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More "Nick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has a fouth o' auld nick-nackets; Rusty airn caps, and jinglin' jackets, Wad haud the Lothians three in tackets, A towmont gude And parritch-pats and auld saut-backets, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... Nick Razorblade a barber was, A strapping lad was he; And he could shave with such a grace, It was a joy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... again, for the great ice wall was getting very close, and he had given many looks at the huge cliff to see whether it would be possible to climb up, when once more the sinking spirits rose with a bound, for, in the nick of time, Johannes shouted, "All clear ahead!" the gong sent forth its notes to order full speed, and the water was churned into a foam as the propeller began ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... you tell us a thing that's puzzled me, and I daresay more than me?" ventured a young assistant manager, voicing the thoughts of others present. "How the deuce did those wild elephants happen to turn up just in the nick of time for you?" ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... be kep' in the abstract,—for, come to apply it, You're ept to hurt some folks's interists by it. 150 Wal, these 'ere Republicans (some on 'em) ects Ez though gineral mexims 'ud suit speshle facts; An' there's where we'll nick 'em, there's where they'll be lost; For applyin' your princerple's wut makes it cost, An' folks don't want Fourth o' July t' interfere With the business-consarns o' the rest o' the year, No more 'n they want Sunday to pry an' to peek Into ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the meet was; well, they drew Ballytowngal, and found no fox there. It was not expected, and nothing happened there. The people did not come into old Nick Bodkin's demesne, but we had heard by the time that we were there that we should come across a lot of Landleaguers at Moytubber. There they were as thick as bees round the covert, and there was one man who had the impudence to tell Tom Daly ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... we've a mind. Aw'm capt whativer made Becka ax her, for ther's hardly a woman i'th ginnel but what had leever goa a' mile another rooad nor meet her; but aw declare shoo's comin' sailin' daan like a fifty-gun ship! Talk abaght owd Nick, ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... cannot describe The delight I am in with this Perceval tribe. Such capering!—Such vaporing!—Such rigor!—Such vigor! North, South, East, and West, they have cut such a figure, That soon they will bring the whole world round our ears, And leave us no friends—but Old Nick and Algiers. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... disturbance in the water, little ominous whirlpools not caused by wind. Presently there emerged a long shadow, like a black expanse of rock:—unmistakably a mugger. And in that moment she felt exquisitely grateful to the hand that had seized her in the nick of time. The next—she wrung her own together ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... fasten that line to any bough near to a hole where a Pike is, or is likely to lie, or to have a haunt; and then wind your line on any forked stick, all your line, except half a yard of it or rather more; and split that forked stick, with such a nick or notch at one end of it as may keep the line from any more of it ravelling from about the stick than so much of it as you intend. And choose your forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep the fish or frog from pulling the forked stick under the water till the Pike bites; and ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... cakes burn, gal," the old man drawled. "If Tunis ain't here mighty quick he can eat his cold. Oh! Here he is—right to the nick o' time, like the second mate's ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... just landed, seeing an electric-motor car running for the first time, exclaimed: "Well, well, Ould Nick must be pullin' it ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... writing-materials in the same order—first the paper, then the ink, then the pen. 'I say to him,' says Keats, 'why not the pen sometimes first?' We don't like precision; look at the word 'Methodist,' which originally was a nick-name for people of strictly disciplined life. We like something a ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... myself," agreed Douglas. "But he didn't hold a grudge against me. He's not that kind. And I think he was so lonely he'd have been glad to feed the Old Nick himself." ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... bull-fighter, who, standing 20 or 30 yds. from the bull, draws its attention to him by means of violent gestures. As the bull charges, the banderillero steps towards him, dexterously plants both darts in the beast's neck, and draws aside in the nick of time to avoid its horns. Four pairs of banderillas are planted in this way, rendering the bull mad with rage and pain. Should the animal prove of a cowardly nature and refuse to attack repeatedly, banderillas de fuego (fire) ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... had wealthy friends, and as this chest must have belonged to them, it would have been worth my while to get hold of her. As, however, they have never appeared, I have been saved the trouble and expense she would have been to me, and now this store comes just in the nick of time when I want it