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More "Hiss" Quotes from Famous Books



... the hurricane-deck was just over her head, and its great white cone seemed to hiss as it poured its dazzling flood of fictitious noonday upon the shelving river bank and the sleeping hamlet beyond. The furnace doors were open, and the red glare of the fires quickened the darkness under the beam of the electric into ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... that comes between us,' cried Athletes, as he threw His weed full fifty paces in the stream of Camus blue: The burning weed encountered the cold river with the hiss Which ensues when fire and water, wranglers old, are forced ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling

... the wild eyes fastened themselves upon her with a look of yearning anguish, and then Hagar answered slowly, "Tell you what you've often wished to know—my secret!" the last word dropping from her lips more like a warning hiss than like a human sound. It was long since Maggie had teased for the secret, so absorbed had she been in other matters, but now that there was a prospect of knowing it her curiosity was reawakened, and while her eyes glistened with expectation, she said, "Yes, tell it to ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... dip under, And the winds and the waves at length Girt up their strength, And the depths were laid bare, And heaven flashed fire and volleyed thunder Through the rain-choked air, And sea and sky seemed to kiss In the horror and the hiss Of ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... and broadening as they passed, and wrinkling and widening, were smoothed out again with a shake, and vanished. The foam flew up, churned by the tediously thudding wheels; white as milk, with a faint hiss it broke up into serpentine eddies, and then melted together again and vanished too, swallowed up ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... amended Bohannan, irritably, "I'm not wholly convinced this is the correct procedure." He spoke in low tones, covered by the purring exhaust of the launch and by the hiss of swiftly cloven waters. "It looks like unnecessary complication, to ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... the Chateau Margaux cellars the day after they had been filled, and heard, deep down, 'perhaps eight feet down in the juice, a seething, gushing sound, as if currents and eddies were beginning to flow, in obedience to the influence of the working spirit; and now and then a hiss and a low bubbling throb, as though of a pot about to boil.' In a little while, it would have been impossible to breathe an atmosphere thus saturated with carbonic acid gas; and the superintendents can only watch the process of nature by listening outside ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various

... clear as it is now. I reflected that as the car was ever rising into a rarer atmosphere, my only hope of salvation lay in calling for help, and that as the paralysis was gaining on my whole body, not a moment was to be lost. I shouted with all my strength; but beyond a sort of hiss, not a sound escaped my lips. The profound silence of the car now struck me in a new light. Had Gazen and Miss Carmichael not committed the same blunder, and suffered a like fate? Perhaps even Carmichael himself ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... was dark with a swither of foam and spray blown off the waves in the thickness of a fog. The heavy bows of the smack beat into the seas with a thud and a hiss—the thud of a steam-hammer, the hiss of molten iron plunged into water; the waves raced exultingly up to the bows from windward, and roared angrily away in a spume of foam from the ship's keel to lee; and the thrumming and screaming of the storm in the rigging exceeded ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... as if menacing and preparing itself to spring upon the Neapolitan—Glaucus caught quickly at one of the half-burned logs upon the hearth—and, as if enraged at the action, the snake came forth from its shelter, and with a loud hiss raised itself on end till its height nearly approached that ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... red hot, Caleb drew it out of the coals, and plunged it into the cold cider, which immediately began to bubble and hiss. Then he poured the sparkling liquid into mugs for the thirsty teamsters to drink; and while he was still holding the pitcher high in air, that the cider might come down with a good "bead," the door slowly opened, and in glided Willy, in his ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May

... our feet, hearing an appalling hiss through the open trap-door, a hiss like the first ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... thou! who never yet of human wrong Left the unbalanced scale—great Nem'esis! Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss, And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss For that unnatural retribution—just, Had it but been from hands less near—in this, Thy former realm, I call thee from ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... whom it fell, that would have justified a cry of shame from every manly bosom, and which at once changed into shrill wrath the supplicatory tones with which he had been hitherto addressed. Down the street he hurried and down the street followed the insulted fair. "Hiss—hiss—no gentleman, no gentleman! Aha-skulk off—do—low blaggurd!" shrieked Polly. From their counters shop-folks rushed to their doors. Stray dogs, excited by the clamour, ran wildly after the fugitive man, yelping "in madding ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... there is another, her tears would be shed For him who lays far in an ocean bed; In hours that it pains me to think of now, She has twin'd these locks and kiss'd this brow— In this hair she has wreathed shall the sea-snake hiss? The brow she has press'd shall the cold wave kiss? For the sake of that bright one that wails for me, Bury me not in the deep, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... name, Not a plausible gloss, or significant note, Not a word in the scandalous circles afloat, Of a beam in the eye, or diminutive mote, But vortex-like that tube of tin Sucked the censorious particle in; And, truth to tell, for as willing an organ As ever listened to serpent's hiss, Nor took the viperous sound amiss, On the snaky ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... Place de la Concorde, was distributed thence over certain sections of the city agreed upon beforehand. Nothing that could be called a disturbance took place during the march; and though there was a hiss now and then and murmurings of discontent, yet the most noteworthy mutterings were directed against the defunct Empire. Indeed, I found everywhere that the national misfortunes were laid at Napoleon's door—he, by this time, having become a ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... time, the play is the play of the world. What a spectacle it is! What kingly pomp, what processions file past, what cities burn to heaven, what crowds of captives are dragged at the chariot-wheels of conquerors! I hiss, or cry "Bravo," when the great actors come on the shaking stage. I am a Roman emperor when I look at a Roman coin. I lift Homer, and I shout with Achilles in the trenches. The silence of the unpeopled Syrian plains, the out-comings and in-goings of the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... disperse our apprehensions, and awaken us from that panick which the reader must necessarily feel, at the first transient view of this dreadful description. These serpents, says the original, are "haud pugnaces," of no fighting race; they will threaten, indeed, and hiss, and terrify the weak, and timorous, and thoughtless, but have no real courage or strength. So that the mischief done by them, their ravages, devastations, and robberies, must be only the consequences of cowardice in the sufferers, who are harassed and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... to me from my mother. No, you will not leave me alone amid all the scandals that are creeping around me. It is awful—if you only knew! At the club, at the play, wherever I go I seem to see the little viper's head of the Baroness Hemerlingue, I hear the echo of her hiss, I feel the venom of her bite. Everywhere mocking looks, conversation stopped when I appear, lying smiles, or kindness mixed with a little pity. And then the deserters, and the people who keep out of the way as at the approach ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... unwholesome; the natural dead flat is often broken by huge hills of cinders and spoil from the mines; the few trees are stunted and blasted; no birds are to be seen, except a few smoky sparrows; and for miles on miles a black waste spreads around, where furnaces continually smoke, steam-engines thud and hiss, and long chains clank, while blind gin-horses walk their doleful round. From time to time you pass a cluster of deserted roofless cottages of dingiest brick, half-swallowed up in sinking pits or inclining to every point of the compass, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... can form a very fair estimate of the lady's features (singularly plain ones) as the sedan swings by. Towards midday business is suspended for a while, and the alleys of the bazaar empty as if by magic. For nearly a whole hour silence, unbroken save by the snarling of some pariah dog, the hiss of the samovar, and gurgle of the kalyan, falls over the place, till 2 p.m., when the noise recommences as suddenly as it ceased, and ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... With a sharp hiss the compressed gas rushed from the containing cylinder into the deflated balloon. The silken sides puffed out, losing their wrinkles. The ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis

... who could make Michael should make thee. O, foolish Man, meting things low and high By self, that accidental quantity! With this conceit, Philosophy stalks frail As peacock staggering underneath his tail. Who judge of Plays from their own penny gaff, At God's great theatre will hiss and laugh; For what's a Saint to them Brought up in modern virtues brummagem? With garments grimed and lamps gone all to snuff, And counting others for like Virgins queer, To list those others cry, 'Our Bridegroom's near!' Meaning their God, is surely quite enough ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore

... but a certain tremor passed over him on finding himself in this subterranean lurking-place of men who were as beasts. He stood a full minute unseen. Then he heard the woman say in a low hiss, "Cat's mee-e-et!" and he knew he had been observed. The men turned and looked at him, not suddenly, or all at once, but furtively, cautiously, slowly. The banker crouched at the table with an astonished face and tried to smuggle the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... touched earth, a low hiss warned him he was trespassing, and clutching Terry's collar, he stood rigid, while the whip-like shadow of death writhed across a strip of moonlight—and disappeared. There was life,—of a sort, in Chitor. So Roy trod warily as he passed from room ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... glimpse a pair of greenish eyes in silent motion, and, giving a low hiss of warning to his nephews, that same sound serving to check further progress on the part of the wild beast, his short rifle came to a level, then ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw: When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl— Then nightly sings the staring owl Tuwhoo! Tuwhit! Tuwhoo! A merry note! While greasy Joan ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... instant there was fierce battle between the old forces and the new. Then, with his eyes upon his father, resuming that hiss that is proper only to ostlers, he ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... Kinton and bent to hiss and cluck into the latter's ear in what he presumably considered an undertone. The Terran laboriously spelled out the message inscribed on the limp, satiny paper held before his eyes. Then he rose and took one step ...
— Exile • Horace Brown Fyfe

... nest is no bigger than half an apricot, came and chirped in the plane-tree tops; the Scops made a habit of uttering his monotonous, piping note here, of an evening; the bird of Pallas Athene, the Owl, came hurrying along to hoot and hiss. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... minds." And Caesar's word was just. If men, bedeviled under culture's star, Have left Louvain a void where flames still hiss, Speared babes, and stamped the world's own Rose to dust, God grant that Belgium's soul may dwell afar Forever, from ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... hiss, the serpent flapped wildly toward the water, dragging his victim with him, and with a terrific splash and a resounding slap of the great tail on the moist sand, both disappeared in ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon

... and squarely, and the head went down with an angry hiss. Then Tom stepped upon it, but the snake squirmed loose and uttered ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield

... beautiful was Peppino's attitude towards it all. That large hearted man trusted them both, and his trust was perfectly justified. Georgie was in and out of the house all day, chiefly in; and not only did scandal never rear its hissing head, but it positively had not a head to hiss with, or a foot to stand on. On his side again Georgie had never said that he was in love with her (nor would it have been true if he had), but by his complete silence on the subject coupled with his constancy he seemed to admit the truth of this bloodless idyll. They talked and ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... child is a rambitious niggar. Fust, Massa, I puts in a lump ob butter bout size ob peace ob chalk, and a glass ob water, and den prinkle in flour to make it look like milk, den put him on fire, and when he hiss, stir him wid spoon to make him hush; den I adds inion, dat is fust biled to take off de trong taste, eetle made mustard, and a pinch ob most elegant ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... trunk-maker in the playhouse; for, whenever the person who is possessed of it doth what is right, no ravished or friendly spectator is so eager or so loud in his applause: on the contrary, when he doth wrong, no critic is so apt to hiss and ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... I see the love that I lost long syne, I touch the hope that I may not see, And all that I did o' hidden shame, Like little snakes they hiss at me. ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling

... sandbank is our only goal, The masts are swaying as with terror, And quivering does the vessel roll. The mad wind frolics with the billows, Now smooths them low, now lashes high. Now they are storming up like lions, And now like serpents sleek they lie; And wave on wave is ever pressing, They hiss, they whisper, soft of tone. Alack! was that the vessel splitting? Are sail and mast and rudder gone? Here, screams of fright, there, silent weeping, The bravest feels his courage fail. What stead ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty by thirty feet, from which came the sibilant hiss of puff adders, and a strong, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... since I had an adventure with one of these reptiles which threatened to be my last. I was quietly strolling in the forest and had with me neither weapon nor stick. My thoughts were far away but a rustling sound and a loud hiss brought them quickly back and arrested my steps. A large, venomous snake was right in front of me! Erect, with open mouth and protruding tongue, the embodiment of hatred, it was there, prompt for an assault. My case was desperate and only a miracle of sang-froid could save me. Fixing my ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... plains. By keeping to windward, she was able to approach very near these phenomenal objects; the ground was lukewarm in a few places, and she could hold her hand for several minutes at a time over the cracks whence the vapour escaped. No water was visible. The roar and hiss of the steam, combined with the violence of the wind, made a noise so deafening that she was glad to quit the scene, and feel a safer soil beneath her feet. It seemed to her excited fancy as if the entire mountain were converted into a ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous

... against wind and weather, bidding defiance to the elements; the man who thinks he can solve the problem is named Robert Fulton. The ship begins its passage, but suddenly it stops. The crowd begins to laugh and whistle and hiss—the very father of the man ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... instant he was carried into a hell of waters where, had it not been for his lifebelt and the plank, he must have been beaten down and have perished. As it was, now he was driven into the depths, and now he emerged upon their surface to hear their seething hiss around him, and above it all a continuous boom as of great guns—the ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... at once. Your observations are as true as they are severe. When we would harangue geese, we must condescend to hiss; but still, my dear Barnstaple, though you have fully proved to me that in a fashionable novel all plot is unnecessary, don't you think there ought to be a catastrophe, or sort of a kind of an end to the work, or the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... a loss which must be sold at a given moment Permissible neither to applaud nor to hiss Respectful without servility She awaits your replies without interruption These liars in surplice, in black cassock, or in purple Wish you had the generosity to show, now and again, less wit You know, madame, that he generally gets ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger

... recovered my senses I saw my companion an inanimate mass beside me, life utterly extinct. While I was bending over his corpse in grief and horror, I heard close at hand a strange sound between a snort and a hiss; and turning instinctively to the quarter from which it came, I saw emerging from a dark fissure in the rock a vast and terrible head, with open jaws and dull, ghastly, hungry eyes—the head of a monstrous reptile resembling that of the crocodile or alligator, but infinitely larger ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... the first thing he heard on entering the stage-door was a hiss. The story goes that the poor author was dreadfully frightened; and that in answer to a hurried question, Colman exclaimed, "Psha! Doctor, don't be afraid of a squib, when we have been sitting these two hours ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... fire-drums beat, the alarm-bells clanged, and ceased not; all Berlin struggling there, all night, in vain. Such volumes of smoke: "the heavens were black as if you had hung them with mortcloth:" such roaring cataracts of flame, "you could have picked up a copper doit at the distance of 800 yards."—"Hiss-s-s!" what hissing far aloft is that? That is the incomparable big Bells melting. There they vanish, their fine tones never to be tried more, and ooze through the red-hot ruin, "Hush-sh-sht!" the last sound heard from them. And the stem for holding that immense Crown-royal,—it ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... moment, that somewhere or other in the hall, there rises a faint, almost whispered, hiss. Slight as it is, it falls with startling effect upon the dead silence which reigns. Then, like the first whisper of a storm, it suddenly grows and swells and rushes, angrily and witheringly, about the head of the wretched Oliver. Then as suddenly ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... to pieces. The snakes, that served them instead of hair, seemed likewise to be asleep; although, now and then, one would writhe, and lift its head, and thrust out its forked tongue, emitting a drowsy hiss, and then let itself ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... cast my eyes round the room, old memories seemed to awaken in me. The fire, after making the green wood hiss, sent a flame up the chimney, and the whole room was illumined with a bright though unsteady light, which gave all the objects a weird, ambiguous appearance. Blaireau rose, turned his back to the fire and sat down between my legs, as if he thought that something strange ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... contracted with pain. From beneath the bandage on his forehead a mere thread of blood trickled down over his temples; at the corners of his mouth stood little beads of pale red foam, and from his throat issued a faint broken hiss, like the sound of a sick man gargling. About him attentions, questions, feverish glances multiplied. The mare from time to time shook her head and neighed in the direction of the houses. An atmosphere as of an impending hurricane hung over ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... of our night animals are guttural and unpleasing. The 'possum has a throaty half-stifled squeak, the native cat a deep chest-note ending with a hiss and easily ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... apostle Peter having denied Him with a curse, swearing that he never knew Him; the chief priests having found Him guilty of blasphemy; the Council having condemned him to death; and when there was a hiss going up to heaven over all Jerusalem, Joseph went right against the current, right against the influence of all his friends, and begged the body ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody

... of seats together and strapped themselves in. With a roar and a hiss the Overshoot blasted away from the landing platform, and almost immediately came to rest on ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg

... low, "See the bubbles of light, how they sparkle and dance—I shall live, I shall live!" And his words scarcely died in our ears before, crash upon crash, came the fall of the age-long trees in the forest, and nearer, all near us, through the blazing grasses, the hiss of the serpents, the scream of the birds, and the bellow and tramp of the herds plunging wild through the billowy red of ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... Then he laid the thin blade against the stone upon the table, kissing it gently along its full length of edge. The man's breath seemed to hiss softly as the steel slipped across the stone; and as it turned deftly and came back, the hiss changed to a blissful, watery gurgling, thin and long drawn in. A prickling ran across Scanlon's scalp; he had the sensation of warm flesh being cleverly and ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... and listening into the darkness, but heard only the welter of the water under the black ledges below, and its scornful hiss as it ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... And enter'd, and were lost behind the walls. "So," thought Geraint, "I have track'd him to his earth." And down the long street riding wearily, Found every hostel full, and everywhere Was hammer laid to hoof, and the hot hiss And bustling whistle of the youth who scour'd His master's armor; and of such a one He ask'd, "What means the tumult in the town?" Who told him, scouring still, "The sparrow-hawk!" Then riding close behind an ancient ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... gallery gods and kitchen angels from one end of this broad land to the other, but never, sir, never in all my career have I been obliged to play such a diabolical part as I am playing here, and, dammit, sir, I am denied even the tribute of a healthy hiss. This is—" ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... pussy-cats heard this, And they began to hiss, And stretch their claws, And raise their paws; "Me-ow," they said, "me-ow, me-o You'll burn to death, if you ...
— CAW! CAW! - The Chronicle of Crows, A Tale of the Spring-time • RM

... if I have dreamed aright, 'Twas a loud one and a long, as ever thundered through! Right stiffly, past a doubt, the Dragon fought it out, And his Angels, each and all, did for Tophet their devoir— There was creak of iron wings, and whirl of scorpion stings, Hiss of bifid tongues, and the Pit in full uproar! But, naught thereof enscrolled, in one brief line 'tis told (Calm as dew the Apocalyptic Pen), That on the Infinite Shore their place was found no more. God send the like ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... latches free, yanked the thing open, reversed it in air—and out fell a coiled rope that curved itself like a snake—a three-headed snake; the triple grappling iron at its end standing up as though to hiss. ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... five minutes I paced anxiously to and fro along the weather side of the poop, with my ears wide open for any sudden outcry that might confirm the awful suspicion of fire having broken out below; but I heard nothing save the continuous hiss and roar of the sea under the lee bow and along the bends, the heavy slop of water in over the rail with every lee roll of the ship, and the thunder and piping of the wind aloft, and I was beginning to hope that it was no ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... his way— And alas! and alack! He tripped on the track And then with a terrible, sudden ker-thwack! Triangular Tommy sprawled flat on his back— And the train came along with a crash, and a crack, A din, and a clatter, a clang, and a clack, A toot, and a boom, and a roar, and a hiss, And chopped him up all into pieces like this— If you cut out papers just like them, why, then, If you try, you can put ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells

... to know some days before he was due that he was coming, for it flapped about the lake and made cries. It would leave the water and stalk through the house walking wide in the legs. It would neither notice nor brook any other man, but rather seemed jealous, and would hiss and flap away the rest of the company. If the bishop slept or watched, the swan would keep dogs and other animals at bay. With true spiritual instinct it would peck hard at the calves of chaplains. If the bishop was ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... have felt it! To destroy—to destroy! To leave behind me ashes, ashes. [The flame flashes up. Rage! Rage on! Or art thou passion, art thou desire? Ah! terrible kiss! [The flame flashes up. Now hear it, hear it! A hiss as from mighty serpents, The dry, licking, wicked tongues! Wouldst thou sting the earth to death? What a career! To clasp and devour and kill! To dance over the world as a frenzied dancer With whirling skirts ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips

... Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death! The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the spirits .. were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and turned, and shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew; when, waving his free hand to them, they all dispersed; and Ahab retired within his ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... ears from a dozen mountain-slopes round about us, as we put our shoulders to the wheel, and gradually approach the summit. Tortoises are occasionally surprised basking in the sunbeams in the middle of the road; when molested they hiss quite audibly in protest, but if passed peacefully by they are seen shuffling off into the bushes, as though thankful to escape. Unhappy oxen are toiling patiently upward, literally inch by inch, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... up the furnace with dry wood, then stoked it full of coal. After an hour and a half his heart thrilled with mingled fear and exultation at sight of the steam, first white, then blue and thin, that began to hiss from the leaks in ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... the Evil gain upon me as the weary moments glide, Till I hiss, a jewelled serpent, fit companion, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... heads, and were looking past him into some distance of their own. One of them uttered a little hiss, wagged its tail, turned as if answering to a rudder, and swam away. The other followed. Their white bodies, their stately necks, passed out of his sight, and he went toward ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the result of nothing gained, Rushing River was about to retire from the spot as wise as he went, when his companion uttered the slightest possible hiss. He had heard a sound. Next instant the chief heard it, and smiled grimly. We may remark here in passing that the Blackfoot chief was eccentric in many ways. He prided himself on his contempt for the red man's love for paint and feathers, and invariably ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne

... of light flashed from the cabins across the way. Legrand gave vent to a hiss of warning and moved off. I could see his shadow for a moment, and then it was swallowed in the blackness. He was waiting and watching outside the cabin. The light streamed out in a fan towards us, and revealed, in the opening of a ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... culprit, and allot to him his due share of blame; but the number of these is still so limited that their judgment has little weight; and the hostile conductor—in presence of the public who would pitilessly hiss a vocal accident of a good singer—reigns, with all the calm of a bad conscience, in his baseness and inefficiency. Fortunately, I here attack an exception; for the malevolent orchestral conductor—whether capable ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz

... Mall like a troubled spirit. With difficulty he was persuaded to go to the theater, where his presence might be important should any alteration be necessary. He arrived at the opening of the fifth act, and made his way behind the scenes. Just as he entered there was a slight hiss at the improbability of Tony Lumpkin's trick on his mother, in persuading her she was forty miles off, on Crackskull Common, though she had been trundled about on her own grounds. "What's that? what's that!" cried Goldsmith to the manager, in great agitation. "Pshaw! ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... did not find some animal fast in one of these man-made snares. Each new victim acted differently, according to the characteristics of its kind. Breed found a badger in a trap and the animal ceased his struggle long enough to wrinkle his nose and hiss at Breed with a thick snakelike sound. The badger's forepaws were more than twice the size of his hind feet, and were fitted with heavy two-inch claws, while those of the hind feet measured but half an inch. He was caught ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... a singular custom in England, Germany, and along the banks of the Moselle. Until within late years, the people were wont to assemble yearly upon a mountain, to set fire to a huge wooden wheel, twined with straw, which, all ablaze, was then sent rolling down the hill, to plunge with a hiss into the water. ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... eye-doctor. But after you seemed to disappear in Africa he had no heart for trying to get his sight back. He'd sit for hours doing nothing but think and talk, all about old Welsh times, or Bible times. Of course he knows hiss services by heart; hiss only job wass with the Lessons.... But you see, he'd often only have me and the girl and Tom in church. There's a new preacher up at Little Bethel that's drawn all the village folk to hear him. But your father'll be a different man now—you see, he'll be like ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... vanished in the blackness. The thunder rolled and cracked and pealed like the trump of doom, whirlwinds tore round, lifting dust and even stones high into the air, and in a low, continuous undertone rose the hiss of the ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard

... carnival time—in the spring. Nothing impressed me, so much, in my visits here (which were pretty numerous) as the uncommonly hard and cruel character of the audience, who resent the slightest defect, take nothing good- humouredly, seem to be always lying in wait for an opportunity to hiss, and spare the actresses ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... things until the fury seized them; his hair was scorching, his wound was forgotten, and he thought only of escape when the brush ahead opened, and the Grizzly, smoke-blinded, half roasted, plunged down a bank and into a small clear pool. The fur on his back said "hiss," for it was sizzling-hot. Down below he went, gulping the cool drink, wallowing in safety and unheat. Down below the surface he crouched as long as his lungs would bear the strain, then slowly and cautiously he raised his head. ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton

... a car-gong of a different timbre and the unmistakable hiss of a trolley wheel on its wire. There are no overhead wires on Manhattan Island except at the several points where the off-island railways terminate. "Union railway," Evan said to himself. "We've reached the Harlem river." Sure ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... deadly sins, are impersonated in the procession. They are clad in the most absurd costumes, and make hideous contortions, beating and abusing each other in their supposed vexation at having to join in the Creator's praises. The people hoot and hiss them, the lower classes sing songs in derision of them, and play them all manner of tricks, and the whole scene is one of incredible noise, uproar, and confusion, more worthy of some pagan bacchanalia ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... to them, if sight was removed. As they heard the shriek of the fierce, whirling blasts, the rush and hiss of astonished waves whipped into terrible activity, the creaking of beams and timbers suddenly strained to their utmost capacity, the flap and rattle of sails furled with lightning rapidity, and, above all else, the ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... words she could not utter. She was rather a favorite with "old Davis," as of course he was called, and it's my private belief that he would have broken his word if the indignation of one irrepressible young lady had not found vent in a hiss. That hiss, faint as it was, irritated the irascible gentleman, and sealed ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... age, would have been held as ridiculous and even insulting by any other woman belonging to the same profession, and many ladies of the highest rank honoured her with her friendship more even than with their patronage. Never did the capricious audience of a Parisian pit dare to hiss Silvia, not even in her performance of characters which the public disliked, and it was the general opinion that she was in every way ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... alike pikes gleam around us, Through air hiss arrows, cannons bright flash, Bullets, like bees, in swarms fly terrific, ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors

... the person who is outside is allowed to enter, and he kneels in front of whom he thinks is the right one. If he should make a correct guess, the company clap their hands, and the person to whom he knelt goes outside. If, however, the guess is an incorrect one, the company hiss loudly, and the guesser has to go outside, come back, and try again. Of course, it will make more amusement if when a boy is sent outside the room a girl be chosen as the person to whom he has to kneel; and the opposite if a girl ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... startled earth she stood, A giant spectre, weeping tears and blood; Guilt shrunk appall'd, Despair embraced his shroud, And Terror shriek'd, and Pity sobb'd aloud;— Then, first Thalia with dilated ken And quicken'd footstep pierced the walks of men; Then Folly blush'd, Vice fled the general hiss, Delight met Reason with a loving kiss; At Satire's glance Pride smooth'd his low'ring crest, The Graces weaved the dance.—And last and best Came Momus down in Falstaff's form to earth. To make the world one ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... the noble animal heard the sharp hiss of the thin willow wand, it began to rear. Standing on its hind legs, it fell to savagely worrying its bit, and careering round and round. The spectators began to fear for the youth, not that he would fall from his horse—that was out of the ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... I should fail, papa?" said Dexie, when she found herself alone with her father. "How can I stand before so many strange people and whistle? Oh! I'm sure I cannot. No young lady whistles in public, and I feel sure they will hiss me off the stage!" ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... Fisher, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Professor Paul M. Doty, Jr., of Harvard's Chemistry Department; Professor Lloyd Reynolds, Yale University economist; Professor Louis B. Sohn of the Harvard Law School; Dr. Joseph E. Johnson, an old friend and former associate of Alger Hiss in the State Department, who succeeded Hiss as President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and still holds that position; Professor Robert R. Bowie, former head of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff (a job which Hiss also held at one time), now Director of the Center ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot

... window dressed, and he was about to close it, after wondering whether anyone would be on the water with a light—Dave, for instance—and if so, what form of fowling or netting it would be, when there was a low hiss—such a sound as is made by a ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... in a quick, sharp, decided tone, prolonged almost to be a hiss. "That will do! Now use some of these pins—quick, fasten up your skirt, and then ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... of an hour the two sat with hardly the interchange of a word. From outside came the swift steady hiss of the rain on to the shrubs in the garden, and again the clock chimed. Morris who at first had sat very quiet had begun to fidget and stir in his chair; occasionally when he happened to notice it, he drank off the port with which Mr. Taynton ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson

... Chief sat silent. Suddenly he said, "Hiss!" and rose to his feet. Taking a long rifle from the ground he adjusted its sight. Exactly seven miles away on the slope of the mountain the figure of a man was seen walking. The Boy Chief raised the rifle to his unerring eye and fired. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... to de whippin' post. Dey strip off his shirt, den dey put his head an' hands through de holes in de top, an' tied his feets to de bottom, den, Ole Marse took de whip. Dat lash hiss like col' water on er red hot iron when it come through de air, an' every time it hit Burrus it lef' er streak of blood. Time Ole Marse finish, Burrus' back look like ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various

... turned into one, Florrie; you would be very proud of your crest. And as long as you were yourself (not that you could get there if you remained quite the little Florrie you are now), you would like to hear the serpents sing. They hiss a little through it, like the cicadas in Italy; but they keep good time, and sing delightful melodies; and most of them have seven heads, with throats which each take a note of the octave; so that they can sing chords—it is very fine indeed. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... his eyes. At one o'clock he was up again and with the faithful Bertrand plashed to the front through long rows of drenched recumbent forms. Once more they strained their ears to catch through the hiss of the rain some sound of a muffled retirement. Strange thuds came now and again from the depths of the wood of Hougoumont: all else was still. At last, over the slope on the north-east crowned by the St. Lambert Wood there stole the first glimmer of gray; little by ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... is used in the sense to mean not "a dog" or "one dog" but two or more dogs—in other words what we grammarians are accustomed to call the plural—it is proper to add to it the diphthong, s, pronounced with a hiss like z ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... mighty conflagrations were caught by the ripples of the current the Seine seemed to be pouring down torrents of living coals; flashes of intensest crimson played fitfully across its surface, the blazing brands fell in showers into the water and were extinguished with a hiss. And ever they floated downward with the tide on the bosom of that blood-red stream, between the blazing palaces on either hand, like wayfarers in some accursed city, doomed to destruction and burning on the banks of ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... come of the Bachs one so great that all others shall fade. He only shall be known as Bach—he and his sons; and before him the name of Reinken shall be as dust!" With a hiss upon the last word, he threw open his arms. "Come!" he said, "take your instrument ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee

... be even holding his breath. Arnold took one step back and charged the door. It went crashing in, and almost at once there was a loud report. The closet—it was little more—was filled with smoke, and Arnold heard distinctly the hiss of a bullet buried in the woodwork over his shoulder. He caught the revolver from the shaking fingers of the man who was crouching upon the ground, and slipped it into his pocket. With his other hand, he held his ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Eurydice, a profane and pointless farce, afterwards printed by its author (in anticipation of Beaumarchais) "as it was d—mned at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane;" and a few detached scenes in which, under the title of Eurydice Hiss'd; or, a Word to the Wise, its untoward fate was attributed to the "frail Promise of uncertain Friends." But even in these careless and half-considered productions there are happy strokes; and one scarcely looks to find such nervous and sensible lines ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... below now, sloping to the right, lay long lines of darkness, jutting here and there with a sudden crag against the blaze of stars. It was marvellous, he thought, how still all lay; there was a steady hiss, now heard for the first time, as the air tore past the glassy sides of the bird-shaped ship, as thin as ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... iron. It was exactly as the papers said, and therein lay the treasure, gold and jewels—the wealth of the Indies, as the writing called it. He stood for a moment looking at the recess, and then, as he took a hasty step forward, he started, and a sharp hiss of indrawn breath came from his lips. A sudden sound had struck upon his ear, a grating noise, then silence, then light footsteps. In a moment Rosmore had blown out the candle, his one idea being to hide himself; fear caught him, the darkness was so great. Who was it? What was ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner

... faery land, Hard for the non-elect to understand. Had Lycius liv'd to hand his story down, He might have given the moral a fresh frown, Or clench'd it quite: but too short was their bliss To breed distrust and hate, that make the soft voice hiss. Besides, there, nightly, with terrific glare, Love, jealous grown of so complete a pair, Hover'd and buzz'd his wings, with fearful roar, Above the lintel of their chamber door, And down the passage cast a glow upon ...
— Lamia • John Keats

... And (he further said), "Warm thyself by the fire of the wise, but beware of their glowing coals, lest thou be burnt, for their bite is the bite of the fox, and their sting is the scorpion's sting, and their hiss is the serpent's hiss, and all their words are like coals of fire" (39). 16. R. Joshua said, "The evil eye, the evil inclination (40), and hatred of his fellow-creatures (41), put a man out of the ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text

... punished, so that Mr. Warrington and the rest of the spectators had but little pleasure out of that encounter. Then ensued some cudgel-playing; but the heads broken were of so little note, and the wounds given so trifling and unsatisfactory, that no wonder the company began to hiss, grumble, and show other signs of discontent. "The masters, the masters!" shouted the people, whereupon those famous champions at ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... were other horrors to be endured. The din became incessant. Simultaneous with the hiss and crackle and crack of the lightning there was a continuous deafening detonation in the air above him, crash on crash and roar on roar. The terrors of the first few seconds had been chiefly those felt and heard. But the wind had steadily increased in violence. It did not blow against him, ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... on the alert. Yes, he was sure he heard footsteps near the gate, without. Then there were some minutes of silence, then the hiss of a fuse and a moment later an explosion which blew the gate ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler

... about balloons, but he felt pretty sure that even the escaping of gas could hardly produce such a sound—it might pass through a rent in the silk with a sharp hiss, but he could plainly catch something more ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... enemy have found us out. Fire the rocket down there below!" shouted the lieutenant in command. The order was quickly conveyed to the boat, and up flew a rocket with a loud hiss through the darkness, its bright stream of light forming a beautiful curve over the fortress. All necessity for silence was now over, the men shouted and cheered and cut many a joke at each other's mishaps as they ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... Balmung, descending, cleft the air from right to left. The waiting lookers-on in the plain below thought to hear the noise of clashing steel; but they listened in vain, for no sound came to their ears, save a sharp hiss like that which red-hot iron gives when plunged into a tank of cold water. The huge Amilias sat unmoved, with his arms still folded upon his breast; but the smile ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... hickory or anything else. For the wood fire connoisseur, if we may call him by that name, there is no difficulty whatever in telling with a glance at the fire just what wood is burned. The crackle and explosive nature of hickory, the hiss of pine, the steady flame from cherry, the hot and rapid disintegration of sycamore, and the steady and thorough combustion of soft apple wood soon become familiar characteristics to those who have the opportunity to lay the fire in variety. Then there is, of course, the fascination and ...
— Making a Fireplace • Henry H. Saylor

... lips with a little hiss and his eyes were flashing with a dull fire. But Da Souza held his ground. He had nerved himself up to this and he meant ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... yonder; What a dog it must be to drowse in the midst of a time like this! Why, the horses might neigh contempt at him; what is he like, I wonder? If the smoke would but clear away, I have strength in me yet to hiss. ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... toads, and had scales or knobs on their backs like those of crocodiles, plated on to the skin, or stuck into it, as part of the skin. They are very slow in motion, and when a man comes nigh them they will stand still and hiss, not endeavouring to get away. Their livers are also spotted black and yellow; and the body, when opened, hath a very unsavoury smell. I did never see such ugly creatures anywhere but here. The guanos I have observed to be very good meat, and I have often eaten of them with pleasure; ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... nature, that this is not the news, then I will say, I am the news! I am this sort of an American! God helping me, I say it! "Look at me!" I am this sort of man of whom I am writing! If I am not this sort of man this afternoon, I will be in the morning! Though I go down as a hiss and as laughter and as a by-word and a mocking to the end of my days—I am this sort of man! ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... little chance for speech, even if the overawing grandeurs of the stupendous crevice, seen in their most impressive presentment as alternating vistas of stark, moonlighted crags and gulches and depths of blackest shadow, had encouraged it. The hiss and whistle of the air-brakes, the harsh, sustained note of the shrieking wheel-flanges shearing the inner edges of the railheads on the curves, and the stuttering roar of the 266's safety-valve were continuous; a deafening medley of sounds multiplied a hundred-fold ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... than hell To souls cast forth who hear all hell-fire hiss All round them, and who feel the red worm's kiss Shoot mortal poison through the heart that rests Immortal: serpents suckled at her breasts, Fire feeding on her limbs, less pain should be Than sense of pride laid waste ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... to distil, but a very imperfect one, is to light a fire among stones, near a hollow in a rock, that is filled, or can be filled with salt-water. When the stones are red-hot, drop them one by one into it: the water will hiss and give out clouds of vapour, some of which may be collected in a cloth, and wrung or sucked out of it. In the same way a pot on the fire may have a cloth stretched over it to catch ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... safely through this horrid cincture, will then be undiscoverable. Amid the untamed forest and untrod precipices that lie beyond, all the beasts most inimical to man reside. There the hills re-echo the tremendous roarings of the boar; the serpents hiss among the thickets; and the gaunt and hungry wolf roams for prey. Oh, Imogen, how fearful is the picture! And can your tender frame, and your timid spirits ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... of an agreeable manner. Thus the poison of the snake, and the blight of his venom on many a reputation and many a womanly heart, is all forgotten in the drawing-room, because of the fascination of his hiss and the glitter of his skin. Again, the Tempter has an Ally in the world of Traffic, wherever bad things are stamped with respectable names—when, for instance, swindling is called "smartness," and robbery "per-centage." Among people ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... was furious with him, also, for causing her pain. When she thought of the windigo, of the rapids, of any peril which might be working his limitless absence, she set clenched hands in her loosened hair and trembled with hysterical anguish. But the enormity of his behavior if he were alive made her hiss at the rafters. "Good, monsieur! Next time I will have four officers. I will have the entire garrison sitting along the gallery! Yes, and they shall be English, too. And there is one thing you will never know, besides." ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... had so highly offended that high and mighty body of gentlemen apprentices and else who swagger in good broadcloth clothes and brass buttons in the theatre, by not leaving his bed of sickness for the amusement of their high mightinesses, that they had resolved to hiss and drive him off the stage. Those who were most prompt to condemn the insolence and indecency of the band alluded to, thought that such a design would be an outrage too unjust, too stupid even for such persons as their high ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... turkey-cock, the feathers of her neck and breast. She is usually the more courageous and pugilistic. She makes a deep hollow guttural boom especially at night, sounding like a small gong. The male has a slenderer frame and is more docile, with no voice beyond a suppressed hiss when angry, or a croak." He not only performs the whole duty of incubation, but has to defend the young from their mother; "for as soon as she catches sight of her progeny she becomes violently agitated, and notwithstanding the resistance of the father appears ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... had been particularly offended with the Roman laws and lawyers. One of the Barbarians, after the effectual precautions of cutting out the tongue of an advocate, and sewing up his mouth, observed, with much satisfaction, that the viper could no longer hiss. Florus, iv. 12.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... already stripping the searchlight of its cover. When he had swung open the big lens Tommy struck a match, which blew out. His second was blown out by a hiss of air that preceded the flow of gas, and the professor jumbled matters by trying his hand. But these efforts scarcely took more time than the telling, and when the powerful streak of light finally pierced the darkness ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... the threshold, while satyrs cried to their fellows across tracts of brown rush-grown land. Aliens came to hiss and passed by wagging their hands. Over all was the monotony of the gray sky, descending and still descending with clouds that came upon the land, mistily folding it in close embraces of death. Voices ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... Garden in the Morning, and was no sooner there, but a large Snake always came, and eat out of the Dish with him, and did so for a considerable time, till one Morning, he striking the Snake on the Head, it hissed at him. Upon which he told his Mother that the Baby (for so he call'd it) cry'd Hiss at him. His Mother had it kill'd, which occasioned him a great Fit of Sickness, and 'twas thought would have dy'd, but ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... slushy whiteness under foot, and the blurred outline of a towering water-tank showed dimly through the sliding snow. He could also just discern the great locomotive waiting on the side-track, and the sibilant hiss of steam that mingled with the moaning of the wind whirling a white haze out of the obscurity. Beyond the track, and showing only now and then, the lights of the wooden town blinked fitfully; on the other hand and behind ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... The hiss of a rocket hurled her words into space. The fireworks had begun. Miss Brown looked at them and watched Nelson at the same time. As a good business woman who was also a good citizen, having subscribed ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet

... He sat there as though made of stone, that awful hiss still sounding in his ears. Miss Grey's voice came to him as from some great distance. He did not seem to realize what she was saying to him. She saw his white face, and the vacant look in his eyes, and she pitied him; but she had ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene

... boiled" her owner said, "To be arrayed in glowing red? Come here, my discontented miss, And hear the scalding kettle hiss! Will you go in, and there be boiled, To have your dress, so old and soiled, Exchanged for one of scarlet hue?" "Yes," cried the Lobster, "that I'll do, And twice as much, if needs must be, To be as gayly clad as she." Then, ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould

... of him I wouldn't be ashamed to let him know, you can tell the world that. And I wouldn't keep him trottin' about like a little pet dog till I got tired of him and give him up for the sake of a greenhorn who"—her voice lowered to a spiteful hiss—"kissed you the first time he ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... into the secluded Brandenburg valley, and found the eagles thriving and much grown. Being curious to see if their confinement had subdued their wild and ferocious spirit, I removed one of the laths and entered the barn. An angry hiss, similar to that of a snake, warned me of danger, but too late to save my hands some severe scratches. With one bound and a flap of their gigantic wings they were on me, and had it not been for Tomerl, who was standing just behind me armed with a stout cudgel, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... not daring to talk. There was no sound except for the faint whoosh of their breathing through the gas masks they were wearing, and the muffled hiss from a tank nearby. ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett

... impulse, the thirteen sprang to their feet, and again their hands flashed out in that curious crisscross motion over the breast, the forehead, the eyes, and a murmur went from mouth to mouth like a hiss. ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... of flame was creeping through the joining of the logs at one end of the cabin, and the logs where the bunk had been were beginning to crackle and hiss ominously. The smoke had grown thicker, and the atmosphere was pungent and choking in its quality. He left her side for a moment, and ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... and the rest of the water. The heat of the water should be not less than 160 deg.F. as it will cool while the lime is being prepared. Slake the lime in a separate vessel by pouring about 5 oz. of water over it. When it begins to hiss and break, add more water little by little. When all the lumps have cracked up stir till a thick even cream is made. Add this to the other ingredients in the stock vat. Stir well. The stock vat should have a temperature of 120-140 deg.F. It should be stirred at intervals. The vessel should ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet

... the theatres have got up a plot," continued the manager; "they will even hiss the piece, but I have made arrangements to defeat their kind intentions. I have squared the men in their pay; they will make a muddle of it. A couple of city men yonder have taken a hundred tickets apiece to secure a triumph for Florine and Coralie, and given them to ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... attended the trial and had the gratification of hearing Lord Melville acquitted. The Prince had the good sense not to vote. The Court was as full as possible & when the two youngest Peers voted on the first charge & said Guilty, there was something like a hiss from the House of Commons. I am glad it is over & I hope the country will not be put to the expense of any more trials of the same kind for many years. The Princes went and shook Lord Melville by the hand as soon as it ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... later, he seen his mistake an' th' Dimocrats seen theirs, an' Jimmie come back ter his old roost. Some iv thim who didn't know the true innards iv th' situation blamed Jimmie, an' at a meetin' th' Dimocrats held—crocus, I think he called it—some iv them started ter hiss Jimmie when he begun ter spake. Th' man at th' desk, whatever title he has, thried ter stop 'em, but Jimmie was quicker than any iv 'em. He jumps up on a chair, Jimmie does, an' waves his arms theatrical like, an' cries out good an' sthrong, 'Don't mind 'em, Misther Moderator (that's what ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... Apache among their guards dreamed that anything more dangerous than thoughts could or would come. And yet, within two minutes from the time he was spread upon his back and left alone, old Two Knives heard inside the lodge a low, warning hiss. ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard

... Beaching, writhing, rolling far. Sweeping all away to war! While the men that walk beside, Dusty, silent, heavy-eyed, Cannot tell why we or they March and suffer day by day. Children of the Camp are we, Serving each in hiss degree; Children of the yoke and goad, Pack ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... their centre were often like hollow trees, and might easily have received the three travellers in one embrace. But as before, the mounds were alive with serpents that evidently made them their homes, and raised an angry hiss whenever the men approached. ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... himself to the ground as the Hadji fired, heard a hiss, and saw a jagged heatburn score the brick building next to which he ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... Sir William can cut him off; no mortal power can help the title going down, if Bill chooses to be such a—— [He draws in his breath with a sharp hiss.] ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... pavement, rolled in at the open door. Each paused as he lifted his glass and thought of the harvest. As for Hodge, who was reaping, he had to take shelter how he might in the open fields. Boom! flash! boom!—splash and hiss, as the hail rushed along the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... sleeping Gorgons dreamed of tearing some poor mortal all to pieces. The snakes, that served them instead of hair, seemed likewise to be asleep; although, now and then, one would writhe, and lift its head, and thrust out its forked tongue, emitting a drowsy hiss, and then let itself subside among ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... A death-like hiss rose from Jude's lips, "Repentigny? He is my enemy too. I will be your slave. I have too much fear of you to ever harm you. Let me tell you about this Repentigny. Life, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... hue as they moved, and rolling together in huge opaque masses, which presently began to close in and become denser as the night advanced. By and by a wild wind awoke, as it were, from the very cavities of ocean, and the waves began to hiss warnings all along the coast, and to rise higher and higher over each other's shoulders as the gale steadily increased. Rene Ronsard, sitting in his cottage, feeble and somewhat ailing, heard the beginnings of the tempest with long-accustomed ears. He was depressed ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... voices affect us like music, Some voices arouse to action and ambition. Some voices fill you with despondency. Some voices irritate like a buzz-saw. Some voices snap like turtles, and some hiss ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley

... congratulate the foolhardy fanatics on getting off as easy as they did; and we commend the forbearance of the considerate crowd in not carrying their coercive measures to extremes, because, the humbug being exploded, all that is necessary now is to laugh, hiss, and vociferously applaud. When men make up their minds to vilify the Bible, denounce the Constitution, and defame their country (although this is a free country), they should go down in some obscure cellar, remote from mortal ken, and, even there, whisper their hideous treason ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... grew silent, the tired watchers dozed in their chairs, the doctor nodded and nodded, bringing his eel-skin cue dangerously near the flame of the candle that stood on the table. Suddenly there was heard a sharp explosion, a hiss, a sizzle; and when the smoke cleared, and the terrified occupants of the room collected their senses, the watcher and wife were discovered under the valance of the bed; the doctor stood scorched and bareheaded, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... mangrove-tops, and illuminated the silvery sands, casting reflections upon the water, where there was now a perfect calm. Far away was heard the lonely cry of a laughing gull. The gentle break of the waves upon the sands gave out a soft, musical sound, and, as we held our breath, a sharp hiss was heard, seemingly but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... hell To souls cast forth who hear all hell-fire hiss All round them, and who feel the red worm's kiss Shoot mortal poison through the heart that rests Immortal: serpents suckled at her breasts, Fire feeding on her limbs, less pain should be Than sense of pride laid waste and love laid low, If she ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... may guess, poor young Aspinall had a very bad time of it. He began to cry as soon as the first question was propounded. But this demonstration failed to shelter him. A general hiss greeted the sound of his whimper, and cries of, "Where's ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... only by an occasional hiss and crackle of some far distant mountain storm. Then, faint as a whisper, came an ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... The arrows hiss like a shower of snakes, The bullets puff in a smoky gust, Out fly loose reins from the bronchos' bits And hunters ride on ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... know, we chaps, A-putten on our woldest traps, Went up the highest o' the knaps, An' meaede up such a vier! An' thou an' Tom wer all we miss'd, Vor if a sarpent had a-hiss'd Among the rest in thy sprack vist, Our fun 'd ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... the searchlight of its cover. When he had swung open the big lens Tommy struck a match, which blew out. His second was blown out by a hiss of air that preceded the flow of gas, and the professor jumbled matters by trying his hand. But these efforts scarcely took more time than the telling, and when the powerful streak of light finally pierced the darkness ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... now upheaved at such short intervals that the scene of devastation was completely shut out from the observers on the hills; but every few minutes they felt a sickening shock, and heard a momentary and horrible crash and hiss which seemed to fill all the air. The instantaneous motor-bombs were tearing up the sea-board, ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton

... motto—"I bide my time." Snoring has been the order of the day in these parts for many years; but the kettle-screaming roads of the North have at last disturbed the Southern slumberers, and, like giants refreshed, they are now working vigorously at their own kettle, which will soon hiss all the way from Louisville to Nashville. Till then, I say, Patience.—One of our companions in the stage very kindly offered to take us to the club, which is newly formed here, and which, if not large, is very comfortable. I mention this as one among the many instances which have occurred ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... impassioned will grow, until she has lost all her woman's nature. She kept the other four hours at her street-door, as if she were a public show. There was time to fetch a mob of Jesuits' followers, of honest Church artizans, to hoot and hiss, while children might help by throwing stones. For these four hours she was in the pillory. Some, however, of the more dispassionate passers-by asked if the Ursulines had gotten orders to let them kill the girl. We may guess what tender jailers their sick prisoner ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... its hire was two pounds ten shillings. Stopped at the "Crown Inn," upon the road, for refreshments, and on handing a ragged little urchin a shilling for his voluntary service of standing at the door of our barouche, on starting off were saluted by a hiss for our generosity. A greater douceur was expected from the drivers of ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... the name), in the Queen's livery, was stopped by the populace, under a belief that it was Madame de Polignac, whom they would have insulted; the Queen, going to the theatre at Versailles with Madame de Polignac, was received with a general hiss. The King, long in the habit of drowning his cares in wine, plunges deeper and deeper. The Queen cries, but sins on. The Count d'Artois is detested, and Monsieur, the general favorite. The Archbishop of Toulouse is made minister principal, a virtuous, patriotic, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... rapidly unwinding from the branches. In the agony of the moment Serena flung a hatchet she had in her hand at the head she now for the first time saw. A frightful hiss, and a loathsome and deadly odour, told us it had taken effect. Again it coiled itself round the tree, which rocked and groaned with its furious movements. Faint with fear and the horrible smell, I knew not my own voice, as I said to Serena, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... fifty paces from us; and then with hiss and rattle as of the first gust of a storm in dry branches the arrows flew among them, smiting man and horse alike, and down went full half of the foremost line, while over the fallen leapt and plunged those behind them unchecked, and were upon us sword in air; and the tough spear ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... A slight hiss was heard, which enraged him so much that he stopped, and looked among the audience with indignation, trying to discover what jealous rival was endeavouring to discompose him—a silence ensued for a minute; Vaughan ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... waters!—from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice; The fall of waters! rapid as the light The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss; The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... and by the light of the great lantern at their prow they saw the white seas hiss past as they drove shorewards beneath bare masts. For they dared ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... sisters, in my realm of wo, Whose only glory streams From its lost childhood, like the artic glow Which sunless Winter dreams! In the red desert moulders Babylon, And the wild serpent's hiss Echoes in Petra's palaces of stone And ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... stood, A giant spectre, weeping tears and blood; Guilt shrunk appall'd, Despair embraced his shroud, And Terror shriek'd, and Pity sobb'd aloud;— Then, first Thalia with dilated ken And quicken'd footstep pierced the walks of men; Then Folly blush'd, Vice fled the general hiss, Delight met Reason with a loving kiss; At Satire's glance Pride smooth'd his low'ring crest, The Graces weaved the dance.—And last and best Came Momus down in Falstaff's form to earth. To make the world one universe ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... groan, The roots, upriven, creak and moan! In fearful and entangled fall, One crashing ruin whelms them all, While through the desolate abyss, Sweeping the wreck-strewn precipice, The raging storm-blasts howl and hiss! Aloft strange voices dost thou hear? Distant now and now more near? Hark! the mountain ridge ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... through this horrid cincture, will then be undiscoverable. Amid the untamed forest and untrod precipices that lie beyond, all the beasts most inimical to man reside. There the hills re-echo the tremendous roarings of the boar; the serpents hiss among the thickets; and the gaunt and hungry wolf roams for prey. Oh, Imogen, how fearful is the picture! And can your tender frame, and your timid spirits ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... courageous indeed, Hiss Elfrida. That is done by a woman who is invited, every where in her proper person, and knows 'tout Paris' like her alphabet I believe she holds stock in Raffini; anyway, they would double her pay rather than lose her. You would have more chance of ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... in the crowd. Many women present rustled as they turned in their seats; some stood up and craned forward; people in the gallery leaned over, looking eagerly down; a loud murmur and a wide hiss of whispering emphasized the life in the court. The tall, loose-limbed figure of Esme Darlington, looking to-day singularly dignified and almost impressive, pushed slowly forward, followed by the woman whose social fate was so soon to ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... she had lost the battle and forgetting her cunning, Madame Clemenceau threw off the veil and showed herself the direct offspring of the infernal regions. Her voice sounded like the hiss of fiery serpents, and her frame quivered as if she stood in a current of consuming vapor. Her eyes, too, wore that painful expression of depth of agony as though her disappointment were excruciating. With his pardon, love, ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... metallic voice sank to a hiss. "I employ no force. You shall yield to me your heart as a love offering. Of such motives as jealousy and revenge you know me incapable. What I do, I do with a purpose. That compassion of yours shall be ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... approaching calamity, as well as for that which had been already felt. The whole country, in fact, was weltering and surging with the wet formed by the incessant overflow of rivers, while the falling cataracts, joined to a low monotonous hiss, or what the Scotch term sugh, poured their faint but dismal murmurs on the gloomy silence which ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... Fair overhead are the white of breasts, of plump bodies flashing through the mist, the swishing hiss of many wings cutting the air, the rhythmic pat, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... added, and the whole is to be "boiled in a human skull, with the aid of the three Kabra-goyas, which are tied on three sides of the fire, with their heads directed towards it, and tormented by whips to make them hiss, so that the fire may blaze. The froth from their lips is then to be added to the boiling mixture, and so soon as an oily scum rises to the surface, the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... hurriedly, we entreated the boatswain to "shove the blamed Finn overboard." Then, all together, we yelled down at the planks:—"Stand from under! Get forward," and listened. We only heard the deep hum and moan of the wind above us, the mingled roar and hiss of the seas. The ship, as if overcome with despair, wallowed lifelessly, and our heads swam with that unnatural motion. Belfast clamoured:—"For the love of God, Jimmy, where are ye?... Knock! Jimmy darlint!... Knock! You bloody black beast! Knock!" ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... stream spurted out, and Arnold aimed it right for the piece of blazing paper. The water fell in a small shower on the fire, and then with a hiss and spluttering, and sending up a cloud of ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope

... sixpenny benches answered No; the ostler and the fiery-faced woman being the most vociferous of all. Here and there, certain dissentient individuals raised a little hiss—led by Jervy, in the interests of ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins

... auld man mean, quo' I, Sittin' upo' the auld rock? The tide creeps up wi' moan and cry, And a hiss 'maist like a mock. The words he mutters maun be the en' O' a weary dreary sang— A deid thing floatin' in his brain, That the tide will no lat gang. "Robbie and Jeannie war twa bonnie bairns, And they played thegither upo' the shore: Up cam the tide 'tween the mune and the sterns, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... could hear the soft, sibilant sound of the escaping gas, not unlike the hiss of a snake. I was also sensible that my heart, not to mention other important organs, was trying to get into ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... and the guilt of the meanest sort of a man is excused on account of an agreeable manner. Thus the poison of the snake, and the blight of his venom on many a reputation and many a womanly heart, is all forgotten in the drawing-room, because of the fascination of his hiss and the glitter of his skin. Again, the Tempter has an Ally in the world of Traffic, wherever bad things are stamped with respectable names—when, for instance, swindling is called "smartness," and robbery ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... truth evident to his fellowmen, who are as a rule incredibly stupid and ignorant of both, but whose judgment he must nevertheless not despise. If he can make something that they will cheer, or something that they will hiss, he may not have done any great thing, but if he has made something that they will neither cheer nor hiss, he may well have his misgivings, no matter how well, how finely, how truly he has done ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... a good look at his fireman. The latter was muddled, it was plain to see that, but he went about his duties with a mechanical routine born from long experience. Only once did he lurch towards Ralph and speak to him, or rather hiss out the words. ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... Daphne, the appearance and situation of which are in agreeable unison. The monastery was then fast verging into that state of the uninhabitable picturesque so much admired by young damsels and artists of a romantic vein. The pines on the adjacent mountains hiss as they ever wave their boughs, and somehow, such is the lonely aspect of the place, that their hissing may be imagined to breathe satire against the pretensions ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... fruits, especially the sour Goyava (Psidium sp). The natives say it devours the fruit of arborescent Arums (Caladium arborescens), which grow in crowded masses around the swampy banks of lagoons. Its voice is a harsh, grating hiss; it makes the noise when alarmed or when disturbed by passing canoes, all the individuals sibilating as they fly heavily away from tree to tree. It is polygamous, like other members of the same order. It ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... same old excitement, with just enough vague forebodings in it to make it pleasant. Still, I had grown a foot or so since I used to fish there, and perhaps I could return the compliment by throwing the old gentleman over his own fence, and then hiss ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... The next minute, however, he laughed at his fright, for it was merely a mother burro and her baby colt which his steps had routed from their hiding-place and sent flying across the flats for safety. A twig snapping sharply under his feet startled him; what sounded like a warning hiss close by brought his heart into his mouth; and trembling from head to foot he paused by a clump of Spanish bayonets, ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown

... abundance, on the right hand and on the left. Show me a cause anathematized by the chief priests, the scribes, and the pharisees; which politicians and demagogues endeavor to crush, which reptiles and serpents in human flesh try to spread their slime over, and hiss down, and I will show you a cause which God loves, and angels contemplate with admiration. Such is our movement. Do you want the compliments of the satanic press, The New York Times, Express, and Herald? (Roars of laughter). If you want the compliments ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-who; Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note, While greasy Joan ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous

... applauding, blocking up the road. Sir Francis could not complain of one thing—that he got no audience; for it was the pleasure of West Lynne extensively to support him in that respect—a few to cheer, a great many to jeer and hiss. Remarkably dense was the mob on this afternoon, for Mr. Carlyle had just concluded his address from the Buck's Head, and the crowd who had been listening to him came rushing up to swell the ranks of the other crowd. They were elbowing, and pushing, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... that somewhere or other in the hall, there rises a faint, almost whispered, hiss. Slight as it is, it falls with startling effect upon the dead silence which reigns. Then, like the first whisper of a storm, it suddenly grows and swells and rushes, angrily and witheringly, about the head of the wretched ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... about singing would see that in an instant. Yet she's quite as popular as Necker, who's a great artist. How can I get much satisfaction out of the enthusiasm of a house that likes her atrociously bad performance at the same time that it pretends to like mine? If they like her, then they ought to hiss me off the stage. We stand for things that are irreconcilable, absolutely. You can't try to do things right and not despise the people who do them wrong. How can I be indifferent? If that doesn't matter, then nothing matters. Well, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... goal, The masts are swaying as with terror, And quivering does the vessel roll. The mad wind frolics with the billows, Now smooths them low, now lashes high. Now they are storming up like lions, And now like serpents sleek they lie; And wave on wave is ever pressing, They hiss, they whisper, soft of tone. Alack! was that the vessel splitting? Are sail and mast and rudder gone? Here, screams of fright, there, silent weeping, The bravest feels his courage fail. What stead our prudence or our wisdom? The soul itself can ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... young June-rose with its crimson heart— And would'st not sooner peril life to win That royal flower, that thou might'st proudly wear The trophy on thy breast, than idly pluck A thousand meek-faced daisies by the way? How dost thou shudder at Love's gentle tones, As though a serpent's hiss were in thine ear. Albeit thy heart throbs echo to each word. Why wilt not rest, oh weary wanderer, Upon the couch of flowers Love spreads for thee, On banks of sunshine?—voices silver-toned Shall lull thy soul with strange, wild harmonies, Rock thee to sleep ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... Let me illustrate this last point by what I saw this afternoon. A dog about as large and strong as a young lion was barking vigorously behind a low fence at a cat, who sat serenely on the other side, meeting his Bombastes Furioso plunges at the intervening pickets with a contemptuous hiss and an occasional buffet with her claw upon his muzzle. I have yet to see a dog that dares attack my goat of a year old, except when he is harnessed to his wagon. They are not, however, afraid of sheep. And they are much more clear in their minds about attacking children ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... the companionway; and a moment later he heard the water hiss along the deck. He was not in the least sorry for what he had done; still, he regretted the act. Craig was a beast, and there was no knowing what he might do or say. But the hose had been simply irresistible. He chuckled audibly on the way down to his cabin. There was one ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... dogs and the sheep and the birds are never deaf—nor the hills—nor the flowers. It is only people that are deaf. I suppose they are always hearing their own steps and voices and wheels and windlasses and the cries of the children and the hiss of the frying-pans. I suppose that is why. Well, let them be deaf. Rusignuola and I do not ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... poured forth assurances of his good behaviour. He followed her down to the platform, and for a quarter of an hour she had to listen, in torment of mind and body, to remonstrances, flatteries, amorous blandishments, accompanied by the hiss of steam and the roar ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... Nay, obvious coil, and hiss most unequivocal, betray the Snake; As fell ophidian as in fierce meridian of Afric ever lurked in swamp or brake; And yet Corinthian LYCIUS never doted on the white-throated charmer of his soul With blinder ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various

... serpent set openly to view. So fares it with us novices, that here betray our imperfections: we, afraid to look on the imaginary serpent of envy, painted in men's affections, have ceased to tune any music of mirth to your ears this twelvemonth, thinking that, as it is the nature of the serpent to hiss, so childhood and ignorance would play the gosling, contemning and condemning what they understood not. Their censures we weigh not, whose senses are not yet unswaddled. The little minutes will be continually striking, though no man regard them: ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... across our well-planned getaway. Which was just what happened, and almost at once. Probably that great horned owl had been hooting for some time, but we had been too busy to notice. I heard the wicket door turning on its hinges, and ventured a warning hiss to Brower and Tim Westmore, who had not yet descended. An instant later I could make out shadowy forms stealing toward the willows. Evidently those who served Old Man Hooper were accustomed ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... short, brawny arms, stood out like great ropes; and then Balmung, descending, cleft the air from right to left. The waiting lookers-on in the plain below thought to hear the noise of clashing steel; but they listened in vain, for no sound came to their ears, save a sharp hiss like that which red-hot iron gives when plunged into a tank of cold water. The huge Amilias sat unmoved, with his arms still folded upon his breast; but the smile ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... together in one and pour their waters into the Caucasian Sea. And through fear young mothers awoke, and round their new-born babes, who were sleeping in their arms, threw their hands in agony, for the small limbs started at that hiss. And as when above a pile of smouldering wood countless eddies of smoke roll up mingled with soot, and one ever springs up quickly after another, rising aloft from beneath in wavering wreaths; so at that time ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... second or two. Then all of us in the turret were startled. Transfixed. From below came a sudden hiss. It sounded in the turret; it came from the shifting room call grid. The hissing of the pneumatic valves of the plate shifters in the lower control room. The valves were opening; the plates automatically shifting ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... water, with wings helpless, the flying boat was no match for the Streamline now. She struck at an acute angle, rebounded in the air for a moment, and with a hiss skittered along over the waves, planing with the help of her exhaust under ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... shrieked, adding its voice to the roar of traffic at Victoria Station. There came the pounding hiss of escaping steam. The crowd pressed close to the rails and peered down the foggy platform. A train had stopped, and the engine was panting close to the gate-rail. A few men in khaki were alighting from compartments. In a moment there was a stamping of many ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway

... from various innocent tubes there belched forth into the water of the central lagoon and into the air over it a flood of deadly vapor. As the Nevian turned toward the prisoner there was an almost inaudible hiss and a tiny jet of the frightful, outlawed stuff struck his open gills, just below his huge, conical head. He tensed momentarily, twitched convulsively just once, and fell motionless to the floor. And outside, ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... rattles sprung on every side, and it never occurred to us to be afraid. I used to take sun-baths and do calisthenics in a certain pleasant nook among azalea and calcanthus, the rattles whizzing on every side like spinning-wheels, and the combined hiss or buzz rising louder and angrier at any sudden movement; but I was never in the least impressed, nor ever attacked. It was only towards the end of our stay, that a man down at Calistoga, who was expatiating on the terrifying nature of the sound, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... see the felling of one giant tree. A wedge-shaped cut had been made upon the side where the great elm was to fall, and, upon the other side, two men were sawing through the trunk. There was no sound but the steady hiss of steel teeth gnawing inch by inch to the wine-red heart of the tree. Sunshine glimmered on its leafy crown, and as yet distant branch and bough knew nothing of the midgets and ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... she gasped. "He has spoken to you? So, Charles Sadler, Charles Sadler!" Her voice came through her white lips like a snake's hiss. ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle

... wild eyes fastened themselves upon her with a look of yearning anguish, and then Hagar answered slowly, "Tell you what you've often wished to know—my secret!" the last word dropping from her lips more like a warning hiss than like a human sound. It was long since Maggie had teased for the secret, so absorbed had she been in other matters, but now that there was a prospect of knowing it her curiosity was reawakened, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... voice came perceptibly nearer, and seemed to almost hiss in her ear—unconsciously she felt the antagonism. "That's absurd," she said, with sudden animation; "why, these people are nobody, the mother used to wash for me a few years ago. They are the very commonest sort—the father was only a section man. The doctor enjoys ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... Works Illustrious, or that cou'd merit Censure? Indeed some People are not to be reclaim'd by Ridicule; and Mr. Collier knowing their Vertues, with how much Compos'dness and Resignation they can bear a Hiss, out of Compassion, took Example by the Town and ...
— A Letter to A.H. Esq.; Concerning the Stage (1698) and The - Occasional Paper No. IX (1698) • Anonymous

... Chief the spacious Hall Thick swarm'd, both on the Ground and in the Air, Brush'd with the Hiss of rustling Wings. ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson

... only a few feet away. Tom began to advance, not directly, but just a trifle on the bias, across Mux's bows so to speak, as if to give him a broadside. They were within range. Tom was heaving to. I trembled for the young coon. Suddenly there was a hiss, a flash of yellow in the air, and—a very big surprise awaiting Thomas! That little coon was no stupid after all. He had not rolled up his sleeves, nor doubled up his fists, nor put a chip upon his shoulder; but he knew what was expected of ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... ungratefully regarded. How such hours rise up before the mind! Even now as I write I think of such a scene, when I walked with a friend, long dead, on the broad yellow sands beside a western sea. I can recall the sharp hiss of the shoreward wind, the wholesome savours of the brine, the soft clap of small waves, the sand-dunes behind the shore, pricked with green tufts of grass, the ships moving slowly on the sea's rim, and the shadowy headland ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... hubbub! scent the fumes! Are those real men or ghosts? The stillness spreads of Death abroad—down come the temple posts, Their molten bronze is coursing fast and joins with silver waves To leap with hiss of thousand snakes ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... quarrelsome, vaguely miserable, and blaming his misery upon all the world. He took to spending much time, with small profit to himself, among the chained gangs of slaves, where were cruel sounds and crueller sights. At the hiss and cut of the lash on bared backs and thighs he thrilled with savage exultation; he took morbid delight in the sight of pain inflicted; and this he could not at all understand. At this season his tales were all of war and blood and violence, of treachery and despair. When ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... disagreeable to be informed of one's stupidity by an ignorant audience that shouts after you like a pack of hounds after a hare. In spite of my pretension of being the least susceptible regarding an author's vanity of all the writers in Paris, it is perfectly impossible to be indifferent to such a thing—a hiss is a hiss. However, vanity aside, there was a question of money which, as I have a bad habit of spending regularly my capital as well as my income, was not without its importance. It meant, according to my calculation, some sixty thousand francs cut off from my ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... question drove sleep from his eyes. At one o'clock he was up again and with the faithful Bertrand plashed to the front through long rows of drenched recumbent forms. Once more they strained their ears to catch through the hiss of the rain some sound of a muffled retirement. Strange thuds came now and again from the depths of the wood of Hougoumont: all else was still. At last, over the slope on the north-east crowned by the St. Lambert Wood there stole the first glimmer of gray; little by little ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... she made a strange little noise that was something between a grunt and a hiss: and she repeated this many times. At last Dot saw what looked like a bit of black stick, just above the surface of the pool, coming towards their side, and, as it moved forward, leaving two little silvery ripples that widened out ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... breat', shoost make a liddle pause, Und see sechs hundert gapin' eyes - sechs hundert shdaring' chaws! Dey shtanden erstarrt like frozen - von faindly dried to hiss:- Und von saidt: "Ish id shleeps I'm treamin' - ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland

... ball of the eye burnt away, and the roots thereof crackled in the flame. And as when a smith dips an axe or adze in chill water with a great hissing, when he would temper it—for hereby anon comes the strength of iron—even so did his eye hiss round the stake of olive. And he raised a great and terrible cry, that the rock rang around, and we fled away in fear, while he plucked forth from his eye the brand bedabbled in much blood. Then maddened ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... 'Boats,' and 'Waggons!' Oh! ye shades Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this? That trash of such sort not alone evades Contempt, but from the bathos' vast abyss Floats scumlike uppermost, and these Jack Cades Of sense and song above your graves may hiss— The 'little boatman' and his 'Peter Bell' Can sneer at ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... up all over the meeting-house, and rises high above the hiss of the sleet on the great windows. Somebody's got on the stove, to add to the confusion and horror. The only man in the whole place who is not excited is Jethro Bass himself, who sits in his chair regardless of those pressing around him. Many years afterward he confessed to some one ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... out now and then at the trees, which tossed like green waves under the roaring August rain. Sometimes a gust drove a shower down the chimney and made the logs hiss. The room was warm and still; in the interval of work it seemed to have paused and be sleeping. The tiger-cat, with his paws folded under him, lay beside the hearth, and Mary on her little bench nursed ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... does not apply the rod to your own, lord cardinal," retorted Will Sommers. "If he scourges you according to your deserts, your skin will be redder than your robe." And his mocking laugh pursued Wolsey like the hiss of a snake into ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... swift command, and the English ranks rose to their feet, uncased their bows and strung them all as though with a single hand. A second command and every bow was bent. A third and with a noise that was half hiss and half moan, thousands of arrows leapt forward. Forward they leapt, and swift and terrible they fell among the ranks of the advancing Genoese. Yes, and ere ever one had found its billet, its quiver-mate was hastening on its path. Then—oh! the sunlight showed it all—the Genoese ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard

... of the serpent within the adjacent house, and the lesser strains of the fiddler, reached the spot as an accompaniment to the surging hiss of the flying rain on the sod, its louder beating on the cabbage-leaves of the garden, on the eight or ten beehives just discernible by the path, and its dripping from the eaves into a row of buckets and pans that ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... vibrated a triple tongue, and showed a triple row of teeth. No sooner had the Tyrians dipped their pitchers in the fountain, and the in- gushing waters made a sound, than the glittering serpent raised his head out of the cave and uttered a fearful hiss. The vessels fell from their hands, the blood left their cheeks, they trembled in every limb. The serpent, twisting his scaly body in a huge coil, raised his head so as to overtop the tallest trees, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... comes to an end, and we sit wide awake in the diligence, amid a silence only broken by the hiss of rain against the windows, and the sweep of gusts upon the roof. The diligence stands still; there is no rattle of harness, nor other sound to prove that we have arrived at the spot by other means than ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... again, and before they could speak he was gone. The tone of his voice lingering upon their ears was like a hiss. It was ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... think so if you really were turned into one, Florrie; you would be very proud of your crest. And as long as you were yourself (not that you could get there if you remained quite the little Florrie you are now), you would like to hear the serpents sing. They hiss a little through it, like the cicadas in Italy; but they keep good time, and sing delightful melodies; and most of them have seven heads, with throats which each take a note of the octave; so that they can sing chords—it is very ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... overhead with a might that shook the ship from stem to stern. The flaps of the mad canvas were like successive thumps of a giant's fist upon a mighty drum. The sheets were jerking at the belaying-pins, the blocks rattling in sharp snappings like castanets. You could hear the hiss and seething of the sea alongside, and see it flash by in sudden white patches of phosphorescent foam, while all overhead was black with the flying scud. The English second-mate was stamping with vexation, and, with all his ills misplaced, storming at the men:—"'An'somely the weather ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... already been several demonstrations of feeling in court, but at this statement by the lawyer there was a general hiss. The schoolmaster hesitated ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... follow this hot trail for a time, and holding his gun ready cocked he stepped softly onward. A bluejay cried out, "jay, jay!" with startling loudness, and seemingly enjoyed his pent-up excitement. A few steps forward at slow, careful stalk, and then behind him he heard a loud whistling hiss. Instantly turning he found himself face to face with a great, splendid buck in the short blue coat. There not thirty yards away he stood, the creature he had been stalking so long, in plain view now, broadside on. They gazed ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... could hear the water hiss as the sun dipped its red rim under the waves. The boy now stood by Ned's side, looking ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson

... earth, a low hiss warned him he was trespassing, and clutching Terry's collar, he stood rigid, while the whip-like shadow of death writhed across a strip of moonlight—and disappeared. There was life,—of a sort, in Chitor. So Roy trod warily as he passed from room to room; dread of dark forgotten ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... began to hiss up toward the stars, each falling shower of light greeted with a long rapturous "Ah-h-h!" Catherine-wheels sputtered nearer the ground; red lights made eerie great spots of illumination here and there, against ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris

... the hiss of a Python heaving in menace of doom to be They hear through the clear night round them, whose hours are as clouds that flee, The whisper of tempest sleeping, the heave and the ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... for that, but they took another tone. They began to hiss and to pant be hind him. A big viper came gliding. Its tongue dripping venom hung far out of its mouth, and its bright body shone against the withered leaves. Beside the snake pattered a wolf, a big, gaunt monster, who was ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... lavrocks sing, My man Jock and me shall be doin' o't; He 'll thrash, and I 'll toil on the fields in the spring, And turn up the soil at the plowin' o't. And whan the wee flow'rets begin then to blaw, The lavrock, the peasweep, and skirlin' pickmaw, Shall hiss the bleak winter to Lapland awa, Then we 'll ply the blythe hours at the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... roar of waters!—from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice; The fall of waters! rapid as the light The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss; The Hell of Waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf around, in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... reached for it. My hand trembled. There were sixty or seventy dollars upon the table, and my own contribution was my last cent. As I fumbled I felt the strain of bodies pressing against mine, and heard the hiss of feverish breaths, and a foolish laugh or two. Nevertheless ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... for San Antonio, where, according to promissory advertisement, she would exhibit her "Marvellous Dominion and Fearless Control over Deadly and Venomous Serpents, Handling them with Ease as they Coil and Hiss to the Terror ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... into a violent passion with little Oliver when he went to return his lottery ticket. He abused and ridiculed Howard for his interference, and succeeded so well in raising a popular cry, that the moment Howard appeared on the playground, a general hiss, succeeded by a deep groan, was heard.—Howard recollected the oracle's answer to Cicero, and was not dismayed by the voice of the multitude. Holloway threw down half-a-guinea, to pay Oliver, and muttered to himself, "I'll make you remember ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... He was silent for a moment while a great green rocket rushed upwards with a hiss and burst in a shower of many-coloured stars. Then as they watched them fall he spoke very kindly and earnestly. "But it is worth while all the same—even though one may be turned back from Paradise. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... pleasure out of that encounter. Then ensued some cudgel-playing; but the heads broken were of so little note, and the wounds given so trifling and unsatisfactory, that no wonder the company began to hiss, grumble, and show other signs of discontent. "The masters, the masters!" shouted the people, whereupon those famous champions at length ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Hence are a thousand hackney writers fed; 190 Hence Monthly Critics earn their daily bread. This is a general tax which all must pay, From those who scribble, down to those who play. Actors, a venal crew, receive support From public bounty for the public sport. To clap or hiss all have an equal claim, The cobbler's and his lordship's right's the same. All join for their subsistence; all expect Free leave to praise their worth, their faults correct. When active Pickle Smithfield stage ascends, 200 The three days' wonder of his laughing friends, Each, or as ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... I again wended my steps into the secluded Brandenburg valley, and found the eagles thriving and much grown. Being curious to see if their confinement had subdued their wild and ferocious spirit, I removed one of the laths and entered the barn. An angry hiss, similar to that of a snake, warned me of danger, but too late to save my hands some severe scratches. With one bound and a flap of their gigantic wings they were on me, and had it not been for Tomerl, who was standing just behind me armed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... clouds were now upheaved at such short intervals that the scene of devastation was completely shut out from the observers on the hills; but every few minutes they felt a sickening shock, and heard a momentary and horrible crash and hiss which seemed to fill all the air. The instantaneous motor-bombs were tearing up the sea-board, and ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton

... doors nestled snugly, one after the other, into place with a hiss; the rows of gravity plates in the ship's belly angled ever so slightly. She quivered, then, in a surge of power, lifted straight up and poised; then, answering the touch of space-stick and accelerator, she went streaking through ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore

... size of peas that weighed from a tenth of a gram up. She was either so absorbed in what she was doing, or pretended to be, that she gave no sign of hearing me come up behind her. One of the balls before her struggled off the table top, and I could hear her breath hiss with the effort. Cheating a little, I felt for her lifts and gave her some help. One after another the balls floated up and sank back. She was utterly charmed—or ...
— The Right Time • Walter Bupp

... very savage-looking circular saw, running at a high rate of speed. The operator caught one of the great horns by its tip, gave it a turn through the air before his eyes, seized it in both hands and applied it to the saw. With a sharp hiss the keen teeth severed the solid tip from the body of the horn, and another movement trimmed away the thin, imperfect parts about the base. The latter fell into a pile of refuse at the foot of the frame, the tip was cast into a box with ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous

... below, which masked the up-coming steamers till one heard the sighing labor of their stacks before he saw their smoke. It was a muddy, rushing giant, bearing a burden of sand and silt, so that one might hear it hiss and grind by stooping at its edge to listen; but the slanting sun this afternoon made it appear like a boiling flood of molten gold which issued silently out of a land of mystery and vanished into a valley of forgetfulness. At least so the trader fancied, and found himself wishing ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... miserable east-end music-hall so that her father might find some sort of employment," Tavernake said. "The people only forbore to hiss her father's turn for her sake. She goes about the country with him. Heaven knows what they earn, but it must be little enough! Beatrice is shabby and thin and pale. She is devoting the best years of her life to what she imagines ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... canst forsake me, then, To spare thyself a little bashful pain? Paolo, dost thou know what 'tis for me, A woman—nay, a dame of highest rank— To lose my purity? to walk a path Whose slightest slip may fill my ear with sounds That hiss me out to infamy and death? Have I no secret pangs, no self-respect, No husband's look to bear? O! worse than these, I must endure his loathsome touch; be kind When he would dally with his wife, and smile To see him play thy part. Pah! sickening thought! From that thou ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... is all to torment her, that I, in my turn, give not back her glances, pretending that I have another love. To hear this makes her jealous of me, by Paean, and she wastes with pain, and springs madly from the sea, gazing at my caves and at my herds. And I hiss on my dog to bark at her, for when I loved Galatea he would whine with joy, and lay his muzzle on her lap. Perchance when she marks how I use her she will send me many a messenger, but on her envoys I will shut my door till she promises that herself ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... must go as he was carried. Then in an instant he was carried into a hell of waters where, had it not been for his lifebelt and the plank, he must have been beaten down and have perished. As it was, now he was driven into the depths, and now he emerged upon their surface to hear their seething hiss around him, and above it all a continuous boom as of great guns—the boom ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... fiery flashes in the van Proclaim too sure the robber-clan 590 Have well secured the only way Could now avail the promised prey; Then curled his very beard[96] with ire, And glared his eye with fiercer fire; "Though far and near the bullets hiss, I've scaped a bloodier hour than this." And now the foe their covert quit, And call his vassals to submit; But Hassan's frown and furious word Are dreaded more than hostile sword, 600 Nor of his little band a man Resigned carbine or ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... Well, away we pulled, with the Reefian row-boats after us, our great hopes being that we should decoy them within range of the Harold's guns, and then, if we could bag a boat-load, we might hope to treat advantageously for any prisoners they might have taken. We made the dark, smooth water hiss and bubble under our bows, as we clove our rapid way through it, throwing up a mass of shining foam before us, and leaving a line of liquid fire in our wake. We soon gained more hope of escape, from the rate at which our pursuers ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... crossed the Rubicon that lies between aspiration and attainment. The populace might be blind or dumb, the "rattlesnakes"—the "irresponsible indolent reviewers," who from behind a hedge pelt every wrestler till they found societies for the victor—might still obscurely hiss; but Carlyle was at length safe by the verdict ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... not what they wanted. They flung themselves upon him, tore him from the pulpit, and thrust him into the midst of this howling mob, who dragged him to the altar with that sort of terrible cry which combines the hiss of the serpent and the roar of the tiger, the murderous zou! zou! peculiar to the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... broken stalks spouted forth, with a hiss and a rush, blinding jets of liquid white fire, which tore at the ceiling angrily and roared and crackled. From the broken stalks it spread to the others, and in a moment jets of liquid white fire were blazing and crackling upward from all the stalks in the room, and the ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen

... at the wall when it first struck - the rush along ever growing higher - the great jet of snow-white spray some forty feet above you - and the 'noise of many waters,' the roar, the hiss, the 'shrieking' among the shingle as it fell head over heels at your feet. I watched if it threw the big stones at the wall; ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... music, in mine ear. A gentle hand, that seems divine, Is warmly, fondly clasped in mine; And lips upon my cheeks are pressed, That whisper tones from regions blest: But soon I start—for friendship's kiss Is gone, and lo! a serpent's hiss. ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich

... rear of the cottage and paused to draw aside a branch. Roger cautiously peered through the leaves, and a hiss like that of ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... is the glamour, fled the royal dream, Fled is the joy. They work no more by night Deep in that cave of dazzling amber light, In pools of darkness, under plumes of steam. Gone are the laughing drills that sting and hiss Deep in the ribs of ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley

... for it flapped about the lake and made cries. It would leave the water and stalk through the house walking wide in the legs. It would neither notice nor brook any other man, but rather seemed jealous, and would hiss and flap away the rest of the company. If the bishop slept or watched, the swan would keep dogs and other animals at bay. With true spiritual instinct it would peck hard at the calves of chaplains. If the bishop was abed no one was allowed near him without a most distressing scene, and there was ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... who was once impassioned will grow, until she has lost all her woman's nature. She kept the other four hours at her street-door, as if she were a public show. There was time to fetch a mob of Jesuits' followers, of honest Church artizans, to hoot and hiss, while children might help by throwing stones. For these four hours she was in the pillory. Some, however, of the more dispassionate passers-by asked if the Ursulines had gotten orders to let them kill the girl. We may guess what tender jailers their sick prisoner ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... darkened. In vain Kali threw whole armfuls into it. On the surface the wet boughs smoked only, and below, the burning wood began to hiss and the flame, however much it was replenished, ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... heard this, And they began to hiss, And stretch their claws, And raise their paws; "Me-ow," they said, "me-ow, me-o You'll burn to death, if ...
— CAW! CAW! - The Chronicle of Crows, A Tale of the Spring-time • RM

... quite drove them out. These, when reinforced, renewed the fight with equal obstinacy; the inhabitants themselves joined in with whatever weapons fury suggested to them and as that merciless strife swayed to and fro amidst the roar of artillery, the crash of walls, and the hiss of flame, war was seen ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... I would go. But, look on me!" she smote contempt upon her bosom. "He would not call to such a thing as me. Me, now? My skin is like a toad's to him. I've become like something in the dust. I could hiss like adders. I am quite impenitent. I pray by my bedside, my head on my Bible, but I only say, 'Yes, yes; that's done; that's deserved, if there's no mercy.' Oh, if there is no mercy, that's deserved! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... a hiss which Bruno understood, for he went at Muff more fiercely. It was glorious to see Muff spit fire, and hear her growl low and deep like distant thunder. Paul would not have Muff hurt for anything, but he loved to see Bruno show his teeth at her, ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin

... prisoner. Every one in the court turned about, and gazed with steadfast hatred on the man in the dock. From the jury-box where the twelve sworn brethren were whispering together, a sound in the general stillness like a prolonged "hiss-s-s!" was heard; and then, in answer to the challenge of the officer, "How say you, gentlemen of the jury, guilty or not guilty?" came in a melancholy voice ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... was a writhing, twisting, tangled mass of snakes of dozens of kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty by thirty feet, from which came the sibilant hiss of puff adders, and a strong, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... on her cheeks, as hastily stepped away beneath the chill of her glance; in tremendous perturbation turned and fled; in tremendous perturbation turned and pursued. In Regent's Park he saw her produce a brilliant pair of scarlet worsted reins, gay with bells; heard her hiss like any proper groom as tandemwise she harnessed David ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... Sergyevna, his aunt finally got him under her control. Fedya was afraid of her: he was afraid of her bright sharp eyes and her harsh voice; he dared not utter a sound in her presence; often, when he only moved a little in his chair, she would! hiss out at once: "What are you doing? sit still." On Sundays, after mass, he was allowed to play, that is to say, he was given a thick book, a mysterious book, the work of a certain Maimovitch-Ambodik, entitled "Symbols and Emblems." This book was a medley of about a thousand mostly ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... some heavy silken stuff, passed one after another over the sea from the ship's prow, and broadening as they passed, and wrinkling and widening, were smoothed out again with a shake, and vanished. The foam flew up, churned by the tediously thudding wheels; white as milk, with a faint hiss it broke up into serpentine eddies, and then melted together again and vanished too, swallowed ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... taking their morning waddle, and Reddy ran plump into them. Now there was nothing that he liked better to eat than nice fat goose. Still, he didn't wait, but left them beating their wings and stretching their long necks to hiss, hiss, hiss, as they scattered in all directions. I guess Reddy wished his legs were as long as ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson

... Georgian portals of the White Lion Inn, for a straggling tail of children bearing home small shoppings and jugs of supper beer, for a flock of gray geese proceeding with suggestively self-righteous demeanour along the very middle of the roadway and lowering long necks to hiss defiance at the passer-by, and for an old black retriever dozing peacefully beneath one of the rustling sycamores in front of Josiah Appleyard, the saddler's shop—all these, as she looked at them, became uncertain in outline, reeled ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... dog about as large and strong as a young lion was barking vigorously behind a low fence at a cat, who sat serenely on the other side, meeting his Bombastes Furioso plunges at the intervening pickets with a contemptuous hiss and an occasional buffet with her claw upon his muzzle. I have yet to see a dog that dares attack my goat of a year old, except when he is harnessed to his wagon. They are not, however, afraid of sheep. And they are much more clear in their minds about attacking children than strong ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... came the head and half the body of a huge grey snake. But the witch did not look round. It grew out of the tub, waving itself backwards and forwards with a slow horizontal motion, till it reached the princess, when it laid its head upon her shoulder, and gave a low hiss in her ear. She started—but with joy; and seeing the head resting on her shoulder, drew it towards her and kissed it. Then she drew it all out of the tub, and wound it round her body. It was one of those dreadful creatures which few have ever beheld—the ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... there was a red weal across the shoulder, and an angry hiss ran through the court at the prisoners, which was with ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty

... his wound was forgotten, and he thought only of escape when the brush ahead opened, and the Grizzly, smoke-blinded, half roasted, plunged down a bank and into a small clear pool. The fur on his back said "hiss," for it was sizzling-hot. Down below he went, gulping the cool drink, wallowing in safety and unheat. Down below the surface he crouched as long as his lungs would bear the strain, then slowly and ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton

... Champions bold Wont ride in arm'd, and at the Soldans chair Defi'd the best of Panim chivalry To mortal combat or carreer with Lance) Thick swarm'd, both on the ground and in the air, Brusht with the hiss of russling wings. As Bees In spring time, when the Sun with Taurus rides, Poure forth thir populous youth about the Hive 770 In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers Flie to and fro, or on the smoothed Plank, The suburb of thir Straw-built Cittadel, New rub'd with Baume, expatiate and confer ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... of loving eyes!" So thou murmurest, fearful one; but see, we tread a rougher way; Fainter glow the gleams of sunshine that upon the dark rocks play; Rude winds strew the faded flowers upon the crags o'er which we pass; Banks of verdure, when we reach them, hiss with tufts of withered grass. One by one we miss the voices which we loved so well to hear; One by one the kindly faces in that shadow disappear. Yet upon the mist before us fix thine eyes with closer view; See, beneath its sullen skirts, the rosy morning ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... The masts bent as though they must dip under, And the winds and the waves at length Girt up their strength, And the depths were laid bare, And heaven flashed fire and volleyed thunder Through the rain-choked air, And sea and sky seemed to kiss In the horror and the hiss Of the whole ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... The anguish of the trusted hope that wanes, The soldier's wound, the lonely mourner's smart. He knew the noisy horror of the fight, From dawn to dusk and through the hideous night He heard the hiss of bullets, the shrill scream Of the wide-arching shell, Scattering at Gettysburg or by Potomac's stream, Like summer flowers, the pattering rain of death; With every breath, He tasted battle and in every dream, Trailing ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... broke from those who stood hindmost, and in strode the witch, with serpents round her neck and arms and hair. At a sign from her they flung themselves with a hiss upon the maidens, whose flesh was pierced with their poisonous fangs. Then turning to ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various

... were not speaking truth to tell thee that I think a gentleman of birth and quality should walk the thoroughfares with a bundle of books under his arm; yet as for the raptril vulgar, the hildings and cullions who hiss one day what they applaud the next, I hold it the duty of every Christian and well-born man to regard them as the dirt on the crossings. Brave soldiers term it no disgrace to receive a blow from a base hind. An' it had been knights and gentles ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... The sudden hiss of the kettle, boiling over, made him jump and seize it. As he turned to set it down, there was a figure standing beside the table. Neither spoke. The kettle burnt his hand and he set it back on the hearth; then he remained standing, his eyes ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... between the old English again-rising and resurrection; but there can be no doubt that conscience is better than inwit, and remorse than again-bite. Should we translate the title of Wordsworth's famous ode, "Intimations of Immortality," into "Hints of Deathlessness," it would hiss like an angry gander. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... an' Jimmie done it. Thin, later, he seen his mistake an' th' Dimocrats seen theirs, an' Jimmie come back ter his old roost. Some iv thim who didn't know the true innards iv th' situation blamed Jimmie, an' at a meetin' th' Dimocrats held—crocus, I think he called it—some iv them started ter hiss Jimmie when he begun ter spake. Th' man at th' desk, whatever title he has, thried ter stop 'em, but Jimmie was quicker than any iv 'em. He jumps up on a chair, Jimmie does, an' waves his arms theatrical like, an' cries out good an' sthrong, 'Don't mind 'em, Misther Moderator ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... he hath past From vile usurpers Now bring him joy at last, Although some lurkers Did seek his blood to spill By actions evil; But God we see is still Above the Devil: Though many serpents hiss Him to devour, God his defender is By His strong power: Then let us give him praise That doth defend him, And sing with heart ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... of the English go out, and silence prevails, save for the soft hiss of the rain that falls impartially on both the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... opposite side of the sledge, with a terrific pull, he drew one of the harpoons out of the ice and with his knife speedily cut it loose from the lashings. Ootah, stunned for a moment, turned upon him. Maisanguaq desperately raised the weapon. Ootah heard it hiss through the air. He reeled backward—the harpoon grazed his arm ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... that shouts after you like a pack of hounds after a hare. In spite of my pretension of being the least susceptible regarding an author's vanity of all the writers in Paris, it is perfectly impossible to be indifferent to such a thing—a hiss is a hiss. However, vanity aside, there was a question of money which, as I have a bad habit of spending regularly my capital as well as my income, was not without its importance. It meant, according to my calculation, some sixty thousand francs cut off from ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... guards dreamed that anything more dangerous than thoughts could or would come. And yet, within two minutes from the time he was spread upon his back and left alone, old Two Knives heard inside the lodge a low, warning hiss. ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard

... banks of the Moselle. Until within late years, the people were wont to assemble yearly upon a mountain, to set fire to a huge wooden wheel, twined with straw, which, all ablaze, was then sent rolling down the hill, to plunge with a hiss into ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... and the darkness seemed like twin enemies determined to bar her advance. She felt that Nature was her foe, even as man had been, and as Rehoboth would be when it knew of her return. Why did the rain hiss, and dash its cold and stinging showers in her face? Why did it saturate her thin skirts so that they, in chill folds, wrapped her wasted frame and clung cruelly to her weary limbs to stay her onward travel? And why that strange, weird sound—the sound muttered by miles of herbage when beaten ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather

... "Nothing!" declared Errington, though hiss color heightened. "Nothing, I assure you! It's just a matter of curiosity with me. I should like to know who she is—that's all! The affair ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... before he joins us at the palace," the Intendant said, and with a nod to me he turned to his coachman. The horses wheeled, and in a moment the great doors opened, and he had passed inside to applause, though here and there among the crowd was heard a hiss, for the Scarlet Woman had made an impression. The Intendant's men essayed to trace these noises, but found no one. Looking again to the Heights, I saw that the woman had gone. Doltaire noted my glance and the inquiry in my face, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... village. Such trees as there are grow out of the sand, and are twisted by the winds from the sea. Their trunks are green with smooth moss. And over the dunes is long grass, then grey and dry with winter, grass that was beaten under the wind into waves that surge and hiss. ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Prussia—and, to the strains of martial music, moving down the Champ Elysees to the Place de la Concorde, was distributed thence over certain sections of the city agreed upon beforehand. Nothing that could be called a disturbance took place during the march; and though there was a hiss now and then and murmurings of discontent, yet the most noteworthy mutterings were directed against the defunct Empire. Indeed, I found everywhere that the national misfortunes were laid at ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... dead calm for a minute. Tiffles was silent, in order that he might not interrupt the quiet admiration of the spectators. The spectators were silent, because they could not exactly understand the scene, and did not know whether to laugh, hiss, or applaud. The silence was broken, by a boy in the back part ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... actors as the curtain rose and again rose during the applause. Presently he turned away to speak to the lady who had read his plays on the night of his first success. The play was loudly applauded. Some people behind me—a youth and a girl—began to hiss. I remember thinking that they resembled the bird they imitated. I only saw Synge on two other occasions. I met him at a dinner party, but had no talk with him, and I called upon him at his old lodgings ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield

... fairly good and put the crowd in good humor once more. But that to follow was so bad that many began to hiss. Then came a race which was as tame as it could possibly be, and many began ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield

... the fumes! Are those real men or ghosts? The stillness spreads of Death abroad—down come the temple posts, Their molten bronze is coursing fast and joins with silver waves To leap with hiss of thousand snakes where Tiber writhes ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... destined Pompeii, creeping on tiptoe with the mother when she gives her farewell look to the baby. Now all is midnight and silence; then the red, crawling serpent comes out. Lo! his breath; hark! his hiss. Now, spire after spire he winds and he coils; now he soars up erect,—crest superb, and forked tongue,—the beautiful horror! Then the start from the sleep, and the doubtful awaking, and the run here and there, and the mother's rush to the cradle; ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... as a remote possibility, was little short of blasphemous. Their amiable nephew, meanwhile, had regarded them as a flock of silly fat geese eminently fitted for plucking. He let them complacently hiss and cackle, congratulate themselves upon their worldly wisdom and conspicuous modernity, while, all the time, silently, diligently, relentlessly plucking. Now, awakening suddenly to the fact of their nudity, they were in a terrible taking; ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... roses, with the wild rose face of me Ladybird looking through. I see the swale rocking, smell the sweetness of the blooming things, and the damp, mucky odor of the swamp; and I hear me birds sing, me squirrels bark, the rattlers hiss, and the step of Wessner or Black Jack coming; and whether it's the things that I loved or the things that I feared, it's all ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... wherein I had read the charge, had been such a friendly, tea-and-gossip book, not the kind to hiss a scandal at you. It was bound in blue cloth and was a heavy book, so that I held it on a cushion. (And this device I recommend to others.) It was the kind of book that stays open at your place, if you leave it for a moment to poke the fire. Some books will flop a hundred ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... carried his prize to a lapidary's bench. He perched himself on a stool and reached for his magnifying glass. A queer little hiss broke through his lips. Cut-glass beads, patently Occidental, and here in ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... difficult for the men in the boats below to see us in the dusk, shrouded as we were in black. They sent up a rocket once; it mounted above us in a slow flaming arc, hung poised an instant, and then descended, plunging into the sea a mile or so away. We heard distinctly the hiss of its contact with the water, and saw, like a quickly dissipating mist, the cloud ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... engaged in concocting the potato salad the kettle upset, extinguished the fire, and sent up a loud triumphant hiss of steam mingled with ashes. Fortunately the potatoes were cooked, so the dinner was at last begun in comfort—that is to say, everyone was very hot, very much exhausted and excited, and very thirsty. Jacky gorged himself with tart ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... was a poor one, the charge merely tearing across the side of the water snake. With another hiss it whipped around and in a twinkling had itself curled around Whopper's ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill

... cried Denham. "I say, you two have made a discovery." Then he lit a match, got it well in a blaze, and let it drop down the square shaft, when it kept burning till, at about a hundred feet below us, it went out with a faint hiss, which told that ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... Desire saw that the ribs of the sorcerer's canoe were formed of living rattlesnakes, whose heads pointed outward to guard him from his enemies. Being invited, he had no sooner stepped into the canoe, than they began to hiss and rattle furiously, which put him in a great fright; but the magician spoke to them, when they became pacified and quiet. Shortly after they were at the landing upon the island. The marriage took place immediately; and the bride made presents of various valuables which had been furnished ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews

... like to know, was to be done with all those who had advanced money in making and repairing turnpike-roads? What was to become of coach-makers and harness-makers, coach-masters and coachmen, inn-keepers, horse-breeders, and horse-dealers? Was the house aware of the smoke and the noise, the hiss and the whirl, which locomotive engines, passing at the rate of 10 or 12 miles an hour, would occasion? Neither the cattle ploughing in the fields or grazing in the meadows could behold them without dismay. Iron would be raised in price 100 per cent., or ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... in the production of the piece. He had come to the conclusion that the public was a fickle, foolish thing, and no one could tell what it would hiss or applaud. Then he remembered the blackness of the night when only two years before his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... Come on, then! Good! good! On the arms, on the back, on the breast, against the belly, everywhere! Hiss, thongs! bite me! tear me! I would like the drops of my blood to gush forth to the stars, to break my back, to strip my nerves bare! Pincers! wooden horses! molten lead! The martyrs bore more than that! Is that not ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... of the World as well as they could; in short the Customers fell off, and the Priests, who were the Shopkeepers, having no Business to do, shut up their Shops, broke, and went away; the Trade and the Tradesmen were hiss'd off the Stage together; so that the Devil, who, it must be confess'd, got infinitely by the Cheat, became bankrupt, and was oblig'd to set other Engines at work, as other Cheats and Deceivers do, who when one Trick grows stale, and ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... the Horn-Snakes I never saw but two, that I remember. They are like the Rattle-Snake in Colour, but rather lighter. They hiss exactly like a Goose, when any thing approaches them. They strike at their Enemy with their Tail, and kill whatsoever they wound with it, which is arm'd at the End with a horny Substance, like a Cock's Spur. This is their Weapon. I have heard it credibly reported, by those who said they were ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... hissing sound in the word Sister, that I cannot abide it. 'Tis a true English word, but a word I have not been used to, having never had a sis-s-s-ter before, as you know,"—Speaking the first syllable of the word with an emphatical hiss. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... faces seemed familiar; the crew of the ship, probably. He also recognized several of the passengers. However, he made no attempt to speak to them. After his meal, he bought a good corona and went for a walk. His situation could have been any small western American seacoast city. He heard the hiss of the ocean in the direction the afternoon sun was taking. In his full-gaited walk, he ...
— The Perfectionists • Arnold Castle

... fall back into the chasm before they reach us; burning ashes strike the smooth walls with a weird scream, and then whirl back into the darkness; yellow solfataras rise in foaming jets, with the fierce hiss of unseen serpents, and bellowing thunders shake the earth. The superb spectacle of nature's power in her armoury of terror is unique among the volcanos of Java, for unless the Bromo blazes in the throes of a violent eruption, when the ascent to the crater becomes impossible, no danger ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... whippin' post. Dey strip off his shirt, den dey put his head an' hands through de holes in de top, an' tied his feets to de bottom, den, Ole Marse took de whip. Dat lash hiss like col' water on er red hot iron when it come through de air, an' every time it hit Burrus it lef' er streak of blood. Time Ole Marse finish, Burrus' back look like er piece of ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various

... and the fighting still going on—but the spirit of the French not a jot changed. Here, among the civilians, they say: "Verdun will never fall," and out at the front, they tell us that the poilus simply hiss through their clenched teeth, as they fight and fall, "They shall not pass." And all the time we sit inactive on the hilltop holding that thought. It's all ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... Bohannan, irritably, "I'm not wholly convinced this is the correct procedure." He spoke in low tones, covered by the purring exhaust of the launch and by the hiss of swiftly cloven waters. "It looks like unnecessary complication, to me, and ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... the Clockmaker grew uneasy. "It's pretty well on in the evening, I guess," said he, "and Marm Pugwash is as onsartin in her temper as a mornin' in April; it's all sunshine or all clouds with her, and if she's in one of her tantrums she'll stretch out her neck and hiss like a goose with a flock of goslin's. I wonder what on airth Pugwash was a-thinkin' on when he signed articles of partnership with that are woman; she's not a bad-lookin' piece of furniture, neither, and it's a proper pity ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... The wind rose, and the waves chopped angrily at unseen barriers. Our little boat confronted the gale fearlessly; with sails spread and ropes taut, she seemed to sit upon the wind. Now she swirled in the billows, now she spring upward on a gigantic wave, only to be driven down with angry howl and hiss. Down came the mainsail. Tacking and jibbing, we wrestled with opposing winds that drove us from side to side with impetuous fury. Our hearts beat fast, and our hands trembled with excitement, not fear, for we had the hearts of vikings, and we knew that our skipper ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... for us, And the predestined creeping things reserved By my sire to Jehovah's bidding? May He preserve them, and I not have the power To snatch the loveliest of earth's daughters from A doom which even some serpent, with his mate, Shall 'scape to save his kind to be prolonged, To hiss and sting through some emerging world, 40 Reeking and dank from out the slime, whose ooze Shall slumber o'er the wreck of this, until The salt morass subside into a sphere Beneath the sun, and be the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... the boarders as well as they might, and the entire horde of wild barbarians had scrambled to her deck, where a perfect inferno now held sway. The air seemed full of flying cutlasses that produced an incessant hiss and clangor. Pistols banged deafeningly at close quarters and there was the constant undertone of groans, cries and bellowed oaths. Above the din came the terrible, clear voice of Stede Bonnet, urging on his seadogs. He had become a different man ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... de paper, sir. I haf heard dis from de chauffeur of de Biedermanns next door. He wass at de hotel himself wid hiss shentleman lars' night at de dance. Dey won't put dat in ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... from a great distance. It was only the wind, the great motive breath of all this disorder, the voice of the invisible power ruling all. Then came other voices, nearer and less indefinite, threatening destruction, and making the water shudder and hiss as if on burning coals; the ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... muttering and growling in the distance began to burst. The great clouds seemed to grow and swell, and from the breast of them swift lightnings leapt, to be met by other lightnings rushing upwards from the earth. The air was filled with a tumult of uncertain wind and a hiss as of distant rain. Then the batteries of thunder were opened, and the world shook with their volume. Down from on high the flashes fell blinding and incessant, and by the light of them the fire-doctors could be seen ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard

... he was at a safe distance I looked up my bars of soap, and dropping a couple of them under the lid, awaited the result. Very shortly a hiss and a groan were heard, and up went the boiling water, sending the ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... or fifty rifles cracked among the pines. Harry saw little flashes of fire, and he heard bullets hiss so venomously that a chill ran along his spine. There was a patter of lead on every side of the house, but most of the shots came from the front lawn. It was well that the colonel, Harry and the judge, were sheltered by the big ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler

... get near enough to see it if you hiss like a serpent," said the hermit. "Get out your binoculars, follow me, and hold your tongue, all of you—that will be ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... way; To that Newmarket—(though I hate the place, And have no taste or talents for a race, Yet so it is—well, now prepare to chide) - I laid a wager that I dared to ride: And I must go: by heaven, if you resist I shall be scorn'd, and ridiculed, and hiss'd; Let me with grace before my friends appear, You know the truth, and must not be severe: He too must go, but that he will of course: Do you consent?—I never think of force." "You never need," the worthy Dame replied; "The husband's ...
— Tales • George Crabbe

... three alert and watchful, eager for fight, what time the struggle waxed ever more fierce and deadly. To and fro the wrestlers swayed, locked in vicious grapple, grimly silent save for the dull trampling of their feet upon the moss and the gasp and hiss of panting breaths; writhing and twisting, stumbling and slipping, or suddenly still with feet that gripped the sod, with bulging muscles, swelled and rigid, that cracked beneath the strain, while eye glared death to eye. But Beltane's iron fingers were fast locked, and little ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... see," said Beau Moessard, while his cane cleft the air with a noise like a snake's hiss; and, turning on his heel, he strode rapidly away like a man who has very ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... live; but sometimes, too, beneath The dust they raised, was worth awhile obscured: And then did envy prophesy and laugh. O envy! hide thy bosom! hide it deep: A thousand snakes, with black, envenomed mouths, Nest there, and hiss, and feed ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... were cut short in a manner that was violent, not to say alarming. Two spears whizzed past him with a vicious, angry hiss, one burying itself deep in the stem of the tree-fern just behind him, the other flying into empty space, but grazing his ear by very few inches indeed. Then, in the wild, barking, hoarse-throated yell, blood-curdling in its note of hate and fury, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... your hand too recklessly into an owl hole, for a hiss and a sudden nip may show that an opossum has taken up his quarters there. If you must, pull him out by his squirming, naked tail, but do not carry him home, as he makes a poor pet, and between hen-house traps and irate farmers, he has good reason, in this ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... gleam from a lantern opened by one of the men close to her, showed that she stood on the brink of a newly-dug grave. She started back at the appalling sight—and was upheld from falling by her attendants, on whose faces she saw a malignant grin; while the tones of Dom Lupo's voice seemed to hiss in her ears, like the serpent triumph of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various

... intense silence was broken by a loud universal hiss. Pilar, thinking that it was part of her punishment, cowered lower, then, obeying some impulse, looked up, and saw the back of the young priest. He was running. As her dull gaze was about to fall again, it encountered for a moment the indignant ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... intervals reading, smoking, and sleeping. Sleep, indeed, you will enjoy most luxuriously, for the rapid bounding motion of the canoe as it leaps forward at every impulse of the crew, the sharp quick beat of the paddles on the water, and the roll of their shafts against the gunwale, with the continuous hiss and ripple of the stream cleft by the curving prow, combine to make a most ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... two feet of the hideous reptile. All of a sudden the beast whirled itself into a coil, its eyes fastened with hideous malignity on poor Gallon, and with its head erect it emitted the most awful hiss I have heard proceed from the mouth ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock

... to ashes! burnt to ashes! The flames dart their serpent tongues through the nursery window. I cannot quit thee, my Elizabeth! I cannot lay down our Edmund! Oh, these flames! They persecute, they enthral me; they curl round my temples; they hiss upon my brain; they taunt me with their fierce, foul voices; they carp at me, they wither me, they consume me, throwing back to me a little of life to roll and suffer in, with their fangs upon me. Ask me, my lord, the things you wish to know from me: I may answer them; I am now ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... into a keg of proper size for containing it, and let it ferment at the bung-hole; filling it up as it works out with some of the liquor reserved for that purpose. As soon as it ceases to hiss, stop it close with a cloth wrapped round the bung. A pint of white brandy for every gallon of the gooseberry wine may be added on bunging it up. At the end of four or five months it will probably be fine enough to bottle off. It is best to bottle it in cold frosty weather. ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... impudence and trick,[448:2] With cloven tongue prepared to hiss and lick, Rome's Brazen Serpent—boldly dares discuss The roasting of thy heart, O brave John Huss! 10 And with grim triumph and a truculent glee[448:3] Absolves anew the Pope-wrought perfidy, That made an empire's plighted faith a lie, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... valve. The steam filled the turbine with a hiss and throb. The Porpoise trembled. Then, with a cough and splutter of the exhaust pipes, the engine started. Slowly it went at first, but, as the professor admitted more steam, it revolved the long screw until it fairly hummed in ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood

... "Hiss!" warned Tiger. "No more talking until we are inside the building. We are approaching the warehouse now and we must not let the watchmen see us. The only way we can get in is through a window in the basement that has been left open by mistake. There is a broad plank running from the ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery

... from us; and then with hiss and rattle as of the first gust of a storm in dry branches the arrows flew among them, smiting man and horse alike, and down went full half of the foremost line, while over the fallen leapt and plunged those behind them ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... day it happened he felt the same old surge of anger and despair twenty years old now, felt the ray-gun bucking hard against his unaccustomed fist, heard the hiss of its deadly charge ravening into a face he hated. He could not be sorry, even now, for that first man he had killed. But in the smoke of that killing had gone up the columned house and the future he might have had, the boy himself—lost as ...
— Song in a Minor Key • Catherine Lucille Moore

... far that day, but they responded gallantly to Harry's encouragement. The cold bit deep, however, and I could scarcely move a limb when, toward midnight, with a hiss of runners and a jingle of bells, we came into sight of Fletcher's shanty by Willow Lake. As luck would have it a light still shone in the window, and he opened the door when Harry and I made shift to draw some wrappings over the ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... behind us which can't see the picture on account of us talkin' and they begin to hiss at us. It bothers Alex the same ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer

... the expense of its hire was two pounds ten shillings. Stopped at the "Crown Inn," upon the road, for refreshments, and on handing a ragged little urchin a shilling for his voluntary service of standing at the door of our barouche, on starting off were saluted by a hiss for our generosity. A greater douceur was expected from the drivers of such a ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... shut with a bang as Paddy and Capps, followed by Kennedy and myself, crept into the air-lock. Paddy turned on a valve, and compressed air from the tunnel began to rush in with a hiss as of escaping steam. Pound after pound to the square inch the pressure slowly rose until I felt sure the drums of my ears would burst. Then the hissing noise began to dwindle down to a wheeze, and then it stopped all of a sudden. That meant that the air-pressure in the lock was ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... moment a beam of light flashed from the cabins across the way. Legrand gave vent to a hiss of warning and moved off. I could see his shadow for a moment, and then it was swallowed in the blackness. He was waiting and watching outside the cabin. The light streamed out in a fan towards us, and revealed, in the opening of a door, a man's form, and ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... and she paid less and less attention to convention and a trifle more to the beauty of Agatha's jewels, until the silence at the small table in the corner remained unbroken except by the faint tinkle of silver and crystal and the bubbling hiss of a ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... in my opinion, many wild conceits and imaginary beauties. All that can furnish this representation are the sounds of the words considered singly and the time in which they are pronounced. Every language has some words framed to exhibit the noises which they express, as THUMP, RATTLE, GROWL, HISS. These, however, are but few, and the poet cannot make them more, nor can they be of any use but when sound is to be mentioned. The time of pronunciation was in the dactylic measures of the learned languages capable of considerable variety; but that variety could be accommodated ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... in his actions; for I take it that a discreet reverence for the body we live in, which the vulgar term fear, shows the best proof of the value of the individual. Egad! life here is as cheap as the grass on an empty common, where there is no democracy of goose to hiss at the kingly shadow of a single ass in God's sunshine. My master hath not done well; for he must have known that I could not leave him without a moral guide and companion—to die, too, with the sin of my unpaid wages ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... a text as this "We sadly miss old CHARLEY's line;" But were we mute, Neptune would hiss His sons degenerate off the brine. Old "CHARLEY" spins his yarns no more! He's dead, as Scrooge declared old Marley. What then? Wake up, from shore to shore, And—send your guineas to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various

... theology of all that is unreal or needlessly perplexing, and make it speak plainly and humanly to people who have their duty to do and their battle to fight?" It makes intelligent, sympathetic, and helpful living take the place of the tooth and the claw, the growl and the deadly hiss of the jungle—all right in their places, but with no place in ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine

... occasional picket firing increased to the sharper rattle of skirmishing, and then deepened to the roar of battle, as the sound of continuous volleys rolled through the woods, mingled with the bellow of cannon and the hiss of shells. Every man now stood with rifle in hand, ready for the decisive moment which had evidently come. Above the noise of musketry and cannon we could sometimes hear the well-known rebel yell, and knew that they were charging with all their force. Now the horrid uproar could ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... in vain. Such volumes of smoke: "the heavens were black as if you had hung them with mortcloth:" such roaring cataracts of flame, "you could have picked up a copper doit at the distance of 800 yards."—"Hiss-s-s!" what hissing far aloft is that? That is the incomparable big Bells melting. There they vanish, their fine tones never to be tried more, and ooze through the red-hot ruin, "Hush-sh-sht!" the last sound heard from them. And the stem for holding ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... she escaped our pursuit and spreading wings ceased not to fly before us (and we following by sight) till she lost us in a desert wherein there was neither grass nor water, nor heard we aught therein save hiss of snake and wail of Jinn and howl of Ghul; and when we reached that place the ostrich disappeared nor could we tell whether she had flown up into the sky or into the ground had gone down. Then we turned our horses' heads ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... Power House roof. The storm tore at me. It was beginning to rain. I was near the outer edge of the roof, and ten feet away stood the oval tower. I saw windows twenty feet up, with dim lights in them. Mingled with the storm was the hiss of the transmitter in the top of the tower, and the roar of Tugh's magnified voice. He had evidently been there only a brief time. From where I crouched on the roof, I could see overhead, along the top edge ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... in the pathless sweep Of the terrible northern blast; Above its roof the wild clouds leap And shriek as they hurtle past. The snow-waves hiss along the plain, Like spectral wolves they stretch and strain And race and ramp—with hissing beat, Like stealthy tread of myriad feet, I hear them pass; upon the roof The icy showers swirl and rattle; ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland

... given them; and this house which I have hallowed for My name, will I cast out of My sight; and Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all people: 8. And at this house, which is high, every one that passeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss; and they shall say, Why hath the Lord done thus unto this land, and to this house? 9. And they shall answer, Because they forsook the Lord their God, who brought forth their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and have taken hold upon ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... of bears or other large animals. The carnivorous plants growing at their centre were often like hollow trees, and might easily have received the three travellers in one embrace. But as before, the mounds were alive with serpents that evidently made them their homes, and raised an angry hiss whenever the men approached. "The wonder to me," said Bearwarden, "is, that these snakes do not protect the game, by keeping it from the life-devouring plants. It may be that they do not show themselves by day or when ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... was already stripping the searchlight of its cover. When he had swung open the big lens Tommy struck a match, which blew out. His second was blown out by a hiss of air that preceded the flow of gas, and the professor jumbled matters by trying his hand. But these efforts scarcely took more time than the telling, and when the powerful streak of light finally pierced the darkness the very first ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... a mere fable. No man was ever fool enough to warm a serpent in his bosom. And the serpent never crosses the path of man if he can help it. The most deadly is that which is too sluggish to get out of his way—therefore bites in self-defense. And the serpent generally gives some warning hiss, or a rattle. Indeed, almost every animal gives warning of its foul intent. The shark turns over before seizing its prey. But the false friend (I am obliged to couple these words) takes you in without changing his side.... In truth, a man, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... dog, in her sight! Ay, she shall see it! I will hiss in her ears as she gazes—'It is my work! this is my revenge!' Ha! ha! where her pride then?—her high birth and station?—wealth, family? Dust, shame, agony, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... eerie thing o'er the moor to fare When the eddies of peat-smoke justle, When the wraiths of mist whirl here and there And wind-blown tendrils tussle, When every step starts a hidden spring And the trodden moss-tufts hiss and sing 'Tis an eerie thing o'er the moor to fare When the tangled ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... approaching the burning steamer. Amid the roar of the flames and the hiss of the sea against heated iron was heard the thin whine ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... sound in my ears like the never-ceasing surge and hiss of waters, a sound that waxed ever louder. Hearkening to this, I presently sought to move and wondered, vaguely uneasy, to find this impossible: I strove now to lift my right hand, found it fast held, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... still was it, Hampton could distinguish the faint ticking of the watch in his pocket, the hiss of the breath between the giant's clinched teeth. Twice the fellow tried to utter something, his lips shaking as with the palsy, his ashen face the picture of terror. No wretch dragged shrieking to the scaffold could have formed a more pitiful ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... the sand spit is the steeper. There the folds of the sea fall in velvety thuds ever so gentle, ever so regular. On the southern slope, where the gradient is easy, the wavelets glide up with heedless hiss and slide back with shuffling whisper, scarce moving the garlands of brown seaweed which a few hours before had been torn from the borders of the coral garden ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... of that kind was, that we met an ugly, venomous, deformed kind of a snake or serpent in the wet grounds near the lake, that several times pursued us as if it would attack us; and if we struck or threw anything at it, it would raise itself up and hiss so loud that it might be heard a great way. It had a hellish ugly deformed look and voice, and our men would not be persuaded but it was the devil, only that we did not know what business Satan could have there, where ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... dog-whip, which he little relished. This proceeding educed from the tribe of starers all their native power of vituperation and abuse, in expressing which they were peculiar. Approaching in manner to angry tom-cats, they jerked their words with something of a splitting hiss and a half bark. The ejaculation, as near as I can spell it phonetically, was "hahcht" uttered in a shrill crescendo tone. They paced backwards and forwards, asking themselves, "Are the Wagoga to be beaten ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... spoken the truth. As Dave gripped the cord attached to the gas valve on the balloon and in his imagination heard the hiss of escaping gas and felt the drop of the balloon, his thoughts sobered. After all, what did they know about these strange people? What sort of treatment would they receive from them? If they landed they might, in less than an hour, be dead. Might it not ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell

... darkness. A big lamp that flickered in the wind cast an uncertain gleam upon the slushy whiteness under foot, and the blurred outline of a towering water-tank showed dimly through the sliding snow. He could also just discern the great locomotive waiting on the side-track, and the sibilant hiss of steam that mingled with the moaning of the wind whirling a white haze out of the obscurity. Beyond the track, and showing only now and then, the lights of the wooden town blinked fitfully; on the other ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... feathers of her neck and breast. She is usually the more courageous and pugilistic. She makes a deep hollow guttural boom especially at night, sounding like a small gong. The male has a slenderer frame and is more docile, with no voice beyond a suppressed hiss when angry, or a croak." He not only performs the whole duty of incubation, but has to defend the young from their mother; "for as soon as she catches sight of her progeny she becomes violently agitated, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... out from him the bitter word And serpent hiss of scorning; Nor let the storms of yesterday Disturb his quiet morning. Breathe over him forgetfulness Of all save deeds of kindness, And, save to smiles of grateful eyes, Press down ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... demonstrations of feeling in court, but at this statement by the lawyer there was a general hiss. ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... against the black background, lighting up the Roads and reflecting her lurid lights on the bosom of the now placid and hushed waters. Every now and then the flames would reach one of the loaded cannon and a shell would hiss at random through the darkness. About midnight came the grand finale. The magazines exploded, shooting up a huge column of firebrands hundreds of feet in the air, and then the burning hulk burst asunder and melted into the waters, while the calm night ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.

