ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... day before yesterday: a queer omnium gatherum party—Prince Louis Napoleon, General Montholon, Lord Lyndhurst, Brougham, Sir Robert Wilson, Leader, and Roebuck. Droll to see Lyndhurst, the most execrated of the Tories, hand-and-glove, and cracking his jokes, with the two Radicals. After dinner I had a talk with him. He said the Duke had been all against the motion on the 28th, but that unless they had agreed to it, the party would have been broken up; said he did not care about coming in. If they ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... cried the Princess, and at the same moment she heard a crick-cracking in all her bones. She grew tall and straight and pretty, with eyes like shining stars, and a skin as white ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... passengers shouted good-bye. At Bleakridge it had to stop for the turnpike, and it was assisted up the mountains of Leveson Place and Sutherland Street (towards Hanbridge) by a third horse, on whose back was perched a tiny, whip-cracking boy; that boy lived like a shuttle on the road between Leveson Place and Sutherland Street, and even in wet weather he was the envy of all other boys. After half an hour's perilous transit the car drew up solemnly in a narrow ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... by the window, cracking dried sunflower seeds, and looking out at the steppes of Little Russia. The evening shadows were already lying in the hollows of the fields of ripening wheat, but the late sun still reddened the crests and the column ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... is she talking here? My heart is on the point of cracking. In one great choir I seem to hear ...
— Faust • Goethe
... caused by a sudden cracking off of some six or eight muskets, one after the other, closely followed by a heavy if slightly irregular volley, and the next instant the air seemed to become positively vibrant with a perfect pandemonium of shrieks, howls, ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... proceeded Olaf. Twice Lugur moaned. At the end he screamed—horribly. There was a cracking sound, as of a stout ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... but a maid," the grandame said, "When my mother was dead; And many a time have I stood. In that beautiful wood, To dream that through every woodland noise, Through the cracking Of twigs and the bending of bracken, Through the rustling Of leaves in the breeze, And the bustling Of dark-eyed, tawny-tailed squirrels flitting about the trees, Through the purling and trickling cool ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... provocative of thirst. He was much disposed to believe Mutimer guilty, but understood that it was none of his business to openly take part with either side. He stood well on the limits of the throng; it was not impossible that the debate might end in the cracking of crowns, in which case Mr. Dabbs, as a respectable licensed victualler whose weekly profits had long since made him smile at the follies of his youth, would certainly incur no needless risk to his own ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... wound with a sharp knife so as to remove all frayed edges. Cover the exposed wood with oil and lead paint to prevent cracking, and the wound will soon be covered with new ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... as it dashed over the rocks. A dog suddenly began to bark in the black, black valley—then ceased. He was vaguely over-awed with the "big mountings" for company and the distant stars. He listened eagerly for the first cracking of brush which told him that the other boys were near at hand. Then all three crept along cautiously among the huge boles of the trees, feeling very mysterious and important. When they reached the rude ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Strand. When we got to Blackwall the music struck up and people began to dance. I never saw a man dance so much in my life. He did not miss a dance all the way to Clacton, nor all the way back again, and when not dancing he was flirting and cracking jokes. I could hardly believe my eyes when I reflected that this man had painted the famous "Last Judgment," and had ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... could bear it no longer. They were singing now—a terrible thing with a refrain of oaths and GEE-UPS, and whistling noises like the cracking of whips—a bullock drivers' camp ditty. Bridget shudderingly decided that a row in Whitechapel could be nothing to this in the matter of bad language. She got up and paced the sitting-room in her dressing-gown, wondering ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... persistent maniacal gesture, distressed, troubled and uneasy; Osterman, with his comedy face, the face of a music-hall singer, his head bald and set off by his great red ears, leaning back in his place, softly cracking the knuckle of a forefinger, and, last of all and close to his elbow, his son, his support, his confidant and companion, Harran, so like himself, with his own erect, fine carriage, his thin, beak-like nose and his blond hair, with its tendency to curl ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... adaptation of means to an end. There was much danger, from the narrowness of the approach to the work from the side opening, of missing the mark and dropping the piece of wood with great difficulty of recovery, and, further, the chance of cracking the upper table by straining the opening for the admission of knife and wedge of wood. I heard of the violin but a few days since, and have no reason to suppose there has been occasion to have any further ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... face felt cold, and opening his eyes, he found that it had good reason to be so. It was covered with snow, and upon the robe itself the snow lay deep. The whole forest was white, and, as he stood up, he heard branches cracking beneath the weight that had gathered on them in the night. It had come down in thick and great flakes, but so softly that it ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... belief fairies often go hunting, and faint sounds of fairy horns, the baying of fairy hounds, and the cracking of fairy whips are supposed to be heard on these occasions, while the flight of the hunters is said to resemble in sound the ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... equivalent to the positive counter-evidence of Hearne on the mouth of the Copper River and of Henderson in Iceland, it must be remembered that, although Hood heard a noise as of quickly-moved musket-balls and a slight cracking sound during an Aurora, he also noticed the same noise on the following day, when there was no northern light to be seen; and it must not be forgotten that Wrangel and Gieseke were fully convinced that the sound they had heard was to be ascribed to the ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... arrangements, when even Brigade H.Q., with a whole staff captain to look after them, hadn't so much as a crust for breakfast. The Brigadier, however, was as cheery as ever, and almost as soon as it was light he was up in our lines cracking jokes with everyone he met, and asking "are we downhearted," to which he got the usual roar as answer. It really never stopped raining all day, and never again it is to be hoped will any of us spend another Christmas like it. By superhuman efforts ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... seemed to feel the cold, and made little cracking noises as if they were shivering. Jeanne lay shaking with cold; twice she got up to put more logs on the fire, and to pile her petticoats and dresses on the bed, but nothing seemed to make her any warmer. There were ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... up with a murrain!" cried the Tanner, for he, too, had talked himself into a fume. "Big words ne'er killed so much as a mouse. Who art thou that talkest so freely of cracking the head of Arthur a Bland? If I do not tan thy hide this day as ne'er I tanned a calf's hide in all my life before, split my staff into skewers for lamb's flesh and call me no more brave man! Now look to ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... reply. In that mood Joan would show no mercy. It was when she was suffering the most that Joan could harden and frighten Nancy. She was lashing herself to duty when she sent the whip cracking. ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... attributes compromised by my position. Oh, Hercules! when I remember my native Africa—when I reflect on the sweet intoxication of my former liberty—the excitement of the chase—the mad triumph of my spring, cracking the back of a bison with one fillip of my paw—when I think of these things—of my tawny wife with her smile sweetly ferocious, her breath balmy with new blood—of my playful little ones, with eyes of topaz and claws of pearl—when I think of all this, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... attempted to read, but found that impossible just then. Biddy was watching over the pots and pans in the kitchen. The boys were at the front door, now and then running along the road to listen, when the cracking of whips, the tramp of horses, and the ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... for battle. At last (Lucretius says and Creech) They set their wits to work on SPEECH: And that their thoughts might all have marks To make them known, these learned clerks Left off the trade of cracking crowns, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... sphere of metal was gone—snapped off into space. Thad clung desperately to the wire, muscles cracking, tortured arms almost drawn from their sockets. Fear flashed over his mind; what if the wire broke, and left him ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... or install options. A good 1990s example is the use of Torx screws for cable-TV set-top boxes. Older Apple Macintoshes took this one step further, requiring not only a hex wrench but a specialized case-cracking tool to open ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... middle ages, to lonely sages, men of science, reformers; the revelations of the world's superficial judgment, shocking to the souls concentrated upon their own bitter labour in the cause of sanctity, or of knowledge, or of temperance, let us say, or of art, if only the art of cracking jokes or playing the flute. And thus this general's daughter came to me—or I should say one of the general's daughters did. There were three of these bachelor ladies, of nicely graduated ages, who held ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... was turned to Turin. Ah, how we watched for the blue banner of Piedmont on the mountains! Charles Albert was pledged to our cause; his whole people had armed to rescue us, the streets echoed with avanti, Savoia! and yet Savoy was silent and hung back. Each day was a life-time strained to the cracking-point with hopes and disappointments. We reckoned the hours by rumors, the very minutes by hearsay. Then suddenly—ah, it was worth living through!—word came to us that Vienna was in revolt. The points of the compass had shifted and our sun had risen in the ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... been thrown about the broncho's neck, while his right hand was groping frantically for the animal's nose. But during all this time the pony was far from idle. He was plunging like a ship in a gale, cracking the whip with Phil Forrest until it seemed as if every bone in the lad's body would be broken. He could hear his own neck ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... her every afternoon in the sunshine, while the others were at work, and married her with great eclat. The moral of which is that, instead of cracking my head to make a sonnet to Claudine, I shall be wise to put on my hat ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... owing to constant pressure and friction in one place. The parts are hot, red, and tender, and emit a disagreeable odor when secretions are retained. The skin becomes sodden by retained sweat, and may crack and bleed. The same redness and tenderness are seen in chapping of the face and lips, and cracking of ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... the ice was thin. He had avoided it all the afternoon, but intent on cutting some fancy figure one of the boys had taught him, he did not notice how near he was to the dangerous spot until he heard a cracking noise all round him, and it was too late to save himself from a ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... would not be worth the cracking," said a cheerful voice behind us; and there stood Mistress Walgrave herself. "Come, husband," said she, soothingly, "be not too hard on Humphrey, he is but a lad. He serves us well most days, when the Queen is not to the front. I warrant thee, ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... them well, Malise," said the Lord James; "'twas you who did the skull-cracking at any rate. See if your leechcraft can tell us if any of these young rogues are likely to die. I would not have their deaths on my conscience ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... words were almost drowned by the fierce hissing, which was now mingled with a deep bass formed by a loud humming, throbbing sound such as might be made by a Brobdingnagian tea-kettle, just upon ready for use. Then came loud cracking and spitting sounds, and the dull roar ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... unprofitable, or pernicious Notions (for surely little better can be said of a great part of that Heathenish stuff they are tormented with; like the feeding them with hard Nuts, which when they have almost broke their teeth with cracking, they find either deaf or to contain but very rotten and unwholesome Kernels) whilst Things really perfected of the understanding, and useful in every state of Life, are left unregarded, to the ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... grains was no joke to anybody without teeth, and it was a serious affair to one of the blackbirds. He took it into his beak, dropped both head and tail, and gave his mind to the cracking of the sweet morsel. At this time he particularly disliked to be disturbed, and the only time I saw one rude to a youngster was when struggling with this difficulty. While feeding the nestlings, they broke the kernels into bits, picked up all the pieces, filling the beak the whole ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... of five, the youngest of the family, was sitting on the doorstep, hammering with the iron-shod heel of his heavy boot a hazel nut he had found on his way home. The nut, instead of cracking, was being driven deep into the moist earth. He did not desist from his employment, or lift ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... eyes, which would certainly have been put out by arrows had I not thought of my spectacles. These I fastened as strongly as I could upon my nose, and, thus protected, I went boldly on, while the arrows struck my glasses without even cracking them. ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... would depend upon such knowledge as he might be able to gather from the experienced people with whom he came in contact. He presently had ample proof that the driving of Macdougal of Boobyalla was nothing extraordinary here. Three horsemen passed him at a racing speed, and with much shouting and cracking of whips, and a wild, bewhiskered Bushman, driving two horses in a light, giglike vehicle, charged through the dust at a pace implying some business of life or death; but a little further on Jim came upon the ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... eclipsed the bright face of Goro, the moon, and forewarned the ape-man of impending storm. In the depth of the jungle the cloud shadows produced a thick blackness that might almost be felt—a blackness that to you and me might have proven terrifying with its accompaniment of rustling leaves and cracking twigs, and its even more suggestive intervals of utter silence in which the crudest of imaginations might have conjured crouching beasts of prey tensed for the fatal charge; but through it Tarzan passed unconcerned, ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... besides, a passion for cracking almonds. "A passion," Louise said, "as expensive as it was noisy, and which never was stronger than when she went about under the influence of the magic ring; and that perpetual crack! crack! which was heard wherever ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... couldn't understand about Stefan was why he was always laughing and joking. He did the work of two men but whether he was working or resting you could always hear him cracking his merry jokes and laughing ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... sun-parlor, extended along the wing, and toward this slight elevation the girl stealthily led him, without so much as the cracking of a dry twig underfoot, peering from left to right for indications that their ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... rise from his chair, but came to a sudden pause, while a sound of rending and cracking broke the silence that had followed his tragic words. All unconsciously, Wang Kum had given him the sticky chair; and the heat of the room and the doctor's feverish agitation, had combined to produce the catastrophe. The Reverend Gabriel Hornblower was trapped ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... his first really big part, and he had soaked himself in it. He had read up the literature of burglary. He had talked with men from Pinkerton's. He had expounded his views nightly to his brother Strollers, preaching the delicacy and difficulty of cracking a crib till his audience had rebelled. It charmed the Strollers to find Jimmy, obviously of his own initiative and not to be suspected of having been suborned to the task by themselves, treading with a firm foot on the ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... engaged in argument George Key hurried through the room and, barely grunting at them, disappeared by way of the green baize door. A minute later they heard several corks pop, and then the sound of cracking ice and splashing liquid. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... which you could no longer buy in Paris, and the two ate them like spoiled children. I didn't want to talk, for it was pure happiness for me to look on. I loved to watch her, when the servants had gone, with her elbows on the table like a schoolboy, her crisp gold hair a little rumpled, cracking walnuts with gusto, like some child who has been allowed down from the nursery for dessert and means to ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... soul so richly gifted Every child of man can find, If to mighty Foutsa lifted He but keep his heart and mind. He who goods and cattle lacking Is to fell disease a prey, In whose household bones are cracking, Cuts occurring every day, Who though slumbering never resteth From excess of bitter pain, And what he in prayer requesteth Never, never can obtain,— To earth-favouring Foutsa's figure If but reverence he shall pay Dire misfortune's dreadful rigour Flits for ever ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... Bob went on saying; "but all the same I don't think you are. After you've shown me, it's just like that egg Columbus stood up on end, after cracking the shell a bit—as easy as jumping off a log, once you know how. But now we're in here, I hope we find out the ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... felt that there must have been some sinister purpose back of the robbery. In that respect it was like the scientific cracking of Langhorne's safe. Langhorne, too, though he had been robbed, had been careful to disclaim the loss of anything of value. I frankly had not believed Langhorne, yet Carton was not of the same type and I felt that his open face would surely have disclosed to us any real loss that he suffered or ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... to leaven must be burned, but he who eats it is free. When it begins to crack it must be burned, and he who eats it must be cut off. "What is leavening?" "Like the horns of locusts." "Cracking?" "When the cracks intermingle." The words of R. Judah. But the Sages say, "if either of them be eaten, the eater must be cut off." "And what is leavening?" "All which changed its appearance, as when a man's hairs stand on end ...