most. The only difficulty will be to dispose of all these things without raising suspicion as to how I came by them. Still, at the worst, I can but tell the truth should questions be asked, and ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... did it!" insisted Mr. Swift, "and you did it in the nick of time. Now I wouldn't for a moment think of offering you a reward for saving my son's life. But I do feel mighty friendly toward you—not that I didn't before—but I do want to help you. Alec, I will go into this business with you. We'll take a chance! I'll invest ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... of his emigration by employing his powers for the benefit of his creditors—oppression easily ensued. Men who had been transported to Virginia at the expense of L10, were sometimes sold for L40 or L50, or even for L60. The supply of white servants became a regular business, and a class of men, nick-named "spirits," used to delude young persons and idlers into embarking for America as to a land of plenty. White servants came to be a usual article of traffic. They were sold in England to be transported, and in Virginia, were resold to the highest bidder. In 1672, the average prices for five ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... hout for 'Ebrews, or some tuppenny kernel? No, not for JEAMES, if he is quite aweer of it! It's just infernal, The Vulgar Mix that calls itself Society. All shoddy slyness, And moneybags; a "blend" as might kontamernate a Ryal 'Igness, Or infry-dig a Hemperor. It won't nick JEAMES though, not percisely; Better to flop in solitude than to demean one's self unwisely. Won't ketch me selling myself off. I must confess my 'art it 'arrers To see the Strorberry-Leaves go cheap—like strorberries ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... he said. "What on earth for? Has he sandbagged somebody for reading Nick Carter and Bertha M. Clay? That's about the only crime ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... Nick has more influence with York than I have. He crosses the street when he sees me. I like him about as much as he likes me. He's boss of his own show—his directors cut no ice. Anyway, it's none of my business. I've no excuse for butting in." Her face showed her disappointment. ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... is not of the broken cart wheel, or hide-and-seek by moonlight, that I wish to speak here, but of another diversion next day, and of a mysterious stranger who arrived at nick of time ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... Reformers subsequently declared was treacherously made use of, as they had not had occasion to send the appeal therein mentioned. It is evident that at that time Dr. Jameson believed that his plans were so well arranged that there would be no bloodshed, that, indeed, he would appear in the nick of time to afford the "moral support" he had originally engaged to provide. The troops were to go straight to Johannesburg before the Boers had time to assemble their forces or to take any measures to stop him. The Doctor explained that they were marching to ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... Verplanck Bill could not muster sufficient support to become law, it revived tariff discussion on promising lines, and it brought nullification proceedings to a halt in the very nick of time. Shortly before February 1, 1833, the leading nullifiers came together in Charleston and entered into an extralegal agreement to postpone the enforcement of the nullification ordinance until the outcome of the new tariff debates should be known. ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... here in 1880. I figured there better land out here and I followed her in 1881. We paid our own ways. Seem like the owners ought to give the slaves something but seem like they was mad 'cause they set us free. Ma was named Viney May and pa, Nick May. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... it mostly with one good long cut on one side and sometimes turn it over and make a little nick on the other, but one good long cut is usually ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... their elbows in capacious but empty pockets, they cast longing looks and wondered, as they had no stockings, where Santa Claus could put their presents when he had brought them. To all this show and preparation there was one exception: one place shrouded in total darkness—it was the shop of Nick Baba, the village shoemaker. That was for the time deserted; left to its dust, its collection of worn-out soles, its curtains of cobwebs, and its compound of bad, unwholesome odors. This darkness and neglect was about to end, however, ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... virtues which distinguished Monsieur Troubridge. Monsieur Troubridge's BIENFAISANCE was at this time thinking of mining the fort. "If we can accomplish that," said he, "I am a strong advocate to send them, hostages and all, to Old Nick, and surprise him with a group of nobility and republicans. Meantime," he added, "it was some satisfaction to perceive that the shells fell well, and broke some of their shins." Finally, to complete his character, ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... Harrison had nearly got to loggerheads one night for no reason apparently, save that each had a high reputation for courage, and neither could find a worthier antagonist. In the nick of time Rablay appeared; he seemed to understand the situation at ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... from