... may, there once lived in that great forest a boy and his sister. Not being able to speak their language I do not know what their names may have meant; but they had names, one sounding like a grunt, the other a hiss. Better call them Umpl and Sptz, which is as near as I can come to it. Of course Sptz was the girl; and they both believed most firmly in hobgoblins, evil spirits, wicked elves, that were ever on the watch for them in the dark; and when they heard the long cre-ak ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True

... daring to send reliefs at the appointed intervals. So intense has the rifle-fire been around the Su Wang-fu and the French Legation lines, that high above the deafening roar of battle a distinct and ominous snake-like hissing can be heard—a hiss, hiss, hiss, that never ceases. It is the high-velocity nickel-nosed bullet tearing through the air at lightning speed, and spitting with rage at its ill success in driving home on some unfortunate wretch. They hiss, hiss, hiss, hour after hour, without stopping; and ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... heart swelled within him; but as he looked with proud admiration at the cloaked and hooded figure by his side, the cutter's gun fired for the third time. With roar and hiss the shot came over the bow of the schooner, as she dipped into the trough, and raking the deck, crashed through her side on the quarter. Molly gave a shriek ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... the moon had risen full and round, so that the clouds of smoke that rose in the air appeared as white as snow. The air seemed full of the hiss and screaming of shot, each one of which, when it struck the galleon, was magnified by our hero's imagination into ten times its magnitude from the crash which it delivered and from the cloud of splinters it would cast up into ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... companion departed. In the evening, having supped, we went to the theatre, where I revenged myself upon the "heavy man," and the "light comedian," who had in the afternoon made merry at my expense for carrying the harp, by getting up a hiss for the former gentleman, who knew not one single word of his part, and by hitting the latter individual upon the nose with an apple, for which latter feat (as the actor was a great favorite,) I was ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson

... are courageous indeed, Hiss Elfrida. That is done by a woman who is invited, every where in her proper person, and knows 'tout Paris' like her alphabet I believe she holds stock in Raffini; anyway, they would double her pay rather than lose her. You would have more chance of ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... perhaps than even you can believe, Medic!" That came in a hiss of cold rage. "I think that its present manifestation—death by a beast that is not a beast—could ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North

... tea or served the supper, she would begin talking of the cattle plague, of the foot and mouth disease, and of the municipal slaughterhouses. He was dreadfully embarrassed, and when the guests had gone, he would seize her by the hand and hiss angrily: ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... spacious hall Thick swarm'd, both on the ground and in the air, Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides, Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flow'rs Fly to and fro; or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod the wine press alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... a look of hate, emitted a noise that resembled a hiss, hesitated long enough to suggest violence, then with the air of a bloodhound with his tail between his ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... they had been filled, and heard, deep down, 'perhaps eight feet down in the juice, a seething, gushing sound, as if currents and eddies were beginning to flow, in obedience to the influence of the working spirit; and now and then a hiss and a low bubbling throb, as though of a pot about to boil.' In a little while, it would have been impossible to breathe an atmosphere thus saturated with carbonic acid gas; and the superintendents can only watch the process of nature by listening outside ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various

... and there was I, looking a mere child myself, and with a bad cold in my head too, answering: "It's bine!" The very thought of it used to send us off into fits of laughter. We hung on to chairs, helpless, limp, and incapable. Mrs. Wigan said if we did it again, she would go in front and hiss us, and she carried out her threat. The very next time we laughed, a loud hiss rose from the stagebox. I was simply paralyzed ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... no mistake; a sailing-ship somehow seems always ready to spring into life with the breath of the incorruptible heaven; but a teamer, thought Captain Whalley, with her fires out, without the warm whiffs from below meeting you on her decks, without the hiss of steam, the clangs of iron in her breast—lies there as cold and still and ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... preparations were completed, the sharp-starred winter night had settled down upon the solitude. In all the vast there was no sound but the occasional snap, hollow and startling, of some great tree overstrung by the frost, and the intimate little whisper and hiss of Pete's fire down in the trench. Disposing a good bunch of boughs under his head, Pete lighted his pipe, rolled himself in his blankets, and lay down with ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... son rode was perfectly trained to rope steers. As it caught the sharp hiss of the lariat the animal had slackened its stride, and the instant it felt the rope tighten had stiffened its legs and braced, almost squatting back on ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster

... to him more alluring than ever, and young and gay—as young as Isabella! And then his thoughts caused him to take in his breath with a hiss—Isabella—how far away she seemed. Of course he could never love ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn

... kept quickening the time and playing with greater power, but suddenly he struck a false chord like the hiss of a snake, like the grating of iron on glass—it sent a shudder through every one, and mingled with the general gaiety an ill-omened foreboding. Disturbed and alarmed, the hearers wondered whether the instrument might not be out of tune, or the musician be making a blunder. Such a master ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... is a word or sound expressing emotion only such as a shout, a groan, a hiss, a sob, or the like, such ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton

... phantom tryst, When chestnuts hiss among the coals, Upon the Evening of All Souls, When all the night is moon and mist, And all the world is mystery; I kiss dear lips that death hath kissed, And gaze in eyes no man may see, Filled with a love ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein

... as he strode carefully forward, stopping now and then to take a sight with the spectroscope. Carnes followed him as he made his way up a small hill which blocked the way. A hiss from ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... beam of light flashed from the cabins across the way. Legrand gave vent to a hiss of warning and moved off. I could see his shadow for a moment, and then it was swallowed in the blackness. He was waiting and watching outside the cabin. The light streamed out in a fan towards us, and revealed, in the opening of a door, a man's form, and ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... again, Beaching, writhing, rolling far. Sweeping all away to war! While the men that walk beside, Dusty, silent, heavy-eyed, Cannot tell why we or they March and suffer day by day. Children of the Camp are we, Serving each in hiss degree; Children of the yoke and goad, Pack ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... a huge shadow floated out of the dark chaos and passed so close over the heads of Neewa and Miki that they heard the menacing purr of giant wings. As the wraith-like creature disappeared there came back to them a hiss and the grating snap of a powerful beak. It sent a shiver through Miki. The instinct that had been fighting to rouse itself within him flared up like a powder-flash. Instantly he sensed the nearness of an unknown and ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... torment than a hermit's fast— That is a doubtful tale from faery land, Hard for the non-elect to understand. Had Lycius liv'd to hand his story down, He might have given the moral a fresh frown, Or clench'd it quite: but too short was their bliss To breed distrust and hate, that make the soft voice hiss. Besides, there, nightly, with terrific glare, Love, jealous grown of so complete a pair, Hover'd and buzz'd his wings, with fearful roar, Above the lintel of their chamber door, And down the passage cast ...
— Lamia • John Keats

... open door to the balcony he told me about his visit to his old school; how at the dinner on the previous night the Principal had proposed his health, and after the lads had sung "Forty Years On" he had told them yarns about his late expedition until they made the long hiss of indrawn breath which is peculiar to boys when they are excited; how they had followed him to his bedroom as if he had been the Pied Piper of Hamelin and questioned him and clambered over him until driven off by the house-master; and how, finally, before he was out of bed this morning ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... wade across on the edge of the cascade and come up to her like a merman from the deep. Here on the felled trunk, which still lay rotting in its old place, they would now sit, gazing at the descending sheet of water, with its never-ending sarcastic hiss at their baffled attempts to make themselves one flesh. Returning to the house they would sit down together to tea, after which, and the confidential chat that accompanied it, he walked home by the declining light. This ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw: When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl— Then nightly sings the staring owl Tuwhoo! Tuwhit! Tuwhoo! A merry note! While greasy Joan doth keel ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... ankle deep in mire, and most of it is blood. Last year the mother in the door was glad as she could be; To-day her heart is full of pain, and mine is hurting me. But it's shoot, shoot, shoot, And when the bullets hiss, Don't let the tears fill up your eyes, For weeping ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... Skinner," Easton said to his comrade, who had come across from his own company to have a chat with him, "that this is more unpleasant than I had expected. This lying here listening to the angry hiss of the bullets is certainly trying; at least I own that I ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... himself and his Big Picture and his boys with some company that would appreciate the value of the combination, his rupture with the Acme Company would be simply a bit of good luck. While he huddled close to the radiator that was beginning to hiss and rumble encouragingly, he glanced rapidly over the meagerly described scenes which were to his imagination so ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... it in the glass—a single flash of green that cut the blackness with an almost audible hiss. It was gone in an instant while a man's voice screamed once in fear and agony, one scream that broke like brittle steel in the ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... way over the limp and indifferent skins, took up the paper and sat down. Once more her clear, fresh voice, this time with a little quiver in it, fitted in to the regular tick of the querulous clock, the near-by chatter of birds' tongues and the hiss of ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... over it, five or six times, every time leaving a coil of himself behind him, until he had softly folded all his length about the lord chamberlain and his bed. This done, he set up his head, looking down with curved neck right over His Lordship's, and began to hiss in his face. ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald

... cry; and then his voice rang through the premises like a trumpet; and when, mimicking it, came the small pipe of a Ginevra, a Mathilde, or a Blanche, one understood why a hollow groan of scorn, or a fierce hiss of rage, rewarded the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... repel the boarders as well as they might, and the entire horde of wild barbarians had scrambled to her deck, where a perfect inferno now held sway. The air seemed full of flying cutlasses that produced an incessant hiss and clangor. Pistols banged deafeningly at close quarters and there was the constant undertone of groans, cries and bellowed oaths. Above the din came the terrible, clear voice of Stede Bonnet, urging on his seadogs. He ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... glass, which he remembered belonged to a set he had bought for a dinner-party in honour of Renee's baptism. He lighted a piece of paper, threw it into the glass, and closed his eyes as he turned the glass over. Renee gave a little hiss of pain, a shudder ran through all the bones down her ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... regarded. How such hours rise up before the mind! Even now as I write I think of such a scene, when I walked with a friend, long dead, on the broad yellow sands beside a western sea. I can recall the sharp hiss of the shoreward wind, the wholesome savours of the brine, the soft clap of small waves, the sand-dunes behind the shore, pricked with green tufts of grass, the ships moving slowly on the sea's rim, and ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... There was enough sarcasm in my tone to bring a flush upon her impassive face, a fierce gleam of anger in her stolid eyes; and when I added, "A fine sort of lady!" I thought she would have struck me. But she did no more than hiss an insolent gibe. ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... cinders and coal, while in the center glowed the red core of the fire, with blue flames hovering over it. The man who worked the bellows chewed tobacco, and now and then projected the juice with deadly accuracy right into the center of the fire, where it made a momentary hiss and dark spot. All the frequenters of the smithy admired Sandy's skill in expectoration, and many tried in vain to emulate it. The envious said it was due to the peculiar formation of his front teeth, the upper row being prominent, and the ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... there is a rustle like a faint hiss in the grass, and a green snake glides over the bank. The breath in the chest seems to lose its vitality; for an instant the nerves refuse to transmit the force of life. The gliding yellow-streaked worm is so utterly opposed to ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies

... would it not be laughable to think that the obedience of the people depends upon the number of the hours which a royal family may spend in the society of tedious and wearisome courtiers? No, my queen, do not listen to the hiss of the hostile serpents which surround you. Go, courageously, your own way—the way ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... unsuccessful: to each of the authors, thus infallibly classed with the genus irritabile, it would be very hard to deny six stanch friends, who consider his the best of all possible Addresses, and whose tongues will be as ready to laud him as to hiss his adversary. These, with the potent aid of the bard himself, make seven foes per address; and thus will be created seven hundred and seventy-seven implacable auditors, prepared to condemn the strains of Apollo himself—a ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... to string. They were too late. Tell was ready before them. There was a hiss as the shaft rushed through the air, and the next moment Gessler the Governor fell dead on the ...
— William Tell Told Again • P. G. Wodehouse

... the coming moon. The risen wind was piping out from land. I could see the bobbing lights of the other drifters to westward, and the glint of the Seacombe lamps on the water. Every now and then a broken wave came up to the boat with a confidential hiss. I had a constant impression that out of the dark flood some great voice was going to speak to me—speak ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... current some yards. On gaining the surface of the water, I could see nothing of Elliott, but I called out his name twice, but received no reply. Immediately another volley was fired at me, making the water hiss around where the bullets struck. I now struck out for the opposite bank, which I reached with difficulty in about ten minutes; but as it was deep, black mud, on landing I stuck fast, but eventually reached the top of the bank, and ran for about ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... now. I reflected that as the car was ever rising into a rarer atmosphere, my only hope of salvation lay in calling for help, and that as the paralysis was gaining on my whole body, not a moment was to be lost. I shouted with all my strength; but beyond a sort of hiss, not a sound escaped my lips. The profound silence of the car now struck me in a new light. Had Gazen and Miss Carmichael not committed the same blunder, and suffered a like fate? Perhaps even Carmichael himself ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... her part, and had learned the miauw, the mew, the hiss, the dash forward, the howl of rage, and the purr to perfection. She had stalked across the stage again and again that day as kitchen cat, each time evoking shrieks of laughter. By her side walked a timorous ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade

... when suddenly from the ranks there was the bright gleam of steel lower down than it should have been. A gasp broke from the breasts of company "A's" friends. The blue and white dropped disconsolately, while a few heartless ones who wore other colors attempted to hiss. Someone had dropped his bayonet. But with muscles unquivering, without a turned head, the company moved on as if nothing had happened, while one of the judges, an army officer, stepped into the wake of the boys and picked up the ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... shall be,—confidence easily passed for genius, and presumption for power. Tributes of admiration and envy poured in upon him,—anonymous missives, tender and daring, odorous with the atmosphere of luxurious boudoirs, and coarse scrawls, scented with orange-peel and lamp-smoke, and seeming to hiss with the sibilant whisper of green-room spite; and the young actor, valuing alike the sentiments, kindly or malign, which ministered to his egoism, intoxicated with the first foamy draught of fame, grew careless, freakish, and arrogant, as all suddenly adopted pets of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... thus deal with the heroes, why, such "small deer" as Bardolph and Master Slender would of course be puffed out of existence with one hiss of lordly contempt. Yet Macaulay has a more vivid historical imagination, more power of placing himself in the age about which he writes, than historians like Hume and Hallam, whose judgments of men are summaries of qualities, and imply no inwardness of vision, no discerning of spirits. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... a snakish hiss Among the dwarfish bushes, And with deep sighing sadly kiss The wild brook's border rushes; The woods are dark, save here and there The glow-worm shineth faintly, And o'er the hills one lonely star That trembles white ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... leave the stage, 'Cause 'tis a loathsome age; For pride, and impudence will grow too bold, When they shall hear it told, They frighted thee; stand high as is thy cause, Their hiss is thy applause. Most just were thy disdain, Had they approved thy vein: So thou for them, and they for thee were born; They to incense, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... His metallic voice sank to a hiss. "I employ no force. You shall yield to me your heart as a love offering. Of such motives as jealousy and revenge you know me incapable. What I do, I do with a purpose. That compassion of yours shall be a lever to ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... confronted the gale fearlessly; with sails spread and ropes taut, she seemed to sit upon the wind. Now she swirled in the billows, now she spring upward on a gigantic wave, only to be driven down with angry howl and hiss. Down came the mainsail. Tacking and jibbing, we wrestled with opposing winds that drove us from side to side with impetuous fury. Our hearts beat fast, and our hands trembled with excitement, not fear, for we had the hearts ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... little post-offices, the mail contracts, and every thing else in the remotest degree connected with government? Sir, a British minister who should do this, and should afterwards show his head in a British House of Commons, would be received by a universal hiss. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... which must be sold at a given moment Permissible neither to applaud nor to hiss Respectful without servility She awaits your replies without interruption These liars in surplice, in black cassock, or in purple Wish you had the generosity to show, now and again, less wit You know, madame, that he generally ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger

... who even fails may claim Indulgence for his cheerful aim; We should applaud, not hiss him; This is a pardon which we grant, (The Latin gives the rhime I want,) ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various

... back ter his old roost. Some iv thim who didn't know the true innards iv th' situation blamed Jimmie, an' at a meetin' th' Dimocrats held—crocus, I think he called it—some iv them started ter hiss Jimmie when he begun ter spake. Th' man at th' desk, whatever title he has, thried ter stop 'em, but Jimmie was quicker than any iv 'em. He jumps up on a chair, Jimmie does, an' waves his arms theatrical like, an' cries out good an' sthrong, 'Don't mind 'em, ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... Parish Thornton made no answer in words, but between his lips the breath ran out with the hiss of sobbing waters. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death! The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the spirits .. were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and turned, and shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew; when, waving his free hand to them, they all dispersed; and Ahab retired ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... in thy desert domes "Where only date-trees sigh and serpents hiss; "And thou whose pillars are but silent homes "For the stork's brood, superb PERSEPOLIS! "Thrice happy both, that your extinguisht race "Have left no embers—no half-living trace— "No slaves to crawl around the once proud spot, "Till past renown in present shame's forgot. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... stood them bravely too. Idle young actors are fond of applause, but, take my word for it, a clap is a mighty silly, empty thing, and does no more good than a hiss; and, therefore, if any man loves hissing, he may have his three shillings worth at me whenever he ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... by the souls of deceased Brahmins; the Africans hold it in equal veneration. Whence arises the classical fable that swans sing their own dirge just previous to death, and expire singing it? The wild swan certainly may be said to whistle, but the tame has no other note than a hiss, and this only when provoked. The Kamschatdales and Kuriles wear round their necks the bills of Puffins, as an amulet which ensures good fortune. Who was Mother Carey?—The wife, perhaps, of "Davy," and keeper of his "locker;" Mother Carey's chickens is the well-known appellation, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various

... who are lovers sit by the fire, Cradled warm 'twixt thought and will, Sit and drowse like sleeping dogs In the equipoise of all desire, Sit and listen to the still Small hiss and whisper of green logs That burn away, that burn away With the sound of a far-off falling stream Of threaded water blown to steam, Grey ghost in the mountain world of grey. Vapours blue as distance rise Between the hissing logs that show ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley

... the sixpenny benches answered No; the ostler and the fiery-faced woman being the most vociferous of all. Here and there, certain dissentient individuals raised a little hiss—led by Jervy, in the interests of "the Altar ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins

... was not gun-shy. He steadied down with a pounding of heavy hoofs. Then Lucy could see again. A thin streak of yellow smoke rose—a little snaky flame—a slight crackling hiss! Then as the wind caught the blaze there came a rushing, low roar. Fire, like magic, raced and spread before the wind ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... spacious Hall Thick swarm'd, both on the Ground and in the Air, Brush'd with the Hiss of ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson

... Suddenly, like the hiss of ten thousand times ten thousand snakes, a rushing sibilation passed through the momentarily darkened air. At the same instant the earth trembled, and there was an awful, thunderous rumbling ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... shoot upward, but fall back into the chasm before they reach us; burning ashes strike the smooth walls with a weird scream, and then whirl back into the darkness; yellow solfataras rise in foaming jets, with the fierce hiss of unseen serpents, and bellowing thunders shake the earth. The superb spectacle of nature's power in her armoury of terror is unique among the volcanos of Java, for unless the Bromo blazes in the throes of a violent eruption, when the ascent to the crater becomes ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... to plunge into the water ahead of the schooner. If they succeeded in doing so, our fate was sealed. For one moment Bill stood irresolute. Then drawing a pistol from his belt, he sprang to the brass gun, held the pan of his pistol over the touch-hole, and fired. The shot was succeeded by the hiss of the cannon's priming; then the blaze and the crashing thunder of the monstrous gun burst upon the savages with such deafening roar that it seemed as if their very mountains had been ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne

... his back against the earthen wall and trained his pistol upward, ready to shoot whatever should appear. Presently fragments of earth and hardened clay began to drop on the pounded floor of the corridor. I heard the soft hiss of the man-at-arms blowing up his match, and I waited for the crash and the little heap of ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... Camel-driver; her driver, if the camel bites, will with good cause thwack, and so instruct the brute that mouths should munch not bite; he will not, six months afterwards, thrust red-hot prongs into the soft of her flesh to hiss there. And God has the advantage over the driver of seeing into the camel's brain and of knowing precisely what moved the creature to offend. The poem which follows is directed against asceticism. Self-sacrifice for the sake of our fellows is indeed ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... proving an addition to our forces. So 'ere's to you, though 'tis true that at El Teb you cut and ran; You're improvin' from a scuttler to a first-class fighting man; You can 'old your own at present when the bullets hiss and buzz, And in time you may be equal to a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various

... grasp. With pity too I saw Earth's child, the monstrous thing of war, That in Cilicia's hollow places dwelt— Typho; I saw his hundred-headed form Crushed and constrained; yet once his stride was fierce, His jaws gaped horror and their hiss was death, And all heaven's host he challenged to the fray, While, as one vowed to storm the power of Zeus, Forth from his eyes he shot a demon glare. It skilled not: the unsleeping bolt of Zeus, The downward levin with its rush of flame, Smote on him, and made dumb ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... He'll learn something about the way to treat old friends." And all at once the mutter merged into a vindictive hiss: "Him with his airs and graces, his fine clothes and greasy manners, putting on the lah-de-dah over them that's stood by him when he hadn't a red and was glad to cadge drinks off spiggoties in hells like ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... body of a tree. hist, hush! bowl, a vessel. hissed, did hiss. boll, a pod. paws, the feet of beasts. nose, part of the face. pause, a stop. knows, does know. faun, a sylvan god. mote, a particle. fawn, a young deer. moat, a ditch. pride, vanity. toled, allured. pried, did pry. told, did tell. wain, a wagon. tolled, did toll. ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... glory, By the wondrous Purgatory Which shall bear thy sainted name. Lest thou think the promise vain Of this miracle divine, I will take this shape malign, Which came hither to profane Thy devotion, and within This dark cavern's dark abyss Fling it,— there to howl and hiss In the everlasting ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... spread the night her spangled canopy, And summoned every restless eye to sleep; On beds of tender grass the beasts down lie, The fishes slumbered in the silent deep, Unheard were serpent's hiss and dragon's cry, Birds left to sing, and Philomen to weep, Only that noise heaven's rolling circles kest, Sung lullaby to bring the ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... reserved By my sire to Jehovah's bidding? May He preserve them, and I not have the power To snatch the loveliest of earth's daughters from A doom which even some serpent, with his mate, Shall 'scape to save his kind to be prolonged, To hiss and sting through some emerging world, 40 Reeking and dank from out the slime, whose ooze Shall slumber o'er the wreck of this, until The salt morass subside into a sphere Beneath the sun, and be the monument, The sole and undistinguished sepulchre, Of yet ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... uniformity which palls. Poets have imagined scenes of bliss; but, fencing out sorrow, all the extatic emotions of the soul, and even its grandeur, seem to be equally excluded. We dose over the unruffled lake, and long to scale the rocks which fence the happy valley of contentment, though serpents hiss in the pathless desert, and danger lurks in the unexplored wiles. Maria found herself more indulgent as she was happier, and discovered virtues, in characters she had before disregarded, while chasing the phantoms of elegance and excellence, which sported in the meteors ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... the bushes, and were received by a veritable rain of stones and spears. Not an enemy was in sight. On all sides they heard the snapping sound of the slings, the whistling of the stones, the sibilant hiss of the spears that at every step fell in increasing numbers, but they could not see whence they came, and no whisper or rustle of underbrush revealed ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... whether the logs be of cherry wood, pine, hickory or anything else. For the wood fire connoisseur, if we may call him by that name, there is no difficulty whatever in telling with a glance at the fire just what wood is burned. The crackle and explosive nature of hickory, the hiss of pine, the steady flame from cherry, the hot and rapid disintegration of sycamore, and the steady and thorough combustion of soft apple wood soon become familiar characteristics to those who have ...
— Making a Fireplace • Henry H. Saylor