— Hebrew Literature
... positive GDP growth and curtailing inflation. However, the Georgian Government has suffered from limited resources due to a chronic failure to collect tax revenues. Georgia's new government is making progress in reforming the tax code, enforcing taxes, and cracking down on corruption. Georgia also suffers from energy shortages; it privatized the T'bilisi electricity distribution network in 1998, but payment collection rates remain low, both in T'bilisi and throughout the regions. The country is pinning its hopes for long-term ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... but when the creatures commenced to come closer, frequently hitting the windows with their sharp beaks, and cracking two of them, they began to get really alarmed. Once the propeller struck the tail of one bold and incautious condor, and feathers flew in all directions; but after a quick circle he was back again, ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... each of them. Also you'll be interested to know I've got a report of your own doings. It was right, Kennedy, I don't blame you. I'd have done the same with Burke on the job. How are you making out? What? You're cracking ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... all. The instant after her shoulder had touched, startled by the contact, she flailed out with her tail. The blow smote the rail just for'ard of the fore-shrouds, splintering a gap through it as if it were no more than a cigar-box and cracking the covering board. ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... through the walls. However, they cast around them a glance of satisfaction, while eating on the little table on which a candle was burning. Their faces were reddened by the strong air. They stretched out their stomachs; they leaned on the backs of their chairs, which made a cracking sound in consequence, and they kept repeating: "Here we are in the place, then! What happiness! It seems to me ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... they were—five huge, hairy, dirty, black creatures, as large as the palm of Dicky's hand, all locked in deadly combat. They writhed and struggled and embraced, their long, curling legs fastening on each other with a sound that was actually like the cracking of bones. It takes a little courage to stand and watch such a proceeding, for you feel as if the hideous fellows might turn and jump for you; but they were doubtless absorbed in their own battle, and ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... by-and-by it began to get on their nerves: and if you don't know what that means, ask Mother to tell you next time you are playing blind man's buff when she has a headache. Then the dragon got into the habit of cracking his tail, as people crack whips, and this also got on people's nerves. Then, too, little things began to be missed. And you know how unpleasant that is, even in a private school, and in a public kingdom it is, of course, much worse. The things that were missed were ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... sweet gamut is cracking and breaking For a look, for a touch,—for such slight things; But he's such a very great musician ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... open water, and the tardy Yukon took to stretching of days and cracking its stiff joints. Now an air-hole ate into the ice, and ate and ate; or a fissure formed, and grew, and failed to freeze again. Then the ice ripped from the shore and uprose bodily a yard. But still the river was loth to loose its grip. It was a slow travail, and man, used ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... that I'm given to be afraid,' said Bagwax. 'The ocean, if I know myself, would have no terrors for me;—not if I was doing my duty. But I should hear the ship's sides cracking with every blast if that secret were lodged within ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... catch-cold; and I seem to regain, in buffeting with the wind, a little of the high spirit with which, in younger days, I used to enjoy a Tam-o'-Shanter ride through darkness, wind, and rain,—the boughs groaning and cracking over my head, the good horse free to the road and impatient for home, and feeling the weather ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... came to sea; once for dressing up the sheep in some of the men's clothes just before the crew were mustered, and then letting them out on the deck; and another time for cutting poor Polly's hammock down by the head, and very nearly cracking his skull—luckily it's rather thick. After leaving Free Town we touched at Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. Have you ever read about that settlement? It was established by the people of the United States, and colonised by men of colour, or blacks, who ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... carefully remove the cores, leaving the apples whole; place them in the syrup, and simmer until perfectly tender, but not broken. When done, lift them out into a glass dish (which should have been previously warmed to prevent cracking), press them slightly with a spoon so as to make a smooth surface slightly raised in the centre, and stand them on one side to get cold. When the apples are cold, strain the syrup into a small stewpan, and reduce over a moderate heat for fifteen or twenty minutes. ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... consider, the walls of Cellino suddenly seemed to let loose a fury of smoke and flame. Nothing that had happened during the day before equalled it. The big guns boomed and the smaller ones sent out sharp, cracking noises that were even ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... Olaf. Twice Lugur moaned. At the end he screamed—horribly. There was a cracking sound, as of ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... he had found at the hut of some priest within the enemy's frontier. He called for a large stone and hammer, and proceeded to examine them. The Hindoos were all in a dreadful state of consternation, and expected to see the earth open and swallow up the whole camp, while he sat calmly cracking their gods with his hammer, as he would have cracked so many walnuts. The Tulasi is a small sacred shrub (Ocymum sanctum), which is a metamorphosis of Sita, the wife of Rama, the seventh incarnation ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... acorns, and fruit; would eagerly tear open a bird and eat it raw; indolent, secretive; would hide in the garden until hunger drove him to the kitchen; rolled in new snow like an animal; paid no heed to the firing of a gun, but became alert at the cracking of a nut; sometimes grew wildly angry; all his powers were then enlarged; was delighted with hills and woods, and always tried to escape after being taken to them; when angry would gnaw clothing and hurl furniture ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of a door, are events to be remarked. Once a day, however, a huge gong sounds, the glass doors of the inner courtyard are thrown open with a flourish, and enters the huge bus fairly among those peacefully sitting at the tables, horses' hoofs striking fire, long lash-cracking volleys, wheels roaring amid hollow reverberations. From the interior of this bus emerge people; and from the top, by means of a strangely-constructed hooked ladder, are decanted boxes, trunks, and ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... the window. Kunda thought, "He has not risen yet, it is not time; I will sit down." She sat waiting amid the darkness under the trees; a fruit or a twig might be heard, in the silence, loosening itself with a slight cracking sound and falling to the earth. The birds in the boughs shook their wings overhead, and occasionally the sound of the watchmen knocking at the doors and giving their warning cry was to be heard. At ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... left his son cracking a long whip which he held in his hand, and looking occasionally at the tress of Mave Sullivan's beautiful hair, approached the hall door, at which he knocked, and on the appearance of a servant, requested ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... too generous to hesitate, too wise, also, for Prussian reaction is cracking and is going to crumble; even Americans of German origin would be acting against their own fatherland if they, by their sympathies, should sustain the regime of caporalism ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... ground," answered the king, roguishly, "or possibly more, as Hardrada is rather taller than the average," or words to that effect. "Then let the fight go on," answered Tostig, taking a couple of hard-boiled eggs from his pocket and cracking them on the pommel of his saddle, for he had not eaten anything but ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... better put the light out," he said, going across the room to where the switch was, and as he went there was a cracking sound in the window, and a bullet flew across the room and ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... either of good or of evil. As you know, I am not a superstitious person. I smile at those whimsical fancies which figure so conspicuously in many people's lives, such as the howling of dogs, the flickering of a candle, the arrangement of the grounds in a cup, the cracking of a mirror, the sudden stopping of the clock, the crowing of hens, the chirping of crickets, the hooting of an owl, the fall of a family portrait, the spilling of salt, a dream of the toothache, etc., etc., etc. ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... was down, Ranier came to the court-yard, and raising his ax with the blade upward, he said aloud: "Ax! ax! hammer! hammer! and build for my profit!" The ax at once leapt forward with the hammer part downward, and began cracking the solid rock on which the court-yard lay, and shaping it into oblong blocks, and heaping them one on the other. So much noise was made thereby that the warders first, and then the whole court, came out to ascertain the cause. Even the king himself was drawn ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... army chaplain. He came over almost at the start of the war and had seen a great deal of the open warfare at the commencement of hostilities. He said: "My friend Fritz is not through; he'll try to do some more yet." As the smoke died down and the cracking stopped, the enemy decided that an attempt would be made either to carry out salvage of whatever they had hit or else we would try to get the wounded away. So without any preliminary warning the whole area was covered ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... wall. But he controlled himself and as he went out he called back to his adversary, "Wish you joy of the bargain Ole Anderson. The peat bog won't beggar me, and the cattle at Ingvorstrup have all the hay they can eat." I could hear his loud laughter outside and the cracking of his whip. It is not easy to have to sit in judgment. Every decision makes ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... Instead he dashed into the open space in front of the custom house, just as the marines swept by, his hat off and his rifle cracking as fast as ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... Tai-yue was bent upon cracking melon seeds, saying nothing but simply pursing up her lips and smiling, when, strange coincidence, Hsueeh Yen, Tai-yue's waiting-maid, walked in and handed ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... were moored to the quay, but there was no life in them; not a sail was set, not a boatman or a sailor was to be seen, and the very water looked as though it were hot. I could fancy the glare of the sun was cracking the paint on the gunwales of the boats. I was the only visitor in the house, and during all the long hours of the morning it seemed as though the ...