Pittsburg in a cab and while leaning on his shoulder his diamond scarfpin got caught in her teeth. She being a bashful young thing—then. Well, when she takes her head off his shoulder the pin naturally comes along, too, and then she got afraid that he would think she was trying to nick it so she stuck the pin in her hat band, intending to restore it on the way home. But in the next cafe they stopped in she picked a fight and left him in a huff. Would you believe it, that guy had the nerve to come around the next day and declare that she had pinched ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... value, it seems thus clearly; and anecdotes change their value; and in that proportion honesty, as regards one or the other, changes the value of its chances. But what has all this to do with 'Old Nick'? Stop: let me consider. That title was placed at the head of this article, and I admit that it was placed there by myself. Else, whilst I was wandering from my text, and vainly endeavouring to recollect what it was that I had meant by this text, a ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... who long remains under the yoke of respect to a great lord, though he admits no barriers after he has once jumped them, and regards the aristocrat as an equal only, "this," he said, "and you have come in the nick of time to hear it. I am no speaker of gilded phrases, and I shall say things plainly. I commanded five hundred men during the late war. Since we have taken up arms again I have raised a thousand heads as hard as mine for the service of the king. It is now ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... Dempster used sometimes to write letters and receive people who came on business out of office hours. She had looked through the contents of the bureau more than once; but today, on removing the last bundle of letters from one of the compartments, she saw what she had never seen before, a small nick in the wood, made in the shape of a thumb-nail, evidently intended as a means of pushing aside the movable back of the compartment. In her examination hitherto she had not found such a letter as Mr. Pittman had described—perhaps there might be more letters behind this ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Beethoven came on the world's stage "just in the nick of time," and almost immediately had to begin hewing out a path for himself. He was born in the workshop, as was Mozart, and learned music simultaneously with speaking. Stirring times they were in which he first saw the ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... retain, in the names of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the recollections of the chief gods of this mythology. Mara (the nightmare) still torments the sleep of the English-speaking people; and the Evil One, Nokke (so says Laing), is the ancestor of Old Nick. ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... now clear of armed insurrectionists. You need not to be reminded that it is the nick of time for reinaugurating a loyal State government. Not a moment should be lost. You and the co-operating friends there can better judge of the ways and means than can be judged by any here. I only offer a few suggestions. The reinauguration must not ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Henry, with quiet steps and a sober, thought-ful look. He had been taught to read and write, and for that reason he was nick-named ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... walking papers damned quick! ... And, in her humiliation, is there anybody mad enough to fancy that she wouldn't snap up Plank in such a fix? ... And make it look like a jilt for Quarrier? ... But Plank must do his part on the minute; Plank must step up in the very nick of time; Plank, with his millions and his ambitions, was bound to be a winner anyway, and Sylvia might as well be his pilot and use his money. ... And Plank would be very, very grateful—very useful, a very good friend to have. ... And Leila would learn at last that he, Mortimer, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave a lustre of midday to objects below; When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be Saint Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled and shouted, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... for instead of boxing fairly, he would kick, pull hair, bite, and scratch most unmercifully, and never fail to take every advantage of his antagonist after he had brought him to the ground. For these reasons he was soon dignified with the nick name of Dick Bear, even by the vulgar boys in the streets; and most of them afterwards took care never to engage with him unless when there were several other boys present to see fair play. One would think that such a rough hewn and slovenly mortal as we have been describing ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... traces everywhere of its grim visitation. But here its heavy hand had been laid lightly upon town and village. It was as if a wave of poison gas of the sort the Germans brought into war had been turned aside by a friendly breeze, arising in the very nick of time. Little harm had been done along the road we traveled. But the thunder of the guns was always in our ears; we could hear the steady, throbbing rhythm of the cannon, muttering away to the ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... discovered that there were three distinct aristocracies in Washington. One of these, (nick-named the Antiques,) consisted of cultivated, high-bred old