... because the hiss of the escaping steam startled him; but at the first turn of the engine my cat scampered forward and seated himself in the very bows of the boat—a little black figure-head—and thence gazed out steadfastly westward as though he were the pilot charged ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier

... great answer to the universe—the answer of courage. He is still Prometheus, and there is no limit to what he can bear. Let the vultures of pain rend his heart as they will, he can still hiss 'coward' in the face of the Eternal. Nay, he can even laugh at his sufferings—thanks to the spirit of humour, that most blessed of ministering angels, without which surely the heart of humanity had long since broken, by which man is able to look with a comical eye upon ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne

... have got up a plot," continued the manager; "they will even hiss the piece, but I have made arrangements to defeat their kind intentions. I have squared the men in their pay; they will make a muddle of it. A couple of city men yonder have taken a hundred tickets apiece to secure a triumph for Florine and Coralie, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... said Beau Moessard, while his cane cleft the air with a noise like a snake's hiss; and, turning on his heel, he strode rapidly away like a man who has very important ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... not think of at all; to say nothing of the danger of swinging down into the bowels of the earth in a creel, the thing aye put me in mind of the awful place, where the wicked, after death and judgment, howl, and hiss, and gnash their teeth; and where, unless Heaven be more merciful than we are just—we may all be soon enough. So I could not think of that, till other human means failed; and I determined, in the first place, to hire Tammie Dobbie's cart, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... dress but of being burned into a wretched little cinder. Horribly frightened at her danger, the Kingfisher turned once more, but this time toward the rolling waters which covered the earth. Down, down she swooped, until with the hiss of burning feathers she splashed into the cold wetness, putting out the fire which threatened to consume her. Once, twice, thrice, she dipped into the grateful coolness, flirting the drops from her blue plumage, now alas! ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown

... gun and all he could do was to take a stick and push the thing out of doors. Then a queer thing happened. When the hot sun shone down on the gila monster (pronounced heela) it was no longer tame and gentle, but would snap at anyone who came near and acted ugly, continuing to hiss with his mouth wide open, on the lookout for the first sign of ...
— Little Tales of The Desert • Ethel Twycross Foster

... slight shock of the soothe of waves, Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent, A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining, Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors, The hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw, Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull, tapering groan, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... covered field, where champions bold Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan's chair Defied the best of Paynim chivalry To mortal combat, or career with lance), Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air, Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides. Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... lasta. Hindoo Hindo. Hindrance malhelpo. Hindu Hindo. Hinge cxarniro. Hint proponeti. Hip kokso. Hippodrome hipodromo. Hippopotamus hipopotamo. Hire dungi. Hire, cost of salajro. Hireling salajrulo. His lia, sia. Hiss sibli. Historian historiskribanto. History historio. History, natural naturscienco. Hit frapi. Hit against ektusxegi. Hitch malhelpajxo. Hive abelujo. Ho! ho! Hoard amaso. Hoarfrost prujno. Hoarse rauxka. Hoarseness rauxkigxo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... to be in the match to-day. It's not much sport to stand by and cheer. Oh, don't think I'm trying to get out of coming! I'm going to look on and see that you do your duty. If you're not playing up, I'll hiss!" ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... memory behind. He'd wish no loud laugh, from the sly, shrewd sneer, To unsettle from your eyes the quiet tear That Pity had brought, and Wisdom would leave there. Now calm he waits your judgment! (win or miss), 45 By no loud plaudits saved, damn'd by no factious hiss. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... With the first hiss of the thong, came a tearing screech from the puma, as he flung himself in fury upon the door of his cage. Gunn in his wrath with Clare had forgotten to bolt it. Dragging with his claws, he found it unfastened, pulled it open, and like a huge shell from a mortar, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... and the forest is more full of life. The dread voices of the darkness are heard around them; coyotes howl and whine; in the distance owls hiss and shriek and flit from tree to tree, as the panting men approach. They think not of danger, not even of those who so ruthlessly slaughtered their great and good maseua; on they go as fast as the heavy load permits and as their ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... young lady doubts, just let her go up to her own room, look at herself steadily in the glass, and say 'Snob.' If she tries this simple experiment, my life for it, she will smile, and own that the word becomes her mouth amazingly. A pretty little round word, all composed of soft letters, with a hiss at the beginning, just to make it piquant, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... English go out, and silence prevails, save for the soft hiss of the rain that falls impartially on ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... nothing I have done to offend you, and has set ('sic') those who are sent here to hiss me; I will be very much obliged to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... out from the bag into the cage! The dacoit snatched away the sack and snapped the shutter fast. A moving mist obscured my sight, a mist through which I saw the green eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu fixed upon me, and through which, as from a great distance, his voice, sunk to a snake-like hiss, ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... the sunny arbor leaves and the glimpse of the blue sky swam round her indistinctly, and the sounds of the guitar grew dull upon her ear and were lost as in a rushing hiss of water, because of the great sudden unintelligible happiness that seemed to bear her little life away on it as a sea wave bears a young child ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... individual, who spoke with a hiss and scrutinized Richard as he took his card with a jealous intensity which might have distinguished a hawk in a state of half alarm and whole suspicion, presently returned. His air was altered to ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... Will said again. He was silent for a moment while a great green rocket rushed upwards with a hiss and burst in a shower of many-coloured stars. Then as they watched them fall he spoke very kindly and earnestly. "But it is worth while all the same—even though one may be turned back from Paradise. Remember—always remember—that it's something to ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... reptile's anger—its crest began to glow and rise, as if menacing and preparing itself to spring upon the Neapolitan—Glaucus caught quickly at one of the half-burned logs upon the hearth—and, as if enraged at the action, the snake came forth from its shelter, and with a loud hiss raised itself on end till its height nearly approached that of ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... loggerhead was red hot, Caleb drew it out of the coals, and plunged it into the cold cider, which immediately began to bubble and hiss. Then he poured the sparkling liquid into mugs for the thirsty teamsters to drink; and while he was still holding the pitcher high in air, that the cider might come down with a good "bead," the door slowly opened, and in glided Willy, ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May

... could be scraped up out of the purlieus of Christendom would blush to do, I think. They assembled by hundreds, and even thousands, in the great Theatre of San Carlo, to do—what? Why, simply, to make fun of an old woman—to deride, to hiss, to jeer at an actress they once worshipped, but whose beauty is faded now and whose voice has lost its former richness. Every body spoke of the rare sport there was to be. They said the theatre would be crammed, because Frezzolini ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... to pounce on her like a fowler, you threatened her father with a scandal, if he thought proper to force the trap; swore you 'd toss her to be plucked by the gossips, eh? She's free of you! You got your English and your Germans here to point their bills, and stretch their necks, and hiss, if this gentleman—and your newspapers!—if he didn't give up to you like a funky traveller to a highwayman. I remember a tale of a clumsy Turpin, who shot himself when he was drawing the pistol out of his holsters to frighten the money-bag out of a market farmer. You've done about the same, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... In silence and in gloom, The dreary pageant labored Till it reached the house of doom. Then first a woman's voice was heard In jeer and laughter loud, An angry cry and hiss arose, From the lips of the angry crowd. Then as the Graeme looked upward He saw the bitter smile Of him who sold his king for gold, The ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French

... come buy! Ten a penny is the price, And if you my chestnuts try, You'll declare they're very nice. See how brightly burns my fire! Hear the chestnuts hiss and crack! Better nuts you can't desire Than ...
— London Town • Felix Leigh

... every manly bosom, and which at once changed into shrill wrath the supplicatory tones with which he had been hitherto addressed. Down the street he hurried and down the street followed the insulted fair. "Hiss—hiss—no gentleman, no gentleman! Aha-skulk off—do—low blaggurd!" shrieked Polly. From their counters shop-folks rushed to their doors. Stray dogs, excited by the clamour, ran wildly after the fugitive man, yelping "in madding bray"! Vance, fearing to be clawed by the females ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... almost certainly remain so for ever. I called to the Rongba. He was fast asleep. I summoned up my last atom of vitality to keep my eyes open. The wind blew hard and biting, with a hissing noise. How that hiss still sounds in my ears! It seemed like the whisper of death. The Rongba, crouched with teeth chattering, was moaning, and his sudden shudders bespoke great pain. It seemed only common charity to let him have the blanket, which was in any case too small for ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... chief of the plot of the play by the reading of along letter, which was so long and some things (the people being set already to think too long) so unnecessary that they frequently begun to laugh, and to hiss twenty times, that, had it not been for the King's being there, they had certainly hissed it off the stage. But I must confess that, as my Lord Barkeley says behind me, the having of that long letter was a thing so absurd, that he could not imagine how a man ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... for Soda and other Beverages. A Treatise especially adapted to the requirements of Druggists and Confectioners. By A. Emil Hiss. 12mo, cloth. 260 pages. Chicago, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... on, having nothing else in his Lodge to appear in: Confounded, and big with Resentment, he drest himself, and made his personal Appearance in that despicable Equipage. The Populace that were left behind in the Circus, hiss'd him every Step he took, they made a Ring about him, and treated him with all the Marks of Ignominy and Contempt. The most cowardly Wretch breathing was never sure so sweated, or hunted down as poor Zadig! He grew quite out of Patience at last, and cut his Way ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... few feet away. Tom began to advance, not directly, but just a trifle on the bias, across Mux's bows so to speak, as if to give him a broadside. They were within range. Tom was heaving to. I trembled for the young coon. Suddenly there was a hiss, a flash of yellow in the air, and—a very big surprise awaiting Thomas! That little coon was no stupid after all. He had not rolled up his sleeves, nor doubled up his fists, nor put a chip upon his shoulder; but he knew what was expected of him, just the same. He ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... if you will, Fairfax. Hoot! Hiss me off the stage! I am no longer worthy of the confraternity of honest, bold, free and successful fellows. I am dwindling into a whining, submissive, crouching, very humble, yes if you please, no thank you Madam, dangler! I have been to school! Have had my task set me! Must learn my lesson ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... glamour, fled the royal dream, Fled is the joy. They work no more by night Deep in that cave of dazzling amber light, In pools of darkness, under plumes of steam. Gone are the laughing drills that sting and hiss Deep in the ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley

... that there was no sound in the headphones except the frying noise all main-sequence stars give out, and the infrequent thumping noises that come from gas-giant planets' lower atmospheres, and the Jansky-radiation hiss which comes from everywhere. ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster

... that looketh upon her eyes but he dieth presently. The like property has the basilisk. A white spot or star she carrieth on her head and setteth it out like a diadem. If she but hiss no other ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... sitting, the cock would bring a green caterpillar for her every four or five minutes, and sometimes take her place on the nest. I often took the husk down from its nail to show the brave little bird sitting on her eggs. If touched she would hiss and set up her feathers, but did not leave her nest. When the young birds were hatched, the parents were incessantly at work from early morning till late at night bringing small caterpillars about every two minutes to supply the wants of the tiny brood. One can judge of the usefulness of ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... language of the place of despair is exhausted in describing and denouncing the South. If a man among us lifts up his voice to say good things about Southerners, one universal hiss goes up from all your conventions and anti-slavery prints. He may be seeking the same end with you, namely, the peaceful removal of slavery, with due regard to the highest good of all concerned; but let him utter a word in arrest of your ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... same question drove sleep from his eyes. At one o'clock he was up again and with the faithful Bertrand plashed to the front through long rows of drenched recumbent forms. Once more they strained their ears to catch through the hiss of the rain some sound of a muffled retirement. Strange thuds came now and again from the depths of the wood of Hougoumont: all else was still. At last, over the slope on the north-east crowned by the St. Lambert Wood there stole the first glimmer of gray; little by ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... clumsily disposed of the container? At the moment, Worth tore buckles and latches free, yanked the thing open, reversed it in air—and out fell a coiled rope that curved itself like a snake—a three-headed snake; the triple grappling iron at its end standing up as though to hiss. ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... behave to you? When last I was here I asked you for a kiss." As he said this he looked at her with all his eyes, with his mouth just open, so as to show the edges of his white teeth, with the wound down his face all wide and purple. The last word came with a stigmatizing hiss from his lips. Though she did not essay to speak, he paused again, as if he were desirous that she might realize the full purport of such a request. I think that, in the energy of his speaking, a touch of true passion had come upon him; that he had forgotten his ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... grinding of brakes and hiss of escaping steam, the express at last stopped slowly in the little station and the door of Paul's compartment was swung open by the officious guard with a "Lucerne, your Lordship," which effectually aroused him from ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous

... where, had it not been for his lifebelt and the plank, he must have been beaten down and have perished. As it was, now he was driven into the depths, and now he emerged upon their surface to hear their seething hiss around him, and above it all a continuous boom as of great guns—the ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... curious pea-jacket to be standing near the woman spoken of, and engaged in shielding a lighted match with his sleeve. Presently, he extended his hand and cautiously applied the particle of flame to the tuft of hair under the woman's armpit. There followed a faint hiss, and a noxious smell of burning hair was wafted ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... breathing of the man, and I could tell every time that his knife struck home, by a peculiar hiss that escaped the snake. It was like the sudden ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... shall be doin' o't; He 'll thrash, and I 'll toil on the fields in the spring, And turn up the soil at the plowin' o't. And whan the wee flow'rets begin then to blaw, The lavrock, the peasweep, and skirlin' pickmaw, Shall hiss the bleak winter to Lapland awa, Then we 'll ply the blythe hours ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... if sight was removed. As they heard the shriek of the fierce, whirling blasts, the rush and hiss of astonished waves whipped into terrible activity, the creaking of beams and timbers suddenly strained to their utmost capacity, the flap and rattle of sails furled with lightning rapidity, and, above all else, the increasing roar, indescribably awful, that was mingled of electricity ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... give me two hundred pounds I'll tell you where it is," said a voice out of the darkness; and a groan and a hiss arose from ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... their heads nearly touched. In this tone and attitude he continued his narrative for a few minutes. At the end of this brief space, Marston rose up slowly, and with a movement backward, every feature strung with horror, and saying, in a long whisper, the one word, "yes," which seemed like the hiss of a snake before he makes his last deadly spring. Both were silent for a time. At last Marston broke ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... Mr Carnaby knew, at that distance, what was going on, found that Holt was no longer by his side. In a moment, Holt returned to his seat, flushed and out of breath. A very slight hiss was heard from every form near, as he ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau

... manacled feet. Great gaping wounds, the marks of sword slash and spear stab, show crimson upon their naked chests and shoulders, while many lie huddled and senseless athwart the benches, careless for ever of the whips which still hiss above them. Now we can understand those empty portholes and ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the sward, they raced as though the hounds were streaming in front; swerved here, tossed there, carried in a whirlwind over the mounds, wheeled through the gloom of the woven branches, splashed with a hiss through the shallow rain-pools, shot swift as an arrow across the silver radiance of the broad moonlight, borne against the sweet south wind, and down the odors of the trampled grass, the carriage ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... got wuz frum a wolf. Walkin' down a trail one day, I spied a wolf not more than ten feet away. Man, I wuz so scared dat I seemed to freeze in my tracks, and couldn't move. I tried to holler but all I could do wuz croak. Den I tried to whistle but de only sound I could make wuz a hiss. After standing for whut seemed hours, wid his ears sticking straight up, de wolf finally turned around and ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration

... a sea as black as onyx, swept the reflections of the lighted ports; and he could hear the faint hiss of foam ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... altar of his God seems to have failed him. He asked for bread, and has got a stone,—he asked a fish, and has got a scorpion. Again and again the worldly, almost scoffing, tone of the superior to whom he has been confessing sounds like the hiss of a serpent in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... against his breast, and Eugene bent his face down to hers. They stood so, and for a minute had, indeed, the whole world to their two selves, for love as well as death has the power of annihilation; and then there was a stir in the lane, a crisp rustle of petticoats and a hiss of whispering voices; and they started and fell apart. There in the lane before them, their eyes as keen as foxes, with the scent of curiosity and gossip, their cheeks red with the shame of it, and their lips forming into apologetic and terrified smiles, stood ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... scoured the neighbourhood in her high dogcart, calling on the Ittlethwaites and Mandeville Porehams, all in vain. Nobody knew anything. Nobody had heard anything. The sudden exit of Maryllia from the scene took everyone by surprise. And when Miss Pippitt began to hiss a scandalous whisper concerning John Walden, and a possible intrigue between him and the Lady of the Manor, the 'county' sat up amazed. Here indeed was food for gossip! Here was ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... serpent. She had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful zigzag, and was going to dive in among the leaves, which she found to be nothing but the tops of the trees under which she had been wandering, when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a hurry: a large pigeon had flown into her face, and was beating her violently with ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... by such rash effrontery and by his own fury, the dreaded Seneca war-chief groped for his hatchet with trembling hands; but a warning hiss from one of his own Mountain Snakes on guard brought him ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... very reverse. They inflate their bodies, having not only large lungs, but air-sacs in connection with them. The throat bulges; the body sways from side to side; and the creature expresses its sentiments in a hiss. The power of colour-change is very remarkable, and depends partly on the contraction and expansion of the colour-cells (chromatophores) in the under-skin (or dermis) and partly on close-packed refractive granules and crystals of a waste-product called guanin. The ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... doubts which may have remained. The metallic clang heard by Miss Stoner was obviously caused by her stepfather hastily closing the door of his safe upon its terrible occupant. Having once made up my mind, you know the steps which I took in order to put the matter to the proof. I heard the creature hiss as I have no doubt that you did also, and I instantly lit the light and ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... and reached Sweden in safety. It was on 24th April 1880 that the little weather-beaten Vega, accompanied by flag-decked steamers literally laden with friends, sailed into the Stockholm harbour while the hiss of fireworks and the roar of cannon mingled with the shouts of thousands. The Royal Palace was ablaze with light when King Oscar received and honoured the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... crossed a little river no wider than Silver Creek an there we was. No screamin wimmin, no stray shots out of attiks, no awtrocities. Nobody even took the trouble to come out an hiss at us. It made everybody feel pretty low I can tell you. The only ones that took any interest at all was a bunch of kids in soldiers caps an stand up collars like your father wears. They seemed to think we was goin to show in their town an trotted along beside us to watch the ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter

... had obliterated every vestige of the trail across the swamp lands. There was no sun, and the twilight of a slow yellow day in late September would soon, in complicity with the fog, leave him totally adrift on this remote strand—he could hear the curving fall and hiss of the breakers, the monotonous rumour of the sea. So he was determined to face Karospina, even if he had to force his way into ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... witnesses in abundance, on the right hand and on the left. Show me a cause anathematized by the chief priests, the scribes, and the pharisees; which politicians and demagogues endeavor to crush, which reptiles and serpents in human flesh try to spread their slime over, and hiss down, and I will show you a cause which God loves, and angels contemplate with admiration. Such is our movement. Do you want the compliments of the satanic press, The New York Times, Express, and Herald? ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... riven asunder. So tremendous was the concussion of it that I quite distinctly felt the longboat quiver and tremble under its influence. And the next instant down came the rain in a regular tropical, torrential downpour, causing the sea to hiss as though each individual drop of rain were red-hot, and starting us to work at once in both boats with the balers, to save our provisions from being ruined. I happened to be looking away in a westerly ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... Riseholme, and hardly less beautiful was Peppino's attitude towards it all. That large hearted man trusted them both, and his trust was perfectly justified. Georgie was in and out of the house all day, chiefly in; and not only did scandal never rear its hissing head, but it positively had not a head to hiss with, or a foot to stand on. On his side again Georgie had never said that he was in love with her (nor would it have been true if he had), but by his complete silence on the subject coupled with his constancy he seemed to admit the truth of this bloodless idyll. They talked and walked and ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... prospect ahead, but from his tense attitude I judged that it appeared interesting. He signed to me to come up another couple of points, took a firm grasp of the gaff and leaned over the bows. Then with a creak of straining tackle and a hiss of riven water a gig was on us. She swooped out of the blue, swept by not two fathoms to windward and with a boat-hook snapped up the treasure trove (it looked suspiciously like a small keg) right under our very noses as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various

... "the language of the place of despair is exhausted in describing and denouncing the South. If a man among us lifts up his voice to say good things about Southerners, one universal hiss goes up from all your conventions and anti-slavery prints. He may be seeking the same end with you, namely, the peaceful removal of slavery, with due regard to the highest good of all concerned; but let him utter a word in arrest of ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... plenty. While here, the "Calloo-calloo," is remarkably shy, very rarely venturing out of the seclusion of the thickest jungle, and warning off intruders with a curious note of alarm, half purr, half hiss. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... this time, so accustomed to my going out in all weathers, that she troubled me with no expostulation. My spirits began to rise the moment I was in the wind. Keen, and cold, and unsparing, it swept through the leafless branches around me, with a different hiss for every tree that bent, and swayed, and tossed in its torrent. I made my way to the gate and out upon the road, and then, turning to the right, away from the village, I sought a kind of common, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... the histories of that age, which furnish the most authentic memoirs of his life. See what Dom Coutant, the Benedictin monk, has recorded of him in his excellent edition of his works; as also Tillemont, t. 7, Ceillier, t. 5, and Rivet, Hiss. Lit. t. 1, part 2, p. 139. The two books, the one of his life, the other of his miracles, by Fortunatus of Poictiers, 600, are inaccurate. Both the Fortunatases were from Italy; and probably one was the author of the first, and the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... range has been checked by the hand of man. In vain the flames jet out on all sides, seeking fresh element. A wide space has been cleared around them. Soon the crackling of the large trees, and the hiss of the burning grass, cease to be heard; and the whole plain becomes enveloped under a cloud of smoke rising upward from ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... nature, enfeebled by suffering, could not but have trembled at the idea of living in a lonely spot, (for the mission-house was nearly a mile from the barracks,) with the neighboring jungle swarming with "serpents that hiss, and beasts of prey that howl." In addition to this cause of alarm, there was opposite them, on the Burman side of the river, the old decayed city of Martaban; which was the refuge of a horde of banditti, who, armed ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... loose. The "major-domo" had singled out Sponsilier and was trying issues with him, Bob Quirk was dropping them right and left, when the deposed commandant sprang upon a table, and in a voice like the hiss of an adder, commanded peace, and the ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... villagers murmuring behind us while I hoisted the little sail and drew the sheet home. The night-breeze, fluking among the gullies, filled the sail at once, fell light again and left it flapping, then drew a steady breath aft, and the voices were lost in the hiss of ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... we were in black. They sent up a rocket once; it mounted above us in a slow flaming arc, hung poised an instant, and then descended, plunging into the sea a mile or so away. We heard distinctly the hiss of its contact with the water, and saw, like a quickly dissipating mist, the ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... lighted room—he could hear a sound, very slight: so slight that it seemed guarded, but none the less unmistakable: the hiss of carbonated water squirting from a syphon into ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... beginning to shoot tiny white, five-pointed flames through the purple sky. The fireflies were beginning to cut long arcs of gold in the sooty dusk. The waves were coming up the low-tide beach with a long roar and retreating with a faint hiss. Afterwards floated on the air the music of the shingle, hundreds of pebbles pattering with liquid footsteps down the sand. Peals of laughter, the continuous bass roar of the men, an occasional uncertain soprano lilting of the women, came from the group. The girls ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... he hurled himself forward. As he scrambled over the upturned chairs he heard a sound that struck terror to his soul: it was the unmistakable hiss of tearing linen. The hastily made garments of G. Lung Fat had proved unequal to the strain put upon them. Percival lost his head completely when he realized that his waistcoat was split up the back from hem to collar, and that he had become ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice

... up from out the waves' abyss— A monstrous little man with a black hide, Scarce four feet high, yet he was not remiss, But dash'd the waves about—and then he cried, With a demoniac laugh, or rather hiss, "Die, mortal, die!" and John sank down and died, The which, when Jeannie saw, she only sigh'd, "I come, my John, I come, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various

... at the massive form on the great war-horse were charged with baleful meaning. Bismarck once or twice looked down on them with a grim smile under his moustache. At length the most daring of the "patriots" emitted a tentative hiss. With a little polite wave of his gloved hand Bismarck bent over his holster and requested "Monsieur" to oblige him with a light for his cigar. The man writhed as he compelled himself to comply. Little doubt that in his heart he wished the lucifer were a dagger ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... Manual for Soda and other Beverages. A Treatise especially adapted to the requirements of Druggists and Confectioners. By A. Emil Hiss. 12mo, cloth. 260 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... the middle of the ship were now leaping fifty feet into the air. The river manuals played upon it, but made little or no impression. It seemed to hiss back contempt and defiance ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting

... descend a few feet, with perfect safety in the shape of solid earth beneath him, though, as he moved, he set free a little avalanche of fragments of granite, that seemed to go down into the shaft with a hiss, which was succeeded by the strange echoing splashes—weird whispers of splashes—as they reached, the ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... figure. To the others his name, at all events, was known, and as he stood up on the floor of the court a swift and regular movement like a ripple of water passed through the throng. They leant forward to get a clearer view of him and for a moment there was a hiss of excited whispering. ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... from somewhere on our right a whisper no louder than a mouse's hiss of warning or of threat. I scarcely was aware of it. It might have been a ripple under the prow of the canoe, a slightest turn of a paddle. Yet it conveyed a message that the natives instantly understood. ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... hardly well-timed question, but, on the contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, he turned his eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his brow. "Oh, I had forgotten Celine! Well, to resume. When I saw my charmer thus come in accompanied by a cavalier, I seemed to hear a hiss, and the green snake of jealousy, rising on undulating coils from the moonlit balcony, glided within my waistcoat, and ate its way in two minutes to my heart's core. Strange!" he exclaimed, suddenly starting again from the point. "Strange that I should choose ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... know, was to be done with all those who had advanced money in making and repairing turnpike-roads? What was to become of coach-makers and harness-makers, coach-masters and coachmen, inn-keepers, horse-breeders, and horse-dealers? Was the house aware of the smoke and the noise, the hiss and the whirl, which locomotive engines, passing at the rate of 10 or 12 miles an hour, would occasion? Neither the cattle ploughing in the fields or grazing in the meadows could behold them without dismay. Iron would be raised in price 100 per ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... outside is allowed to enter, and he kneels in front of whom he thinks is the right one. If he should make a correct guess, the company clap their hands, and the person to whom he knelt goes outside. If, however, the guess is an incorrect one, the company hiss loudly, and the guesser has to go outside, come back, and try again. Of course, it will make more amusement if when a boy is sent outside the room a girl be chosen as the person to whom he has to kneel; and the opposite if a girl be ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... against the dark sky and looked in the midst of the smoke like a fiery meteor. The Eddystone Rock was suffused with a dull red light, as if it were becoming red hot, and the surf round it appeared to hiss against the fire, while in the dark shadow of the cave the three lighthouse keepers were seen cowering in terror,—as they well might, seeing that melted lead and flaming masses of wood and other substances were falling thickly ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne

... for a minute. Tiffles was silent, in order that he might not interrupt the quiet admiration of the spectators. The spectators were silent, because they could not exactly understand the scene, and did not know whether to laugh, hiss, or applaud. The silence was broken, by a boy in the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... for a safe shot; in a minute he went down into the meadow on the other side. I then crept on hands and knees towards the nut-bushes: as I got nearer there was a slight rustle and a low hiss in the grass, and I had to pause while a snake went by hastening for the ditch. A few moments afterwards, being close to the hedge, I rose partly up, and looked carefully over the fence between the hazel wands. There was the pheasant not fifteen yards away, his ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... the former favorite of the Theatre de Francais, had in some way offended the Gardes du Corps. So one night they came in full force to the theatre and tried to hiss her down. ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... them pleasures wait, and joys for ever new. But cruel virgins meet severer fates; Expell'd and exil'd from the blissful seats, To dismal realms, and regions void of peace, Where furies ever howl, and serpents hiss. O'er the sad plains perpetual tempests sigh, And pois'nous vapours, black'ning all the sky, With livid hue the fairest face o'ercast, And every beauty withers at the blast: Where e'er they fly their lover's ghosts ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... interesting to see the difference of style. All three types of colonial woodsmen cut the tree almost breast high, but the Australian seemed to be the only one that took advantage of that understroke, with a hiss through the clenched teeth, which looks so formidable when you watch our timber-getters. It was a Canadian team which started. They cut coolly, and the one whom I watched struck one by his splendid condition. A wiry man, not thick-set, but well built and athletic, who never turned ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean

... eyes fastened themselves upon her with a look of yearning anguish, and then Hagar answered slowly, "Tell you what you've often wished to know—my secret!" the last word dropping from her lips more like a warning hiss than like a human sound. It was long since Maggie had teased for the secret, so absorbed had she been in other matters, but now that there was a prospect of knowing it her curiosity was reawakened, and while her eyes glistened ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... charms, that smite the simple heart Not touch'd by nature, and not reach'd by art. His never-blushing head he turn'd aside, (Not half so pleased when Goodman prophesied) And look'd, and saw a sable Sorcerer rise, Swift to whose hand a winged volume flies: All sudden, gorgons hiss, and dragons glare, And ten-horn'd fiends and giants rush to war. Hell rises, Heaven descends, and dance on earth: Gods, imps, and monsters, music, rage, and mirth, A fire, a jig, a battle, and a ball, Till one wide conflagration swallows all. Thence a new world, to nature's laws ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... few of those who had been sworn in as special constables were assembled; a little contemptible group of the abject, dependant tools of the corporation, who, as I suppose, from the appearance of their lips, attempted to raise a hiss, but their voices were instantly drowned by the cheers of the multitude; and thus the meeting passed off as peaceably as if there had not been any bustle made by the corporation and police of the city, in order ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... the soft, sibilant sound of the escaping gas, not unlike the hiss of a snake. I was also sensible that my heart, not to mention other important organs, was trying to ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... Geese were taking their morning waddle, and Reddy ran plump into them. Now there was nothing that he liked better to eat than nice fat goose. Still, he didn't wait, but left them beating their wings and stretching their long necks to hiss, hiss, hiss, as they scattered in all directions. I guess Reddy wished his legs were as long ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson

... they're pretty complex," Ayesha Keithley said. "I identified stick-and-slip sounds and percussion sounds, and plucked-string sounds, along with the ordinary hiss-and-buzz speech-sounds. Making a vocoder to reproduce that speech is going to be fun. Just what are you using, in the ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper

... spoke, but missed; and the serpent, turning its head, gave a hiss at us, though it did not attempt to quit its raft. From the way it moved its tail, which served as a rudder, I believe that it could easily have guided itself to the shore; and as it was big enough to have crushed ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... was so spent, I could not climb the wall; and when I saw Turkey turn and face the bull, I turned too. We were now in the shadow of the hill, but I could just see Turkey lift his arm. A short sharp hiss, and a roar followed. The bull tossed his head as in pain, left Turkey, and came towards me. He could not charge at any great speed, for the ground was steep and uneven. I, too, had kept hold of my weapon; and although I was dreadfully ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... he comes to discover the chief of the plot of the play by the reading of along letter, which was so long and some things (the people being set already to think too long) so unnecessary that they frequently begun to laugh, and to hiss twenty times, that, had it not been for the King's being there, they had certainly hissed it off the stage. But I must confess that, as my Lord Barkeley says behind me, the having of that long letter was a thing so absurd, that he could not imagine how a man of his parts could possibly fall into ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... you for a kiss." As he said this he looked at her with all his eyes, with his mouth just open, so as to show the edges of his white teeth, with the wound down his face all wide and purple. The last word came with a stigmatizing hiss from his lips. Though she did not essay to speak, he paused again, as if he were desirous that she might realize the full purport of such a request. I think that, in the energy of his speaking, a touch of true passion had come upon him; that he had forgotten ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... hundred yards of their course lay under motionless trees, whose upper foliage began to hiss with falling drops of rain. By the time that they emerged upon a glade ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... bid hoist the sail and have out the oars. While this was doing the creature appeared again with a glowing mass of fused metal (massam igneam de scoria) in pincers, which he hurled at them. Where it struck the water about a furlong from them, it made the sea boil and hiss. They had only escaped about a mile when they saw beings swarming out upon the shore, throwing about molten masses, some after them and some at one another, and then all went back into the forges ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute

... swept over the camp with reckless disregard of all aim. It came with a sharp rattle. The bullets swept on with a biting hiss, and some of them terminated their careers with a vicious "splat" against the great overhang of rock or the ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... sank to a hiss. "I employ no force. You shall yield to me your heart as a love offering. Of such motives as jealousy and revenge you know me incapable. What I do, I do with a purpose. That compassion of yours shall be a lever to cast you into my arms. Your hatred ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... organization; they had closed the hall, and confiscated everything, typewriters and office furniture and books—including a book on Sabotage which they had turned over to the editor of the "Evening Times"! There was a hiss of anger at this. Also, they had taken to interfering with the mail of the organization; the I. W. W. were having to get out their literature by express. They were fighting for their existence, and they must find some way of getting the truth to people. ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... her and carried his prize to a lapidary's bench. He perched himself on a stool and reached for his magnifying glass. A queer little hiss broke through his lips. Cut-glass beads, patently Occidental, and here in Shanghai ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... pointed and saw a long, glossy neck surmounted by a small head rising above the surface of the river. Presently the back of the creature was exposed, brown and glossy as the water dripped from it. It turned its eyes upon us, opened its lizard-like mouth, emitted a shrill hiss and came for us. The thing must have been sixteen or eighteen feet in length and closely resembled pictures I had seen of restored plesiosaurs of the lower Jurassic. It charged us as savagely as a mad bull, and one would have thought it intended to destroy and devour ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the bridal finery, unmindful of the anguish tugging at the hearts of both the patient women, Marian and Helen, who worked on so silently, reserving their tears for the night time, when Katy lay sweetly sleeping and dreaming of Wilford Cameron. Helen had ceased to think that Hiss Hazelton had any designs on Dr. Grant, for her manner toward Uncle Ephraim was just as soft and conciliating, and she dismissed that subject from her mind with the reflection that it was the nature of some girls to be very pretty to the gentlemen, without meaning any harm. She liked Marian on the ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... shoulder to shoulder at his back. They niver tur-rned over their property to their wives.' 'Yes,' says wan man, 'Dewey was a cow'rd. Let's go an' stone his house.' 'No,' says the crowd, 'he might come out. Let's go down to th' v'riety show an' hiss his ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne

... appearing from the aerodrome. When they struck the water there was a hiss, which grew in volume and acuity as they skimmed the waves. After a few hundred yards, the machines rose as easily as from land, circled up to the clouds and into them. Coming down, the aviators practiced dipping and swerving by following and avoiding the purposely ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... Thou canst forsake me, then, To spare thyself a little bashful pain? Paolo, dost thou know what 'tis for me, A woman—nay, a dame of highest rank— To lose my purity? to walk a path Whose slightest slip may fill my ear with sounds That hiss me out to infamy and death? Have I no secret pangs, no self-respect, No husband's look to bear? O! worse than these, I must endure his loathsome touch; be kind When he would dally with his wife, and smile ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... though the whole wind slash at your bark, you are lifted up, aye—though it hiss to ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington

... term by which the ancient Greek or Roman used to distinguish hiss religion from the rival religions of other and heretical pagans. Just as Orthodoxy, according to DEAN SWIFT, means "my doxy," and Heterodoxy, the doxy of other people; so the pious Roman used to speak of "my thology" as the only genuine religion; the "thologies" of other men being cheap and worthless ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various

... drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat's bow—Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!" The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and turned, and shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew; when, waving his free hand to them, they all dispersed; and Ahab retired within ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... answered Aulus. "I lack two front teeth, knocked out by a stone from the hand of a Briton, I speak with a hiss; still my happiest ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... time to time more deeply seated convulsion would upheave sudden to the surface vast tracts of semi-molten rock, soon again to disappear, and from which waves of bulk enormous would roll outwards, to meet in wild conflict with the giant waves of other convulsions, or return to hiss and sputter against the intensely heated and fast foundering mass, whose violent upheaval had first elevated and sent them abroad. Such would be the probable state of things during the times of the earlier gneiss and ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... finished for, with a menacing movement, Betty had thrust the stick toward the reptile and the latter with a hiss had struck. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope

... ringings were unheeded; so were the more dignified admonitions of the new clock; so was the tea-kettle, which hissed with the utmost fury at being boiled so long, but hissed in vain, for it was allowed to hiss its entire contents into thin air, and then to burn its bottom red hot! In like manner the large pot of potatoes evaporated its water, red-heated its bottom, and burned its ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne

... and sleeping. Sleep, indeed, you will enjoy most luxuriously, for the rapid bounding motion of the canoe as it leaps forward at every impulse of the crew, the sharp quick beat of the paddles on the water, and the roll of their shafts against the gunwale, with the continuous hiss and ripple of the stream cleft by the curving prow, combine to ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... wide, but chief the spacious hall (Though like a covered field, where champions bold Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan's chair Defied the best of Paynim chivalry To mortal combat, or career with lance), Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air, Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides. Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, New rubbed with balm, expatiate, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... said Belle; "do you hear? it already begins to hiss upon the embers; that fire of ours will ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... quarter and all the Moors of Tetuan were alive to what was happening, and on the night of the marriage a great company of both peoples, though chiefly of the rabble among them, gathered in front of the Rabbi's house that they might hiss ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... he would cry; and then his voice rang through the premises like a trumpet; and when, mimicking it, came the small pipe of a Ginevra, a Mathilde, or a Blanche, one understood why a hollow groan of scorn, or a fierce hiss of rage, rewarded ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... as we turned our heads, and contrasted on the two sides of the sail of the jolly-boat. And then we got within earshot. A great fire is terrible to see, but it is almost more terrible to hear, and it is curious how like it is to the sound of great waters or a great wind. The roar, the hiss, the crackle, ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... in the glass—a single flash of green that cut the blackness with an almost audible hiss. It was gone in an instant while a man's voice screamed once in fear and agony, one scream that broke like brittle steel in the ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... it was in Geoffrey's face that the tide rose. Such a burning tide it was, he fancied he heard the blood hiss as it curled round the roots of his hair. He noted this as curious, and remembered that in hanging or drowning it was the trifles that stamped themselves upon the mind. Also, it appeared that he was ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards

... parted, showing a gleam of strong white teeth. "My name," he said, speaking in a peculiarly soft voice that somehow reminded Merryon of the hiss of a reptile, "is Leo Vulcan. You have heard of me? Perhaps not. I am better known in the Western Hemisphere. You ask me what I want?" He raised a brown, hairy hand and pointed straight at the girl in Merryon's ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... was more apparent than ever, only the smile of Barnabas was the smile of youth, joyous, exuberant, unconquerable. Noting which Experienced Age laughed short and fierce, and strode in to strike Youth down—then came a rush of feet, the panting hiss of breath, the shock of vicious blows, and John Barty, the unbeaten ex-champion of all England, threw up his arms, staggered back the length of the room, and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... dripped on my shining gossamer veil and white velvet dress. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, my whole nature was metamorphosed; and my coming years swept in panoramic vision before me, beckoning me to the prompt performance of a stern and humiliating duty. The blood in my veins seemed to hiss and bubble like a seething cauldron, and my heart fired with a hate for which language has no name, no garb, no provision; but my brain kept faithful guard, and reason calmly pointed out my future path. When Mr. Carlyle ended his tirade against me and his curses on his ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... evil indeed; but dishonesty, infamy, villainy, ill reports carry no more hurt in them than a man is sensible of; and if a man have no sense of them, they are no longer evils. What are you the worse if the people hiss at you, so you applaud yourself? And that a man be able to do so, he ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus

... first thing he heard on entering the stage-door was a hiss. The story goes that the poor author was dreadfully frightened; and that in answer to a hurried question, Colman exclaimed, "Psha! Doctor, don't be afraid of a squib, when we have been sitting these two hours on a barrel of gunpowder." If this was meant as a ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... engaged a black puff of smoke appeared behind my tail and I had the impression of hearing a piece of iron hiss by. "Must have got my range first shot!" I surmised, and making a steep bank piqued heavily. "There, I have lost them now." The whole art of avoiding shells is to pay no attention till they get your range and then dodge away, change altitude, and generally avoid going in a ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... perseveringly, no matter how thoroughly it may be refuted or proved absurd. Literally, make the greatest noise in opposition to it that you are able, especially at public meetings. There, recollect a groan is a groan, and a hiss a hiss, even though proceeding from a goose. On all such occasions do your utmost to create a disturbance, to look like a popular demonstration against the measure. In addition to shouting, yelling, and bawling, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... places. Faces, emotionally divided between fear and strong interest, peered at us as we ran by, disappearing at the first whistle of a bomb, for all the world like hermit-crabs into their shells. A whistle sent us both scurrying into a passageway; the shell fell with a wicked hiss, and, scattering the paving-stones to the four winds, blew a shallow crater in the roadway. A big cart horse, hit in the neck and forelegs by fragments of the shell, screamed hideously. Right at the bridge, the sentry, an old territorial, was watching ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... his bosom. And the serpent never crosses the path of man if he can help it. The most deadly is that which is too sluggish to get out of his way—therefore bites in self-defense. And the serpent generally gives some warning hiss, or a rattle. Indeed, almost every animal gives warning of its foul intent. The shark turns over before seizing its prey. But the false friend (I am obliged to couple these words) takes you in without changing his side.... In truth, a man, if ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... to proceed eastward, by the parishes of Greatham, Lysse, Rogate, and Trotton, in the county of Sussex; by Bramshot, Hedleigh, and Kingsley. This royalty consists entirely of sand covered with heath and fern; but is somewhat diversified with hiss and dales, without having one standing tree in the whole extent. In the bottoms, where the waters stagnate, are many bogs, which formerly abounded with subterraneous trees; though Dr. Plot says positively,* that 'there never were any fallen trees hidden in the mosses of the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... Claudia gave her hand to Lord Vincent, who led her to the head of the first set. When Ishmael returned, Bee gave him her hand and told him Claudia's wish, which, of course, had all the force of a command for him, and he immediately led Bee to the place opposite Lord Vincent and Hiss Merlin. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... be,—confidence easily passed for genius, and presumption for power. Tributes of admiration and envy poured in upon him,—anonymous missives, tender and daring, odorous with the atmosphere of luxurious boudoirs, and coarse scrawls, scented with orange-peel and lamp-smoke, and seeming to hiss with the sibilant whisper of green-room spite; and the young actor, valuing alike the sentiments, kindly or malign, which ministered to his egoism, intoxicated with the first foamy draught of fame, grew careless, freakish, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... out of the Dish with him, and did so for a considerable time, till one Morning, he striking the Snake on the Head, it hissed at him. Upon which he told his Mother that the Baby (for so he call'd it) cry'd Hiss at him. His Mother had it kill'd, which occasioned him a great Fit of Sickness, and 'twas thought would ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... in her breath with a hiss; and then to herself, "If he despises me for the act, well, I must bear it, too— while I ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... hard breathing of the man, and I could tell every time that his knife struck home, by a peculiar hiss that escaped the snake. It was like ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... escape it. As I did so, as quick as a flash there shot out a long tentacle from this mass of floating blubber, and it fell as light and sinuous as a whip-lash across the front of my machine. There was a loud hiss as it lay for a moment across the hot engine, and it whisked itself into the air again, while the huge, flat body drew itself together as if in sudden pain. I dipped to a vol-pique, but again a tentacle fell over the monoplane and was shorn off by the propeller as easily as it might have cut ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... part is just to coach and coach, to go over the lines a thousand times and the stage business ten thousand, and then to stay behind the scenes and hiss at them: 'More spirit! More life! Throw yourself into it!' and then to watch them walk it through like puppets! Well, The Taming of the Shrew is pretty stiff work for amateurs, no doubt of that—there's that much to be said. Breakfast time, childie! ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond

... light steals through the woods their forms grow less grotesque. In the half light a phoebe begins her shrill song. A blue-jay screams. The quail sounds his first "Bob White." Brown thrashers in the thicket—it is past their time of singing—respond with a strange, sibilant sound, a mingled hiss and whistle, far different from his ringing songs of May, now only memories; different also from her scoldings when she was disturbed on her nest and from her tender crooning calls to ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... handling without resistance, the shred of bark, driven by the imperceptible zephyr, falls a few yards away, and in an agony of anxiety utters an imploring purr, or was it an imprecation? That half purr, half hiss has been the only sound of the episode. It is a warning to be gone and leave Nature to her ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... the wild rose face of me Ladybird looking through. I see the swale rocking, smell the sweetness of the blooming things, and the damp, mucky odor of the swamp; and I hear me birds sing, me squirrels bark, the rattlers hiss, and the step of Wessner or Black Jack coming; and whether it's the things that I loved or the things that I feared, it's all a part ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... snakes of dozens of kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty by thirty feet, from which came the sibilant hiss of puff adders, and a strong, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... alarm, Dymes poured forth assurances of his good behaviour. He followed her down to the platform, and for a quarter of an hour she had to listen, in torment of mind and body, to remonstrances, flatteries, amorous blandishments, accompanied by the hiss of steam and ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... reached Kinton and bent to hiss and cluck into the latter's ear in what he presumably considered an undertone. The Terran laboriously spelled out the message inscribed on the limp, satiny paper held before his eyes. Then he rose and took one step toward ...
— Exile • Horace Brown Fyfe

... arm about the snarling creature perched on her shoulder; but the cat with a hiss only raised ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... innumerable crowd has gathered, for it is said that a ship is to sail against wind and weather, bidding defiance to the elements; the man who thinks he can solve the problem is named Robert Fulton. The ship begins its passage, but suddenly it stops. The crowd begins to laugh and whistle and hiss—the very father of the ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... earth-colored men, shoulders thrown back, bent forward, muscles of arms swelling and slackening, hoes flashing at the same moment against the sky, at the same moment buried with a thud in clods. And he felt reassured as a traveller feels, hearing the continuous hiss and squudge of well ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos









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