— George Walker At Suez • Anthony Trollope
... in argument George Key hurried through the room and, barely grunting at them, disappeared by way of the green baize door. A minute later they heard several corks pop, and then the sound of cracking ice and splashing liquid. George was mixing ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... there'll be a jerk, I tell you! Some think it will spoil the old cart, and they pretend to say that there are valuable things in it which may get hurt. Hope not,—hope not. But this is the great Macadamizing place,—always cracking up something. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... he at last,—"it is for this that I have been—" he searched for an expressive Americanism, and shrugging, invented one, "thunder-cracking along the highway in search of the man Themar saw by the fire of Miss Westfall. 'It is incredible—it can not be!' said I, as I blistered about, searching here, searching there, losing my way and thunder-cracking ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... car is headed. Then, a premature turn of a wheel pitches him forward with a good chance to alight upon his feet, whereas the same thing happening when he was facing in the opposite direction would cause him to tumble over backward, with excellent prospects of cracking his skull. But in obedience to an immutable but inexplicable vagary of sex, a woman follows the patently wrong, the obviously dangerous, ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... maniacal gesture, distressed, troubled and uneasy; Osterman, with his comedy face, the face of a music-hall singer, his head bald and set off by his great red ears, leaning back in his place, softly cracking the knuckle of a forefinger, and, last of all and close to his elbow, his son, his support, his confidant and companion, Harran, so like himself, with his own erect, fine carriage, his thin, beak-like nose and his blond hair, with ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... wounded were carried back. But the Esquimaux were only made more angry by the resistance. They came on again with wild cries and, though Andy, Washington and the professor fought with all their strength, clubbing their guns and cracking several of the savages over the head, they were ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... do. "No, Ma'am, not yet," was Hetty's answer from below. On hearing this, my master started up from his bed, and just as he was, in his shirt, ran down stairs with a long cow-skin[6] in his hand. I heard immediately after, the cracking of the thong, and the house rang to the shrieks of poor Hetty, who kept crying out, "Oh, Massa! Massa! me dead. Massa! have mercy upon me—don't kill me outright."—This was a sad beginning for me. I sat up upon my blanket, ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... job" that night. We crossed the field to the farmhouse which we found filled to overflowing. Ambulances were waiting there to carry the wounded back to Ypres. I saw many friends carried in, and men were lying on the pavement outside. Bullets were cracking against the outer brick walls. One Highlander mounted guard over a wounded German prisoner. He had captured him and was filled with the hunter's pride in his game. "I got him myself, Sir, and I ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... have been. His nerves tingled and quivered. Minute by minute the giddiness grew more marked, the numb, sickly feeling at his heart more distressing. And then suddenly, with a groan, his head pitching forward, and his brow cracking sharply upon the narrow wooden shelf in front of him, he lay in ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were idly jerking the ladder up and down, an accident happened. Something snapped at the top, and with a little cracking sound, the whole ladder broke loose from its fastenings and fell to ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... upon the reins, pressed his foot heavily upon the brake, and brought the coach to a standstill, the horses, which had before drawn it through the deadly dangers it had passed at that spot, showing a restless dread and expectancy of the cracking ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... several dark forms were seen by the best-sighted of the men on watch, creeping cautiously up the ravine towards the hiding-place. The cracking of twigs and an occasional grunt were heard, and we knew the Indians were approaching. Word was passed not to fire until our leader gave the signal, which was finally given. Two of the old flintlocks went off, the others missed fire. One of the bullets struck one of a drove ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... soon fast asleep. In the morning it was still snowing, but about noon it cleared up. It was freezing hard, and the snow glistened as the sun burst through the clouds. The stillness of the forest was broken now by sharp cracking sounds as boughs of trees gave way under the weight of the snow; in the open it lay more than ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... was not less exciting than usual. The horses were placed as nearly abreast as possible and the starter gave an Indian yell. Then followed the cracking of whips, the furious pounding of heavy hoofs, the commands of the contestants, and the yells of the onlookers. Away they went at a mad pace down the road. The course extended a mile straight away down ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... crushing the life out of him. He struggled frantically, but felt like a puppy-dog in the paws of a grizzly. He was whirled round and round till he grew dizzy. He was crushed and hugged until he became faint. When his bones were cracking and the very life seemed oozing out of him, he felt himself suddenly catapulted somewhere in glorious release, then his senses gave way and he remembered no more ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... days of thy youth," says Solomon. "Train up a child in the way he should go," says the proverb, "and when he is old he will not depart from it." Be not afraid of the sneers of the ungodly. "As the cracking of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of a fool." "The fairest flower in the garden of creation," says Sir James E. Smith, "is a young mind, offering and unfolding itself to the influence of Divine Wisdom, as the heliotrope turns its sweet ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... were three little horses; behind it was hitched an old shabby two-wheeled thing, which we were to leave somewhere for repairs. With whip-cracking and vociferation, amid good-natured farewells from the crowd, we started away. It was ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... prowess by its capture. For such a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing like Samson's, his arteries running buckets of red blood, to boast of these infinitesimal exploits, produced a feeling of disproportion in the world, as when a steam-hammer is set to cracking nuts. The other was a quiet, subdued person, blond and lymphatic and sad, with something the look of a Dane: 'Tristes tetes de Danois!' as Gaston Lafenestre ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... soil, and already they saw the lights of the village twinkling like so many golden candles. But the berlin, which had drawn them so stoutly over these rugged mountain-roads, failed them at the last. One of the hind wheels jolted violently upon a great stone, there was a sudden cracking of wood, and the carriage lurched over, throwing its occupants one ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... these mild people, me that's heard grand stories in the forecastle of how this man was marooned in the Bahamas, and that man was married to a Maori queen, by God? Me, the hero that dowsed skysails, and they cracking like guns. Is this lousy room a place for me that's used to a ship as clean as a cat from stem to stern?' And you stand up bravely, and you look the man of the public house square in the shifty eyes, and you say: 'Listen, bastard! Do you ken e'er a master wants a sailing man? ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... the eastern horizon, our perfect enjoyment took the form of a tranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a spanking gait, the breeze flapping curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the horses' hoofs, the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi! g'lang!" were music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared to give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look after us with interest, or envy, or something; and as we lay and smoked the pipe of peace and compared all this luxury ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with a strip of coarsely woven crash lined with several pieces of paper. This is glued to the back to make it hard and solid and to prevent it from cracking, or "breaking," when the book ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... Cracking an order at them in his best garbled Spanish, Bob clambered into the pilot's seat. He was understood, and better, was obeyed. One man gingerly approached the propeller and started twirling it, while the other went to the side of the plane and ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... noise, Winnie. It was simply the rending and cracking of the poor churchyard trees as ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... in the folds the ewes, yet frail from their travail, stood stung and still, mothering their weak-kneed lambs. Beside the thud of the horse's hoofs toward town there was no sound on the road save a little, dry cracking of the frost. The doctor, as he started in his carriage for Davie's house, drew his robes closely about him and scowled at the fierceness of the blast; but Davie, riding far ahead, his elbows flying wildly up and down, did not know that ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... the matter, and I agreed on condition he allowed me to tie his handkerchief over his head. I was wearing his hat and tying the ends of a big silk handkerchief beneath his chin when the cracking of a twig caused me to look up and see Harold Beecham with an expression on his ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... six horses, and a gayly dressed postilion mounted on one of the horses of each pair, makes a very grand appearance, you may depend, in coming, upon the gallop, into the streets of a town—the postilions cracking their whips, and making as much noise as they can, and all the boys and girls of the street coming to the doors and ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... the city of Florence. My only consolation was to eat unnumbered cherries and apricots, for I did not as yet like the figs. My brother and I sometimes had a lurid delight in cracking the cherry and apricot stones and devouring the bitter contents, with the dreadful expectation of soon dying from the effects. Altogether I considered our sojourn in the town house, Casa del Bello, a morose experience; but it was, fortunately, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... impassable wall. He made a desperate rush at length to overleap the fire, and his figure, magnified by the red light, looked gigantic as he sprang high in the air. A dozen pistols clattered together—the man fell heavily forward, tossing up his scorched hands, and the frizzing, cracking timbers closed darkly above him to the thunder ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... intercept a morsel even in the jaws of some young desperado, declaring it "must to the pan again to be browned, for it was not fit for a gentleman's eating"—how he would recommend this slice of white bread, or that piece of kissing-crust, to a tender juvenile, advising them all to have a care of cracking their teeth, which were their best patrimony,—how genteelly he would deal about the small ale, as if it were wine, naming the brewer, and protesting, if it were not good, he should lose their custom; with a special recommendation to wipe the lip before drinking. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... cock crew, and the prince made all haste to get on horseback; Kate jumped up behind, and home they rode. When the morning sun rose they came in and found Kate sitting down by the fire and cracking her nuts. Kate said the prince had a good night; but she would not sit up another night unless she was to get a peck of gold. The second night passed as the first had done. The prince got up at midnight and rode away to the green hill and the fairy ball, and Kate went with him, ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... of the stable. "This is the place where they keep them," remarked one of the men. "They are the finest horses in the rebel army, and it would be a good job to run them into the Union lines some fine night. I know a man that would pay a cracking good price ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... could still write and sell. In his declining years too; misfortune is doubly and trebly unfortunate that befalls us then. Scott fell to his Hercules' task like a very man, and went on with it unweariedly; with a noble cheerfulness, while his life-strings were cracking, he grappled with it, and wrestled with it, years long, in death-grips, strength to strength; and it proved the stronger; and his life and heart did crack and break; the cordage of a most strong heart! Over these last writings of Scott, his Napoleons, Demonologies, Scotch Histories, and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... opened from that part of the ridge still held by the Confederates, the shell tearing through or over the dissolving groups of their right wing, and cracking viciously above the heads of the victorious Unionists. The explosions followed each other with stunning rapidity, and the shrill whirring of the splinters was ominous. Men began to fall again in the ranks or to drop out of them wounded. Of all this Waldron took no ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... this morning, in Padua, Verona, Milan, Chioggia, or wherever it was, whips were cracking, hoofs clattering, motor horns booming, wheels endangering your life. Farewell now to all!—there is not a wheel in Venice save those that steer rudders, or ring bells; but instead, as you discern in time when the brightness ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... very careful. Whenever he went into the woods after game or Indians, he had perpetually to keep watch to make sure that he was not being hunted in turn. Every turkey-call might mean a lurking savage, every cracking twig might mean an ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... his discourse as fully as a bishop, but that at this point there was a shouting and the noise of dry boughs cracking under advancing feet. In a moment the three men were standing, alert, astonished, in ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... cracksman," said Arthur Weldon, with a laugh. "If there are any safes out here that are worth cracking, I'd say look ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... by the hand, led her into the next room and opened the window to see what was going on outside, where the cracking of whips and several voices were to be heard. A servant was walking up and down the yard leading a large horse which he had just brought from the stable; the Baron was holding a smaller one, which bore a lady's saddle, ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... cheek; his audacity frightened her. She was fond of admiration, but this way of expressing it was new to her. The young man caught the movement and recovered himself. He had ventured on a thin spot, as was his custom, and the sound of the cracking ice ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to observe to thee,"—said Lavretzky,—"that we are not sleeping at all, now, but are, rather, preventing others from sleeping. We are cracking our throats like cocks. Hark, ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... Hunchback" again. Why, so horribly nervous the first night that the chair shook under me while my hair was being dressed. I trembled to such a degree from head to foot, and the rustling of the curl-papers as the man twisted them in my hair almost drove me distracted, for it sounded like a forest cracking and rattling in a storm. After the performance, my limbs ached as if I had been beaten across them with an iron bar, and I could scarcely stand or support myself for exhaustion and fatigue. This, however, was only the first night, and I suppose proceeded from the painful uncertainty I felt as to ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Nan was only conscious of the ripping of her garments, the sudden pressure of hot bodies round her, and of a blurred sound of hounds baying, the vicious cracking of a whip, and the voices ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... said, "to think that a Fletcher is again cracking the skulls of Frenchmen—I mean, of course, of Catholic Frenchmen—for I regard the Huguenots, being of our religion, as half English. I don't say take care of yourself, my lad—it is not the way of Englishmen to do that, on the battlefield—but ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... in the machine, which I believed was produced by the cracking of a cord. This new intimation made me carefully examine the inside of our habitation. I saw that the part that was turned towards the south was full of holes, of which some ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... Street." On our way up to the front line an occasional flare of bursting shrapnel would light up the sky and we could hear the fragments slapping the ground above us on our right and left. Then a Fritz would traverse back and forth with his "typewriter" or machine gun. The bullets made a sharp cracking noise overhead. ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... revived; then I ate something he offered me, and was soon myself. I was in the library—sitting in his chair—he was quite near. "If I could go out of life now, without too sharp a pang, it would be well for me," I thought; "then I should not have to make the effort of cracking my heart-strings in rending them from among Mr. Rochester's. I must leave him, it appears. I do not want to leave him—I cannot ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... gold circlet about the brows, pressed hard against his chin. Her hair was in his mouth, tendrils of it stung his eyes, but the gold band numbed his flesh and bruised the bone. Upward, ever upward, she forced his chin until his neck was cracking with the strain and he choked for breath. Then she suddenly relaxed. Her arms left him, her wickedly lovely face once more smiled into his starting eyes, and she took the chain from her girdle with leisurely swiftness, falling to her knees ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... good phrases which had once come up under his pen, as that witty phrase about crushing and cracking had come up in the course of a brief note scribbled on a half-sheet of paper. The phrase reappears five years afterwards, elaborated into an impressive sentence, in the preface to The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, dated Lymington, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the cleverest lad in the parish at noosing any wild animal, is our patron of the feast. He has wanted for many a day to say something in the ear of Matilda Vercelli. Bringing up the leveret to my bedside, and opening the lips, and cracking the knuckles, and turning the foot round to show the quality and quantity of the hair upon it, and to prove that it really and truly was a leveret, and might be eaten without offence to my teeth, he informed me that he ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... disintegrate into a thousand flying timbers and twisted sheets of tin which soared upward and outward over their heads and into the night. As the rocking hills ceased echoing, the sound of the Vigilantes' rifles recurred like the cracking of dry sticks, then everywhere about the defenders the earth was lashed by falling debris while the iron roofs rang at ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... a rapid trot through the jungle in the direction of the village. For a few minutes, the sharp cracking of guns ahead warned them to haste, but finally the reports dwindled to an occasional shot, presently ceasing altogether. Nor was this less ominous than the rattle of musketry, for it suggested ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... flame, flickering and threatening through the smoke, licking up all before them; and, at times, a gust of so hot and blasting a wind as seemed to dry the very marrow in our bones. The roaring of the fire was now distinctly audible, mingled with hissing, whistling sounds, and cracking noises, as of mighty trees falling. Suddenly a bright flame shot up through the stifling smoke, and immediately afterwards a sea of fire burst upon our aching eyeballs. The whole palmetto ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... father didn't live long after him, for he got queerer nor ever, and they said he used to go out i' the dead o' the night, wi' a lantern in his hand, to the stables, and set a lot o' lights burning, for he got as he couldn't sleep; and there he'd stand, cracking his whip and looking at his hosses; and they said it was a mercy as the stables didn't get burnt down wi' the poor dumb creaturs in 'em. But at last he died raving, and they found as he'd left all his property, Warrens and all, to a ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... studding-sail, I went up to the cross-trees; and here it looked rather squally. The foot of the top-gallant-mast was working between the cross and trussel trees, and the mast lay over at a fearful angle with the topmast below, while everything was working and cracking, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... extraordinary. The almost unknown Colonel Baden-Powell instantly became "B.-P." to the general public, and in the twinkling of an eye his photograph appeared in the shop-windows beside those of Sir Redvers Buller, Sir George White, and Lord Methuen. Everybody was cracking jokes about the war, and the Boers seemed to be already under the heel of the conqueror. When men opened their newspapers in the railway carriage it was with the remark, "How's old B.-P. getting along?" The doings of other soldiers in more important ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... so great was the strain and tension that I could feel the beating of my horse's heart beneath me. The suspense was finally broken by one or two shots in rapid succession, and as the sound died away, the voice of Juan Leal rang out distinctly: "Cuidado por el toro!" and the next moment there was a cracking of brush and a pale dun ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... I will confine my remarks to the newer things that you haven't heard of. I will first note a shagbark hickory that stands in my own neighborhood, an outstanding variety we call Hand. This is very much like the Vest in shape and size and cracking quality. According to my tests, this variety cracks out 50% meat, and since it is a local variety and I know it is hardy and fruitful, I am placing it ahead of the Vest for the Middle West. It is certainly equal to it in every ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... squares of about ten inches on a side, and is fastened to the second layer by bolts at the corners and one in the middle of each square. The surface is flush. (See Fig. 9.) The end sought by the above system is to break up the shot by the hard steel face and to restrict any starring or cracking of the metal to the limit of the squares or scales struck. The bolts are of high carbon and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... rubbish or chalk should be added wherever there is any deficiency." If it be possible, in dry weather allow a stream of water to flow by their roots, or in any case give liquid manure. The roots should never be dry; cracking often follows rain just after a drought if the roots are dry. Soot is a safeguard against insects, and is supposed to give colour. Dr Griffiths (in "Special Manures for Garden Crops," p. 101) says: "Nitrogenous ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... and dreary anticipations would have been absolutely required of him. He pictured the scene to himself; he lying fermenting in the barrel, like a curious vintage; the bear sniffing querulously round it, perhaps cracking it like a cocoa-nut, or extracting him like a periwinkle! Of these chances he had been deprived by the interference of the crew. ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... hopes of finding the land we were in search of. At noon we were in the latitude of 50 deg. 56' S., longitude 56 deg. 48' E., and presently after we saw two islands of ice. One of these we passed very near, and found that it was breaking or falling to pieces, by the cracking noise it made; which was equal to the report of a four-pounder. There was a good deal of loose ice about it; and had the weather been favourable, I should have brought-to, and taken some up. After passing this, we saw no more, till we returned ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... publican, the shopkeeper, the pettifogger, the citizen, and courtier, all tread upon the kibes of one another: actuated by the demons of profligacy and licentiousness, they are seen every where rambling, riding, rolling, rushing, justling, mixing, bouncing, cracking, and crashing in one vile ferment of stupidity and corruption — All is tumult and hurry; one would imagine they were impelled by some disorder of the brain, that will not suffer them to be at rest. The foot-passengers run along as if they were pursued by bailiffs. The porters and chairmen trot ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... became "homogeneous" not as bricks or stones built into a wall by mortar or cement but as concrete, eternal as the hills, needing not to be chiselled and split but only to be moulded and "set" at just the right moment. If this gives any suggestion of want of permanence, of liability of cracking, then the figure is not fortunate. I mean only to suggest, by still another metaphor, that out of the myriad rugged individualities, idiosyncrasies, and independences a new rock ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... he turned sharply now, saw what had taken place, and came back cracking his whip. "Ah!" he shouted. "Get ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... he might run ashore or foul of some ship, got up steam immediately, and set to work to perform the goose step at anchor in the harbour. You may imagine the row,—wind blowing, rain splashing, ropes hauled, spars cracking, everybody hallooing:—'A stroke a-head! ease her! faster! stop her!' and other variations of the same tune. All this immediately over my head! After expending the conventional number of hours in my cot, in the operation of what ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... side by side, I a little in advance, as became a scout, and your father with his own men, as better suited a soldier of the king—on many a hard fi't and bloody day. It's the way of us skirmishers to think little of the fight when the rifle has done cracking; and at night, around our fires, or on our marches, we talk of the things we love, just as you young women convarse about your fancies and opinions when you get together to laugh over your idees. Now it was natural that ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... into the gallery, where the servants were already arranged on their knees, praying and crossing themselves with all their might. The shock lasted above a minute and a half, and I believe has done no injury, except in frightening the whole population, and cracking a few old walls. All Mexico was on its knees while it lasted, even the poor madmen in San Hepolito, which A—— had gone to visit in company with Seor ——-. I have had a feeling of sea-sickness ever since. They expect a return of the shock in twenty-four hours. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Government's been cracking down on business everywhere it can," the bartender went on. "All kinds of violations. I got nothing against the law, you understand. But that kind of thing don't help profits any. Look at ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... blasting rock, for instance:[A]—1. Incomplete combustion of the explosive. 2. Compression and chemical changes induced in the surrounding material operated on. 3. Energy expended in the cracking and heating of the material which is not displaced. 4. The escape of gas through the blast-hole, and the fissures caused by the explosion. The proportion of useful work has been estimated to be from 14 to 33 per cent. ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... lion lay upon the unfortunate man, he faintly cried, "Help me, help me! Oh God! men, help me!" After which the fearful beast got a hold of his neck, and then all was still, except that his comrades heard the bones of his neck cracking between the teeth of the lion. John Stofolus had lain with his back to the fire on the opposite side, and on hearing the lion he sprang up, and, seizing a large flaming brand, had belabored him on the head with the burning wood; but the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... from the house. Her glance involuntarily took in the familiar masses and details; the patches of short tough grass mixed with decaying chips and small weeds underfoot, and the spacious June sky overhead; the fine network and blisters of the cracking and warping white paint on the clapboarding, and the hills beyond the bulks of the village houses and trees; the woodshed stretching with its low board arches to the barn, and the milk-pans tilted to sun against the underpinning ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... yer powder on yer friends, like the bloody-minded spalpeen ye are!" says the scavenger, cracking his whip, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... from the bottles to the players, who covertly were watching him. "How you two smarts can tell a domino from a door-knocker after cracking a ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... tracking his master, he met three ways, after smelling the two, boldly pursued the third without any such previous investigation; which, if true, would be an instance of a disjunctive hypothetical syllogism. Also Dugald Stewart spoke of the case of a monkey cracking nuts behind a door, which, not being a strict imitation of anything which he could have actually seen, implied an operation of abstraction, by which the clever brute had first ascended to the general notion of nut-crackers, which perhaps he had ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... shot ahead to the lead; the great herd lengthened out from its compact mass; swerved easily to the left, as at a word of command; crashed through the fringe of evergreen in which I had been hiding,—out into the open again with a wild plunge and a loud cracking of hoofs, where they all settled into their wonderful trot again, and kept on steadily across ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... drift. The deacon's horse knew before the deacon did that something had happened in his favor, and was quick to respond. With his first jump of relief the deacon suddenly revived, his hopes came fast again, his blood retingled, he gathered himself, and, cracking his lines, he shot forward, and three minutes later he had passed the squire as though he were hitched to the fence. For a quarter of a mile the squire made heroic efforts to recover his vanished prestige, but effort was useless, and finally concluding that ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... Bob!" cried Lennox, for the firing from the farther bank suddenly ceased, and the rustling and cracking of twigs somewhere overhead told that the fresh danger was ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... Emerson Morse put in pacifically, "have been kept from popping corn and cracking nuts all Fall so's they could do both Christmas night, and it would seem ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... Lamb trees, as seen at Norris, Tennessee, during this meeting, appear to be of at least average size and have better than average shell structure. They probably would be well adapted to machine-cracking. Thus the Lamb would not be a bad variety to grow for its nuts. Or we could double-work the trees, to have each tree with a good trunk of the Lamb wood growing beneath a fruiting top of any desired walnut variety. One or two of our members ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... they could now hear the cracking of the whip with which the servant urged on the tow-horse. And now it stopped, at an easy landing-place, barely fifty paces from the terrace. Madame de Lamotte landed with her son and the stranger, and her husband descended ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... master: that she had thoughts which his brains could never master, and was the better of the two; quite separate from my lord although tied to him, and bound as almost all people (save a very happy few) to work all her life alone. My lord sat in his chair, laughing his laugh, cracking his joke, his face flushing with wine—my lady in her place over against him—he never suspecting that his superior was there, in the calm resigned lady, cold of manner, with downcast eyes. When he was merry in his cups, he would make jokes about her coldness, and, "D—— ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the disgrace of such an end,' exclaimed Mr. Kornicker, twisting his fingers together, and in his earnestness cracking the knuckles of all of them. 'Think of that, my old fellow. Think of the stain that will always rest upon ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... had been so keen to see the general, and yet he was coming back with his mission unaccomplished. Was it that his pony was hopelessly foundered? It seemed to be moving well. Anerley picked up Mortimer's binoculars, and a foam-bespattered horse and a weary koorbash-cracking man came cantering up the centre of the field. But there was nothing in his appearance to explain the mystery of his return. Then as he watched them they dipped into a hollow and disappeared. He could see that it was one of those narrow khors which led to the river, and he waited, glass ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... night I could hear the gay music of the bells and hoofs, the rumbling of the wheels the cracking of the eternal whip, as I fidgeted from one familiar lap to the other in search of sleep; and waking out of a doze I could see the glare of the red lamps on the five straining white and gray backs that dragged us so gallantly ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... disturb him, and he assured himself at length that he had heard only the cracking of dead branches in the storm, and that there had been no rifle shots. Then, at last, his eyes drooped and ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... creature, with a bellow that seemed to shake the plain, made a wild rush to the gate, the whole herd at his heels. Like lightning, the men made a line behind, shouting, yelling, cracking their whips to drive them onward. Pip stood up and halloed, absolutely beside himself with excitement. Then he held ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... waited, I don't know. We knew by the artillery preparations that the command for advance must soon come, and we crouched there, some quivering with excitement, others cracking jokes and telling stories, and most of the men smoking cigarettes, until the word of command should pass down the line. We knew what it meant. It was true our barrage would make it comparatively safe; but we knew, too, that many of the lads who were joking with ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... bull went down before the rifles, old Roper, with the Maluka riding him, standing like a rock under fire; and then, just as the mob was quieting down, a wild scrub cow with a half-grown calf at her heels shot out of the mob and headed straight for the pack team, Dan galloping beside her and cracking thunderclaps out of a stock-whip. Flash and I scuttled to shelter, and Dan, bending the cow back to the mob, shouted as he passed by, at full gallop: "Here you are, missus; thought you might like a ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... who was named Noggs, had one glass eye and long, bony fingers which he had an uncomfortable habit of cracking together when he spoke to any one. He had once been rich, but he had given his money to Ralph Nickleby to invest for him, and the money-lender had ended by getting it all, so that the poor man at last had to become the other's clerk. When he first saw ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... is shown an appliance for cracking nuts which will prevent many a bruised thumb. To anyone who has ever tried to crack butternuts it needs no further recommendation. The device is nothing more than a good block of hardwood with a few holes bored in it to fit the different sized nuts. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... That's always the way with russia—now-a-days, at least!—Smell that, grandfather! Isn't it sweet? But there's no stay in it! Smell that joint! The leather's stone-dead!—It's the rarest thing to see a volume bound in russia, of which the joints are not broken, or at least cracking. These joints, you see, are gone to powder! All russia does—sooner or later, whatever be the cause.—Just put that joint to your nose, sir! That's part of what you smell so ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... frightened; but his lordship, after laughing heartily, was politer, and knew better about manners than all that; so, bidding the flunkies hurry away with the fragments of the china jugs and jars, they found themselves, sweating with terror and vexation, ranged along silk settees, cracking about ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... the youth who, cracking his whip joyously, and followed by half a score of dogs, cantered on his rude pony down the Tilford Lane, and thence it was that with a smile of amused contempt upon his face he observed the ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and evening fell upon the wood, he entered it. Moving, here and there a bramble or a drooping bough which stretched across his path, he slowly disappeared. At intervals a narrow opening showed him passing on, or the sharp cracking of some tender branch denoted where he went; then, he was seen ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... that fine comedy in an old grey-bearded Capuchin dog?" cried the frate, leaping about and cracking his fingers. "Could you have bettered it? Could any man living have bettered it? Confess me an old rogue-in-grain, or I break ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... When the shutters are put up, light filters through the interstices of the boards. Go close up to them, apply your eye to one of those lighted crevices, listen to the cannon roaring, the mitrailleuses horribly spitting, the musketry cracking, and then look into the interior of the closed rooms. People are talking, eating, and smoking; waiters go to and fro. There are women too. The men are gay and silly. Champagne bottles are being uncorked. "Ah! ah! it's the fusillade!" Lovers and mistresses ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... have been long in slumber, when a slight noise, perhaps the cracking of a stick, drove sleep from my anxious brain, and I sat up with surprise, staring at a long figure in black that stood peering at me. The black gown, the beads and the broad-brimmed hat told ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... the bar, Burton brought all his weight to bear upon it. There was a dull, cracking sound and a sort of ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... situation, an old one—a girl who dare not marry a poor man, and a poor man cracking his brains to know where to get money from. I dare say Bewsher never questioned the rightness of it all—he was too much in love with the girl, his own training had been too similar. And Morton, hovering on the outskirts, talked—to weak people the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... turned out, there were none, or none to throw me back. At the stream-side, holding by an elder-bough, I tested the ice with my weight, proved it firm, crossed without so much as cracking it, and breasted a bare grassy slope, too little to be called a down, where a few naked hawthorns chafed and creaked in the wind. Above it was an embankment rounded like a bastion, up the left side of which I crept—or, you might almost say, crawled—and, reaching the ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... at last, and came to the place of punishment. Many a piteous sight and sound was there—cracking of whips, shrieks of the burning, rack and gibbet and wheel; Chimera tearing, Cerberus devouring; all tortured together, kings and slaves, governors and paupers, rich and beggars, and all repenting their sins. A ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... as distant from the Azores as Europe is. According to a rough calculation on Col. James' chart I make E. Azores to Portugal 850, West do. to Newfoundland 1500, but I am writing to a friend at Admiralty to have the distance calculated (which looks like cracking nuts with Nasmyth's hammer!) ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... brag-party broke up and settlements were being made, during which operation the Captain's bragging propensities were exercised in cracking up the speed of his boat, which, by his reckoning, must have made at least sixty miles, and would have made many more if he could have procured good wood. It appears the two passengers, in their first lesson, had incidentally lost ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... it together; secondly, organic substance of armour which grows into its proper shape at once for good and all, and can't be mended at all, if broken, (as of insects); thirdly, organic substance of skin, which stretches, as the creatures grows, by cracking, over a fresh skin which is supplied beneath it, as in bark of trees; fourthly, organic substance of skin cracked symmetrically into plates or scales which can increase all round their edges, and are connected by softer skin, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... borrowed some pins, and pinned up my shirt tail as well as I could. I then went into the dance, and told the fiddler to play me a jig. Che, che, che, went the fiddle, when the banjo responded with a thrum, thrum, thrum, with the loud cracking of the bone player. I seized a little Sambo gal, and round and round the room we went, my money and my buttons going jingle, jingle, jingle, seemed to take a lively part with the music, and to my great satisfaction every eye seemed to be upon me, and I could ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... "you're wanted for cracking the skull of a farmer named Leigh. There's a doubt if Leigh will live and you may ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... up from the bank of the river are dented and broken as if some giant in the past had smashed them with his hammer, cracking some and punching deep holes in others. It was in one of these holes, or caves, that ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... have them, these brides, for the rest of our journey, in all stages and of all ages! Thus far none others had appeared as determined as were these two honey-mooners, that all the world should share their bliss. They were cracking filberts with their disengaged fingers, the other two being closely interlocked, in quite scandalous openness, when we ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... said at last, "that means something that one has not, and that is to come—is it so?" "Something that one never has, and that never comes," muttered the old man, wearily cracking the flints in two; "something that one possesses in one's sleep, and that is farther off each time that one awakes; and yet a thing that one sees always, sees even when one lies a dying they ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the earth; he whirled on a pivot, high and clear, and came to the ground with a force to match his weight, his body, like a whip-lash, cracking its ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... half-suffocated by the dust which now shut them in, while, with a furious roar, the avalanche of cinder, stones, and ashes swept by, not twenty yards from where they stood, and subsided amidst the cracking of boughs and tearing up of trees at the ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... the art of burglary. This was his first really big part, and he had soaked himself in it. He had read up the literature of burglary. He had talked with men from Pinkerton's. He had expounded his views nightly to his brother Strollers, preaching the delicacy and difficulty of cracking a crib till his audience had rebelled. It charmed the Strollers to find Jimmy, obviously of his own initiative and not to be suspected of having been suborned to the task by themselves, treading with a firm foot on the expert's favorite corn within five ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... on the door while Professor Hooker wrathfully besought the intruder to depart before he took active measures. There was the cracking of glass. ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... great horn spectacles, and his lips tightly pressed together, could not sometimes avoid putting aside his magnifying-glass and punch upon the workbench, and throwing a glance toward the inn, especially when the cracking of the whips of the postilions, with their heavy boots, little jackets, and perukes of twisted hemp, awoke the echoes of the ramparts and announced a new arrival. Then he became all attention, and from time ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... get home," cried Hugh John, cracking his fingers and thumbs. "I know a proper place ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... auditors. As if there was not enough in his figure, visage, and attire to move the mirth of beholders, he added to his other attractions a variety of gestures and antics of the most extravagant kinds, dancing, leaping, and dodging about, clapping his hands and cracking his heels together, with the activity, restlessness, and, we may add, the grace, of a jumping-jack. Such was the worthy, or unworthy, son of Salt River, a man wholly unknown to history, though not to local and traditionary fame, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... just covered when done. Set them on a moderate fire till they boil, then take them off, and set them by the fire to simmer slowly, till they are soft enough to admit a fork; (place no dependence on the usual test of their skin's cracking, which, if they are boiled fast, will happen to some potatos when they are not half done, and the inside is quite hard,) then pour off the water, (if you let the potatos remain in the water a moment after they are done enough, they will become waxy and watery,) uncover the sauce-pan, and set ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... busy in camp with the packing for the voyage, had shared in the gloom of my temporary defeat. But now, as I plunged past them, I could see them leaping into the air and cracking their heels together with delight. They had wet every plank of her with their sweat, and they were as proud as I. In the light of the following days, their delight dwindled into ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... regarded is, that artificial drying is usually inapplicable to fresh peat. The precautions needful in curing peat have already been detailed. Above all, slow drying is necessary, in order that the blocks shrink uniformly, without cracking and warping in such a way as to seriously injure their solidity and usefulness. In general, peat must be air-dried to a considerable extent before it can be kiln-dried to advantage. If exposed to dry artificial heat, when comparatively ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... the log cracking; and just then the door swung on its hinges, and Mr. Starkie entered with the great bunch ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... old floor cracking. Don't flatter it by noticing. How odd to find, meeting in this way, that we are both searching for the ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... saw a moment later. Approaching over the frozen snow were several Eskimo sledges, drawn by dog teams, and the native drivers were shouting and cracking their ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... blew they could hear a distant cracking of branches as the dead boughs, broken by the swaying of the trees, fell off and came down. Had any one attempted to walk into the forest there they would have sunk above the ankle in soft decaying wood, hidden from sight by thick vegetation. Wood-pigeons ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... pleasure yo', mammy; but weary befa' riches and land, if folks that has 'em is to write "Abednegos" by t' score, and to get hard words int' their brains, till they work like barm, and end wi' cracking 'em.' ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... his British Majesty. After the first few days of favouritism, I sensibly lost ground with his excellency; for he was too deeply occupied, and had too many resources of his own, to find his amusement in my society. During the few days I sat at his table, I entertained his diplomatic guests with cracking nuts, extracting the kernels, peeling oranges, talking broad Scotch and Parisian French, chanting the "Gloria," dancing "Gai Coco," and, in fact, exhibiting all my accomplishments. I was, however, soon sent to the secretary's office to be taught a new jargon, and to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... had come. The carriage was still waiting at the edge of the outer court, and once again the driver started off without instructions, but tooling his team this time at a faster pace, with a great deal of whip-cracking and shouts to pedestrians to clear the way. And this time the carriage had an escort of indubitable maharajah's men, who closed in on it from all sides, their numbers increasing, mounted and unmounted, until by the time ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... Day he was cracking his Whip and begging People to get up on the Wagon with him. And he said it was a Queer Thing, but he couldn't bear ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... Colonel himself along with his adjutant. It can be readily imagined what scrambling and endeavor there was on the part of the sorrowing ones to return undetected to the Colonel's headquarters his stolen property and belongings. For days thereafter, the garrison resounded to the cracking of the Colonel's knout, and this time the wailing and shedding of tears was undoubtedly more real than any that had been shed previously to that time. These various unfortunate affairs, while harmful enough in themselves, did far greater harm than such incidents would ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... North Carolina, was known as Shaking Mountain, for strange sounds and tremors were heard there, and every moonshiner who had his cabin on that hill joined the church and was diligent in worship until he learned that the trembling was due to the slow cracking and separation ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... simply because, Jeffrey excepted, no Whig could be found who was adapted to the office. The solicitor laid strict injunctions on Napier not to go if a Whig were not in office. No Whig was, and he stayed away. I think this is good?—bearing in mind that all the old Whigs of Edinburgh were cracking their throats in the room. They gave out that they were ill, and the lord-advocate did actually lie in bed all the afternoon; but this is the real truth, and one of the judges told it me with great glee. It ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... landau, of ancient and decayed splendour, driven by two white horses. They came dashing up at a wild gallop. The native driver, in his red fez and white cotton jacket, barely gave Freddy time to jump into the carriage after Meg was seated when, with a noisy cracking of his whip, he urged the horses to ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... had an awful time in an ice gorge. He could hear it cracking and grinding below as though warning him of danger. He succeeded in climbing on a cake which saved him from being carried under, and made his way to clear water on the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... mistaking him for a friend: 'I beg your pardon, I thought I knew you—but I'm glad I don't.' It was humor in the Southern orator, John Wise, to liken the pleasure of spending an evening with a Puritan girl to that of sitting on a block of ice in winter, cracking hailstones between ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... did well at first. He made himself popular with the mob, cracking poor homely jokes with them at which they laughed uproariously. He paid strict attention to business: made some excellent laws; wisely extended Roman citizenship among the subject peoples; undertook ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the fish was a matter of more interest, and it was striking to observe that the angel-fish and groupers were able to recognize their respective summons to food, for when the keeper tapped one portion of the bridge it gave a sharp cracking sound to which the angel-fish came flocking, while in calling the groupers and other fish, he hit another portion of the bridge, which reverberated in a different tone, and the larger fish dashed through the water ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... till there was not a roof intact in the place. The soldiers, of whom there were barely two thousand, were ready to mutiny. The citizens besought Duchambon to surrender. Provisions ran out. Looking down from the tops of the walls, cracking jokes with the English across the ditch, the French soldiers counted more than a thousand scaling ladders ready for hand-to-hand assault, and a host of barrels filled with mud behind which the English ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... from papa, you ass! and his jolly friends,' said the young lady, vigorously cracking a hunting-whip, which she habitually carried in her hand. 'I'm as good judge of horseflesh ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... she said at last, "that means something that one has not, and that is to come—is it so?" "Something that one never has, and that never comes," muttered the old man, wearily cracking the flints in two; "something that one possesses in one's sleep, and that is farther off each time that one awakes; and yet a thing that one sees always, sees even when one lies a dying they say—for ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... but that was not what happened. As soon as the drover returned, the cattle were rounded up in a hollow between two sand-hills. For a time the dust increased to such an extent that nothing could be seen; but by the shouting and whip-cracking it was evident that the men were ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... resemble brooms, and planted on pedestals of chalk, and a few other points, do not edify me. The French Opera, which I have heard to-night, disgusted me as much as ever; and the more for being followed by the Devin de Village, which shows that they can sing without cracking the drum of one's ear. The scenes and dances are delightful; the Italian comedy charming. Then I am in love with treillage and fountains, and will prove it at Strawberry. Chantilly is so exactly what it was when ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... sure I will give this youngster a slight injection. Pity you hadn't held him with the double arm-lock instead of cracking him over the head. Herr Kapitan Schwalbe won't want to be troubled with a ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... feel the cold, and made little cracking noises as if they were shivering. Jeanne lay shaking with cold; twice she got up to put more logs on the fire, and to pile her petticoats and dresses on the bed, but nothing seemed to make her any warmer. There were nervous twitchings in ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... of renovation, which is but the challenge of the infinitely precious principle of duration, one is still moved to say that the prime result of one's contemplative strolls in the dusky alleys of such a place is an ineffable sense of disrepair. Everything is cracking, peeling, fading, crumbling, rotting. No young Sienese eyes rest upon anything youthful; they open into a world battered and befouled with long use. Everything has passed its meridian except the brilliant facade of the cathedral, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... artist did not obey her command, she pressed the button herself. The cracking of her bones could be heard as she wrapped herself up ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... dear boy, keep your papers in order. I find a dissertation on 'The Commerce of Carthage' stuck in my large paper copy of 'Dibdin's Decameron,' and an 'Essay on the Metaphysics of Music' (pray, my dear fellow, beware of magazine scribbling) cracking the back ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... full-breasted pigeon, with his head thrown back, and was continually in the act of wriggling his long chin into his ample neckerchief. He could not ask you how do you do, or say in answer to that question, "I thank you, sare, very well," without stamping prettily with his foot, as if cracking a snail, and tossing his chin into the air as if he were going to balance a ladder upon it. Then, though his features were compressed into a small, monkeyfied compass, they were themselves, individually, upon a magnificent scale. It was as if there ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... wagonmaster the teams were doubled, two of the wagons being left in the valley till the others should reach the summit, when the teams were to be brought back. When they came to the long and hard pull, the drivers gave us a good sample of army wagoning, their yelling and cracking of whips keeping up a continual chorus, and at specially hard points the quartermaster and wagon-master joined in the music like the baying of a pack of hounds, while the horses seemed to be stimulated to almost ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Catherine, her voice cracking with rising hysteria. "A girl! . . . For eight generations the first-born has been a son. And the ninth is a girl! The daughter of a foreign dancing-woman! . . . God has indeed taken your punishment into His ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... brought all his weight to bear upon it. There was a dull, cracking sound and a sort of rasping. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... we pulled into Quito, she did what she'd done before—vanished. Sarah never believes me when I say how relieved I felt to be quit of her. But it was not to be. I got to my 'dobe house and managed a cracking fine dinner my cook had ready for me. She was mostly Spiggoty and half Indian, and her name was Paloma.— Now, Sarah, haven't I told you she was older'n a grandmother, and looked more like a buzzard than a dove? Why, I couldn't bear to eat with her around where I could look at ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... over and has cracked. If you get an opportunity of walking over a clay field during a dry summer, you will find similar but much larger cracks, some of which may be two or three inches wide, or even more. Sometimes the cracking is so bad that the roots of plants or of trees are torn by it, and even buildings, in some instances, have suffered through their foundations shrinking away. {11} We can now understand why some of our model bricks cracked. The cracks were caused ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... in the other arm, being thus encumbered—for it did not occur to him that he could throw away his bundle, he was so poor—he tripped and fell. His foot caught; it is unknown in what,—in a twisted tie, or perhaps in a crevice of the cracking earth. ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... care? You can't care! What is it to you that a drunken beast slinks back into hell again? Do you think you are Samaritan enough to follow him and try to drag him out by the ears?... A man whose very brain is already cracking with it all—a burnt-out thing with ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... that something had happened in his favor, and was quick to respond. With his first jump of relief the deacon suddenly revived, his hopes came fast again, his blood retingled, he gathered himself, and, cracking his lines, he shot forward, and three minutes later he had passed the squire as though he were hitched to the fence. For a quarter of a mile the squire made heroic efforts to recover his vanished prestige, but effort was useless, and finally concluding that he was practically ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... the strain and tension that I could feel the beating of my horse's heart beneath me. The suspense was finally broken by one or two shots in rapid succession, and as the sound died away, the voice of Juan Leal rang out distinctly: "Cuidado por el toro!" and the next moment there was a cracking of brush and a pale dun ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... coat, sallied forth into the street. His first destination was intended to be the Governor's mansion, and, as he walked along, certain thoughts concerning the Governor's daughter would keep whirling through his head, so that almost he forgot where he was, and took to smiling and cracking jokes to himself. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... he perceived that the roadway was now a crying mass of wagons, teams, and men. From the heaving tangle issued exhortations, commands, imprecations. Fear was sweeping it all along. The cracking whips bit and horses plunged and tugged. The white-topped wagons strained and stumbled in ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... silence as of death reigned in the mine; then there was a sharp cracking explosion, followed—or rather, prolonged—by another like thunder, and, while a flash of fire seemed to surround them, filling the air, firing their clothes, and scorching their limbs, the whole mine shook with a deep continuous roaring. The men knew that ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... the scrub and desert in front of the troops. The enemy's scouts, however, were never disclosed in the radii of the electric beams. In fact, the first notice we had that the dervishes were about to inspect our environment was the impetuous incoming of our friendlies from Jebel Surgham and the cracking of snipers' guns in the bush mingled with the buzzing of bullets overhead. A battalion rose quietly from the ground, for the troops slept clear of the hedge, and went forward a few paces to man the zereba. On learning what was actually ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... silence of our conflicting glances was unbroken for several seconds, and then words came uncontrollably from my mouth and I managed to snap that nerve-cracking tension. ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... monarch her master: that she had thoughts which his brains could never master, and was the better of the two; quite separate from my lord although tied to him, and bound as almost all people (save a very happy few) to work all her life alone. My lord sat in his chair, laughing his laugh, cracking his joke, his face flushing with wine—my lady in her place over against him—he never suspecting that his superior was there, in the calm resigned lady, cold of manner, with downcast eyes. When he was merry in his cups, he would ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... round and borrowed some pins, and pinned up my shirt tail as well as I could. I then went into the dance, and told the fiddler to play me a jig. Che, che, che, went the fiddle, when the banjo responded with a thrum, thrum, thrum, with the loud cracking of the bone player. I seized a little Sambo gal, and round and round the room we went, my money and my buttons going jingle, jingle, jingle, seemed to take a lively part with the music, and to my great satisfaction every eye seemed to be upon me, and I ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... But a cracking sounded in the direction of the rocks; and the most elevated of them, after rocking to and fro, rebounded to the bottom. In fact, if they were immovable on the side of the Barbarians—for it would have been necessary to urge them up an incline plane, and they were, ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... saying; "but all the same I don't think you are. After you've shown me, it's just like that egg Columbus stood up on end, after cracking the shell a bit—as easy as jumping off a log, once you know how. But now we're in here, I hope we find out the truth ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... strong. But with a heavy axe and a stout arm there is no need for that. I had begun this weapon," continued the youth, as if he were musing aloud rather than speaking to his companion, "with intent to try its metal on the head of the King; but I fear me it will be necessary to use it in cracking a viking's headpiece before ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... be found to have acquired a beautiful color, often even more brilliant than that of a companion fruit left on the vine. Enclosing the fruit while on the vine and about half grown in paper bags has been recommended, and it often results in deeper and more even coloring and prevents injury from cracking, but the fruit so ripened, while more beautiful, is not so well flavored as that ripened in the sun. But Americans are said to taste with their eyes, so that in this country, fruit of this beautiful color will often out-sell that which is of better flavor ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... there was only one left to laugh at all his companions. Two nights more passed, and he saw nothing; but on the third he came rushing from the garden to the other two before the house, in such an agitation that they declared—for it was their turn now—that the band of his helmet was cracking under his chin with the rising of his hair inside it. Running with him into that part of the garden which I have already described, they saw a score of creatures, to not one of which they could ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... night had ceased—the snapping of the leafless branches, the cracking of the earth, and the heaving of the rocks: the Spirits of the Frost had finished their work; and just as the grey forehead of dawn appeared beyond the cold hills, Antoine cried out gently: "Angelique . . . Ah, mon Capitaine . . . Jesu" . . ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... me while my hair was being dressed. I trembled to such a degree from head to foot, and the rustling of the curl-papers as the man twisted them in my hair almost drove me distracted, for it sounded like a forest cracking and rattling in a storm. After the performance, my limbs ached as if I had been beaten across them with an iron bar, and I could scarcely stand or support myself for exhaustion and fatigue. This, however, was only ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... we nearer the scarlet-runner state of existence, Mrs. Molly?" he asked me before I had finished tying the blouse, in the nicest voice in the world, fairly cracking with friendship and good humour and hateful things like that. Why I should have wanted him to get huffy over that letter is more than I can say. But I did; and ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... increases as we reach Rohri and Sukhar, where passengers are transferred by ferry across the Indus; the country seems a veritable furnace, cracking and blistering with heat. At Sukhar our train glides through some rich date-palms, the origin of which, legend says, were the date-stones thrown away by the soldiers of Alexander the Great. They seem to have taken root in congenial soil, anyway, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... junk-shops, pawnbrokers' cellars, and old women's garrets seemed all to have disgorged themselves here. A huge stack of calico comforters, their tufts gray with dust and cobwebs, lay on top of two old ploughs, in one corner: kegs of nails, boxes of soap, rolls of leather, harnesses stiff and cracking with age, piles of books, chairs, bedsteads, andirons, tubs, stone ware, crockery ware, carpets, files of old newspapers, casks, feather-beds, jars of druggists' medicines, old signboards, rakes, spades, school-desks,—in ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... them all to keep them busy the whole day, and they soon got to work at them, and such a popping and cracking began, as frightened all the cats and dogs about ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... couple of hot pitaties." And when he accepted the invitation without much alacrity, as if he had something else on his mind, she picked for him out of the steam two of the biggest potatoes, whose earth-coloured skins, cracking, showed a fair flouriness within; and she shook a little heap of salt, the only relish she had, on to the chipped white plate as she handed it to him, saying, "Sit you down be the fire there, and git ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... duel! He must have a fight with someone to prove his courage. It was a disgrace that he had no enemies, but he would try to make some when he returned to the Peninsula. Continuing these vagaries of his imagination, excited by the cracking detonations, he pretended an affair of honor. His adversary wounded him with the first shot and he fell. He still had his pistol in his hand; he must defend himself while stretched on the ground; and to the great scandal of his mother and of Mammy Antonia who thought ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Father Antonio that Seraphina had been carried away to her own apartments in a fainting condition. The excellent man was almost incoherent with distress and trouble of mind, and walked up and down, his big head drooping on his capacious chest, the joints of his entwined fingers cracking. I had met him in the gallery, as I was making my way back to Carlos' room in anxiety and fear, and we had stepped aside into a large saloon, seldom used, above the gateway. I shall never forget the restless, swift pacing of that burly figure, while, feeling utterly ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... was so pleased with Jane for cracking up the doctor, that she gave her five shillings; and, after that, used to talk to her a great deal more than to the cook, which judicious conduct presently set ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... before within the walls of Grosville Park. Nor had the lips of any English girl ever dealt there with a poetic diction so unchastened and unashamed. Lady Grosville might well feel as though the solid frame of things were melting and cracking round her. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... game. Some like one, some another. Soccer is a cracking good game, and can be played any time that the ground ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... late, and it is doubtful if Chester, thoroughly aroused as he was, would have released his victim anyhow. There was a sound of cracking glass, as Duval's head was forced against the window pane, and Chester, hearing it, released his hold and ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... broncos had come to an end, there was a two-mile race, for a first and a second prize, put up by the two ranch owners. In this race nine of the cowboys started, amid a wild yelling and the cracking of numerous pistols,—for the average cowboy is not enjoying himself unless he ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... feathers on the ground. Rome has robbed men of their souls and has fed hell with them to its surfeit. And now, in her turn, her grasping hands have withered at the wrists, her insatiable lips are cracking upon her loosening teeth, and the mistress of the world is the sport ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... substance for the slender red stem of dogwood, which is growing out of the soil they have made. The fallen leaves of the surrounding trees follow the pioneer work of the mosses. The rain and the cracking frosts are other agencies. By and by the organic will triumph over the inorganic, the cell over the crystal, the plant over the rock, and where now the fossils ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... together; secondly, organic substance of armour which grows into its proper shape at once for good and all, and can't be mended at all, if broken, (as of insects); thirdly, organic substance of skin, which stretches, as the creatures grows, by cracking, over a fresh skin which is supplied beneath it, as in bark of trees; fourthly, organic substance of skin cracked symmetrically into plates or scales which can increase all round their edges, and are connected by softer skin, below, as in fish and reptiles, (divided with exquisite lustre ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... explain the raps by a theory that the 'medium' produces them through cracking his, or her, knee-joints. It may thus be argued that Sister Anthoinette discovered this trick, or was taught the trick, and that the tradition of her performance, being widely circulated in Montalembert's quarto, and by ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... and Albert put on their skates and stretched out at full speed across the lake that spread its floor of dark glass within a stone's throw of the vicarage, he had a sense of never having lived before. The spaciousness of the house and the pleasant evenings spent cracking nuts and eating apples in front of the blazing fire-place were also revelations that filled his mind with many new thoughts. Why was his own home ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... they never would've got onto us if it hadn't been for your stupid tricks. Slugging a cop on the dome. Cracking up a car. You ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... mocking enemy. It hated them. They hated it. Its eyes were red with gloating over them. Their eyes were red and bloodshot with the fury of their battle. Its voice was hoarse with the roar of its laughing at them. Their voices were thick and their lips were cracking with the hot curses they hurled back ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... keep only two stablemen; one to take care of the horses and one to act as groom. I'm off. I've a cracking good hunter, if you'd like a leg up. We'll all ride out to Chevy Chase Sunday. By- by, ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... reading a book with a parasol open. Couldn't sink if you tried: so thick with salt. Because the weight of the water, no, the weight of the body in the water is equal to the weight of the what? Or is it the volume is equal to the weight? It's a law something like that. Vance in High school cracking his fingerjoints, teaching. The college curriculum. Cracking curriculum. What is weight really when you say the weight? Thirtytwo feet per second per second. Law of falling bodies: per second per second. They all fall to the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... street nor the number of that Paris appartement. We were deep in our plans for mountaineering, and except that I noted the wheezy little lift of Mrs. Upgrove's letter, I remember literally nothing about that excursion but the familiar odour of the Paris asphalt, the snapping and cracking of the Gallic horsewhip, and the smoke of my own cigarette which blew into my eyes as I threw it away on ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... at the rug. Too well he realized that Cappy had the whip hand and was fully capable of cracking the whip; ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... strings, it is fascinating. The Scherzo is again of the Beethoven order in its contagious comicality. The piano has the lion's share of it at first, but toward the last the other instruments leave off embroidery and take to cracking jokes for themselves. The Andante is a genuinely fine piece of work. It ranges from melting tenderness to impassioned rage and a purified nobility. The piano part is highly elaborated, but the other instruments have a scholarly, a vocal, individuality. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... around in the dark. They could hear the sounds of several horses feeding and the barking of the dogs. Then, quite unexpectedly, came the cracking of a board, a yell of alarm from Nat ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... and again; but at last it stood a proud and hideous fact, like a gray prison, towering above the bare, undecorated brick stores and the frame houses on the prairie around it, new, raw, and cheap, from the tin statue on the dome to the stucco round its base already cracking with the sun. Piles of lumber and scaffolding and the lime beds the builders had left still lay on the unsodded square, and the bursts of wind drove the shavings across it, as they had done since the first day of building, when the Hon. Horatio Macon, who had worked for the appropriation, ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... absolutely around you. If you have that power of eye-contrio which is so necessary to the full enjoyment of scenery, you will see nothing but the water. You will certainly hear nothing else; and the sound, I beg you to remember, is not an ear-cracking, agonizing crash and clang of noises, but is melodious and soft withal, though loud as thunder. It fills your ears, and, as it were, envelops them, but at the same time you can speak to your neighbor without ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... he ran around the rough rim, and I had to perform with the agility of a contortionist to avoid dead snags of trees and green branches. When I got to the point from which I had calculated George had done his shooting I found no one. My yells brought no answers. But I heard a horse cracking the rocks behind me. Then up from far below rang the sharp spangs of rifles in quick action. Nielsen and Edd were shooting. I counted seven shots. How the echoes rang from wall to wall, to die hollow and faint in the ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... earth seems to reel and the mountains to shake, and the rivers are lashed into foam and fury. Then the poet sees the Maruts approaching with golden helmets, with spotted skins on their shoulders, brandishing golden spears, whirling their axes, shooting fiery arrows, and cracking their whips amid thunder and lightning. They are the comrades of Indra, sometimes, like Indra, the sons of Dyaus or the sky, but also the sons of another terrible god, called Rudra, or the Howler, a ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... of a hand which was at once given him, he sometimes caught it without asking leave, he kissed it once and again. I, the while, alone in a corner, avoided a sight which irritated me; stifling my sighs, cracking my fingers with grasping my wrists, plunged in melancholy, covered with a cold sweat, I could neither ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... terrified to notice the direction in which he had drifted—even if he had possessed the ordinary knowledge of a backwoodsman, which he did not. He was helpless. In his bewildered state, seeing a squirrel cracking a nut on the branch of a hollow tree near him, he made a half-frenzied dart at the frightened animal, which ran away. But the same association of ideas in his torpid and confused brain impelled him ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... bade farewell to all, and the little crowd cheered lustily against the whine of the blizzard as, with cracking whip and hoarse shouts, they were wrapped in the cloudy winding ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... fairies often go hunting, and faint sounds of fairy horns, the baying of fairy hounds, and the cracking of fairy whips are supposed to be heard on these occasions, while the flight of the hunters is said to resemble in sound ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... were as bright and tidy as possible, then got into a light suit and went down to the post house. A quarter of an hour later a cloud of dust along the road betokened the approach of the Dak Gharry, and two or three minutes later it dashed up at full gallop amid a loud and continuous cracking of the driver's whip. The wiry little horses were drawn ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... double bridle, should be sewed to the bridle; it is safer for leading, and it is only the curb bit which you wish to have the power of changing. The reins should be thin and supple, they will last the longer for it; for reins break from being stiff and cracking, and suppleness of reins is essential ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... not be generally known in the United States, but while the Southern and some of the Northern newspapers are making a target of Miss Wells, the young colored woman who started this English movement, and cracking their jokes at the expense of Miss Florence Balgarnie, who, as honorable secretary, conducts the committee's correspondence, the strongest sort of sentiment is really at the back of the movement. Here we have crystallized ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... their fatigue was, it had not affected the appetite of these vigorous walkers. On the contrary, the food, which had to last for two more days, was very welcome. The damp had not reached the biscuits, and for several minutes it could be heard cracking under the solid teeth of Dick Sand and his companions. Between Hercules's jaws it was like grain under the miller's grindstone. It did not ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... of the rifle smashing up. It struck the man under the chin and there was a sharp cracking sound as his jawbone snapped. For a fraction of a second there was an expression of stupefied amazement on his face then his eyes glazed and he slumped to the ground with his ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... of egg and ink in a bottle, so that the composition may be well shaken up when required for use. Apply to the kid with a piece of sponge and rub dry. The best thing to rub dry with is the palm of the hand. When the kid shows symptoms of cracking, rub in a few drops of sweet oil. The soles and heels should be ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... PRESSURE.—There was a remarkable occurrence at the mills of the Combined Locks Paper Company at Combined Locks, Wis., on Saturday. From some unknown cause there was an upheaval of rock upon which the mills are located, throwing the mill walls out of place, cracking a great wall of stone and cement twenty feet thick and making a saddle-back several hundred feet long and six inches high in the bed rock beneath the mill. An artesian well two hundred feet away on the bluff has dried up. The damage to the ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... and I heard Jack's voice calling for me to come out. The cover-bows were bent far over, and the canvas pressed in on the side to the southwest till it seemed as if it must burst. The front end of the top had gone out and was cracking in the wind. I crept forward, and us I did so I felt the wagon rise up on the windward side and bump back on the ground. I concluded we were doomed to u wreck, and called to Ollie to get out as fast us he could. I supposed a hard ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... twenty-five years old and with brains enough—supposedly—to keep out of the feeble-minded class, it strikes me you indulge in some damned poor pastimes," went on dad disagreeably. "Cracking champagne-bottles in front of the Cliff House—on a Sunday at that—may be diverting to the bystanders, but it can hardly be called dignified, and I fail to see how it is going to fit a man for ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... vindicated, took so firm a hold of his mind that he felt chilled through and through. Hopeless of obtaining more news, he remounted, and traversed the woods afresh, calling Pierre with all his might, whistling, cracking his whip, and snapping the branches that the whole forest might reecho with the noise of his coming; then he listened for an answering voice, but he heard no sound save the cowbells scattered through the glades, and the wild cries of the swine ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... time, and by constant scraping, the clay wall would eventually have been pulled down; but before that event came to pass, a loud flapping and fluttering, and cracking and clattering, was heard among the tops of the trees; and in an instant afterwards the broad, shadowy wings of the old male hornbill were swashing about the ears of the four-footed robber, where the long cutlass-like beak, armed at its edges, at once interrupted ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... artificial drainage against the accumulation of water under the concrete. Tile drains are better and cheaper than excessively deep foundations. The thorough tamping of the sub-base is essential to avoid settling and subsequent cracking of the concrete slab. This is a part of sidewalk work which ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... mistaken source of the Sublime, which seems to have been sometimes resorted to, both in poems and pictures; namely, in the sympathy excited by excruciating bodily suffering. Suppose a man on the rack to be placed before us,—perhaps some miserable victim of the Inquisition; the cracking of his joints is made frightfully audible; his calamitous "Ah!" goes to our marrow; then the cruel precision of the mechanical familiar, as he lays bare to the sight his whole anatomy of horrors. ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... others Jogpas. When they saw us approaching they generally bolted, driving their sheep or yaks in front of them. Nevertheless, we came upon two Tibetan women, very dirty, and their faces smeared with black ointment to prevent the skin from cracking in the high wind. They were dressed in long sheepskin garments, worn out and filthy, and their coiffures were so unwashed that they emitted a sickening odour. I ordered them not to come too near us, for although these females ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... were several other speakers, but no words penetrated to his brain. He felt as if he must stifle. He felt the globe of earth cracking, breaking in two under his feet, and for the first time in his life he was acutely aware of the division of humanity. All through his career he had taken his middle-class position for granted; he tacitly agreed that there were employees and employers; but in his own case his camaraderie ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... summit, a hundred yards away, and made for it. We rushed up the stairs to the top of this scaffolding, and stood there, above the vast outlying world, with hair flying and ruddy blankets waving and cracking in the fierce breeze. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 in the tower struck, the jar caused the spire to lean in the opposite direction. The boys now got their nuts, and then put in more, that the operation might be repeated, for they ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... aloft the signal's streaming, Hark! the farewell gun is fired; Women screeching, tars blaspheming, Tell us that our time's expired. Here's a rascal Come to task all, Prying from the custom-house; Trunks unpacking, Cases cracking, Not a corner for a mouse 'Scapes unsearched amid the racket, Ere we sail ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... led off, another put in its place, and the postilions were cracking their whips, when out of the darkness a knot of mounted men rode into the lamplight. There were at least a dozen of them, and at their head rode a man who at the sight ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... filled his pipe and lit it, and in doing so his eyes fell upon the little wallet from which she had taken her tweezers. He picked it up and quickly shouted to her; but the dogs were barking with furious delight, she was cracking her whip, and she had ridden too far for her to hear him through the noise. It would have been sheer folly to have run after her; so, with a shrug of his shoulders, Stafford put the little wallet in his pocket, waded the stream and, after a moment or two of consideration, made for the inn ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... covered with a strip of coarsely woven crash lined with several pieces of paper. This is glued to the back to make it hard and solid and to prevent it from cracking, or "breaking," ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... ringmaster, Briggs by name, was cracking his whip in the middle of the ring, mighty lord of all he surveyed, although, to his chagrin, there was no clown present to receive the attention. In those good old days the circus carried but one clown. He was the most overworked man in the ring, but he had the satisfaction of knowing that he ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... ground strokes should be hit with a short, snap of the wrist—as though you were cracking a whip. There is no time and no reason to employ ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... slope up from the bank of the river are dented and broken as if some giant in the past had smashed them with his hammer, cracking some and punching deep holes in others. It was in one of these holes, or caves, that ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... the brick wall, which was none too thick. Besides this, a small pane of the window was open; so that the crunching of the wheels as they turned on the freshly-laid metalling, the encouragements of the drivers to their horses, and the cracking of the whips, could be distinctly heard. Even the steps of the passers-by were audible, and a word here and there ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... reflected Maggie. It had ended in that. A mound of earth, cracking a little, and sunken. She lay there, her nervous fingers motionless and her stammer silent. And could there be a more eloquent monument of what she was...? Then she remembered herself, and signed herself with the ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... by the newly spilt blood of strong men, swarm so thickly that another torture is added. Half the nationalities of Europe lie groaning together, each calling in his native tongue for water, or for help to loosen a bandage which in the shimmering heat has become unbearable. And as the rifle cracking rises to the storm it always does every few hours, more men will be brought in and laid on that gruesome operating table. The very passageways have been already invaded by men lying on long chairs, because there are no more beds. Even they are happy; they have crept to a place where they can gasp ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... away to talk with some friends Estelle told "the rest" that was "nothing." The championship secure, Joe had paid all Terry's bills, had supported Terry and his wife for a year, had relapsed into old habits and "pulled off a job" of safe-cracking because, the prize-fighting happening to pay poorly, he would have had a default on the payments for a month or so. He was caught, did a year on the Island before his "pull" could get him out. And all the time he was in the "pen" he so arranged it with his friends ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... with the house rocking frightfully, now came from outside the peal as of a thousand thunders, accompanied by the clang of bell, the crash of falling walls, the sharp cracking and splitting of woodwork, and the yelling and shrieking of people ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... discharge their seeds. Thus, a certain fungus has the property of ejecting its seeds with great force and rapidity, and with a loud cracking noise, and yet it is no bigger than a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... which would certainly have been put out by arrows had I not thought of my spectacles. These I fastened as strongly as I could upon my nose, and, thus protected, I went boldly on, while the arrows struck my glasses without even cracking them. ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... over the landscape. A rumbling, cracking noise is heard among the mountains. Shadows of clouds sweep across the scene. Ruodi, the fisherman, comes out of his cottage. Werni, the huntsman, descends from the rocks. Kuoni, the shepherd, enters, with a milkpail on his shoulders, followed by ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... high revel. But when the winter came, how cold must he have been, for all the wood with its stifling smoke that he burned in his crude stone hall. And Madame the Countess, his wife, and her train of highborn young women—imagine the cracking chilblains on the hands of the ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... and loins strained almost to cracking, the men worked cheerfully. Their General had ridden forward with his staff: they knew that close by the head of the pass their camp was already being marked out for them, and before sleeping they would be ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... than to enjoy a nearer view of such a conflagration. My wish was destined to be fulfilled today, as my road lay between a burning forest and a burning rost. {40} The intervening space was not, at the most, more than fifty paces broad, and was completely enveloped in smoke. I could hear the cracking of the fire, and through the dense vapour perceive thick, forked columns of flame shoot upwards towards the sky, while now and then loud reports, like those of a cannon, announced the fall of the large trees. On seeing my guide enter this fiery gulf, I was, I must confess, rather frightened; but ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... goaded by the tongue-lashings of their wives, these enervated drudges were usually out of sorts. Bursts of ill temper, in the form of invective, hair-pulling, ear-pulling, pinching, caning, "nape-cracking," or "chin-smashing," were part of the routine, and very often I was the scapegoat for the sins of other boys. When a pupil deserved punishment and the schoolmaster could not afford to inflict it because the culprit happened to be the pet of a well-to-do family, the teacher's anger was almost sure ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... earthen jar, with one onion chopped, and one quart of potatoes peeled and sliced; the vegetables and seasoning will cost about five cents; add one pint of water, put on the cover of the jar, and cement it in place with a paste of flour and water, which you must grease a little to prevent cracking; then put the jar into a moderately hot oven, and bake it about four hours. With the addition of bread and butter it makes a hearty meal, ...
— Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six • Juliet Corson
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