families who looked back with pride upon an ancestry that had been always great in the nation's councils and its wars from the birth of ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... fools sit on the bench, or we should hev none of this," continued Matthew. "I reckon some one that's here is nigh ax't oot by Auld Nick in the kirk ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... months after this, in the early spring, while Miss Cuyler was still in Rivington Street, that young Van Bibber invited his friend Travers to dine with him, and go on later to the People's Theatre, on the Bowery, where Irving Willis, the Boy Actor, was playing "Nick of the Woods." Travers despatched a hasty and joyous note in reply to this to the effect that he would be on hand. He then went off with a man to try a horse at a riding academy, and easily and promptly forgot all about it. He did remember, as he was dressing for dinner, that he had an appointment ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... in the two elevens, mingled with the yeomen and whoever can best do the business. Fallow field and Beckley, without regard to rank, have drawn upon their muscle and science. One of the bold men of Beckley at the wickets is Nick Frim, son of the gamekeeper at Beckley Court; the other is young Tom Copping, son of Squire Copping, of Dox Hall, in the parish of Beckley. Last year, you must know, Fallow field beat. That is why Nick Frim, a renowned out-hitter, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Rock-scorpions are right. They have pounced upon the derelict like wolves. I almost wish I was there to see the effect when they realize they have been fooled, and they find that that craft is loaded with stones. It was just done in the nick of time; they might have ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... Rosscullen mortgage and turning poor Nick Lestrange out of house and home has rather taken me aback; for I liked the old rascal when I was a boy and had the run of his park to play in. I was ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... disloyal; of ex- Senator Jerry Clemens, who had early been a Union man, but later was disposed to accept secession as an accomplished fact; then, on the Union occupancy of Northern Alabama, he boldly advocated a restoration of the State to the Union. Colonel Nick Davis, likewise an original Union man, at first opposed secession; then, after Bull run, accepted a colonelcy in an Alabama rebel regiment; then declined it, and thereafter tried to remain loyal to the Union. The conduct of such strong men as Clemens ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... evening watching his skilful joining together of the two ends of cable. How deft he was in unwinding the sheathing wire, how exact in cutting off just the right amount of core from each end of the cable, how careful in stripping the insulation from the cores' end with a sharp knife not to nick the wires, which would have produced untold trouble. Then the seven wires stranded together in each end were unwound, carefully cleaned and scraped, that they might solder readily, after which they were again twisted together with pliers, ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... if you wish to patronise them you may take that opportunity of looking about and getting disburthened of some of the Paris mud, quite certain if it be wet weather that you will soon get more. Fruit in all its variety, books, prints, blacking, and nick-knacks of every description offer themselves to your notice. But let us direct our attention to a more interesting object; the fine bronze equestrian statue of Henry IV: one could almost think the good and ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... end of the week that Dick Rover came into contact with Tad Sobber, a stocky youth, with a shock of black hair and eyes which were cold and penetrating. Sobber was with a chum named Nick Pell, and both eyed Dick in a calculating manner which was ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... quick and expert. Only a few days ago one of the boys fell down in a fit in the schoolroom; some of the others assisted the teacher to carry him into the open air. The poor fellow had a collection of nick-nacks in one pocket, and about 20 penny pieces in the other, but during the moment that passed in carrying him out both pockets were emptied. The Directors of the house of Refuge, while having a due regard ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... at which she should have spoken, but she did not. She, who had prided herself that she would make a race of it—she, who had always been able to slip out of a predicament in the nick of time—stood mutely by and let Transley and her father interpret her silence as consent. She was not sure that she was sorry; she was not sure but she would have consented anyway; but Transley had taken the matter quite out of her hands. And yet she ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... fright, and tried to follow; but it was all over in a second, before we saw it, still less realized it—his struggle, swimming for dear life, and not gaining an inch; the stick held out to him in the nick of time, just as he passed a spot where the beast of a current ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... neck five minuts, bekaze the breath of her kiss was not gone from my mouth, I must go through the married lines on my way to quarters an' I must stay talkin' to a red-headed Mullingar heifer av a girl, Judy Sheehy, that was daughter to Mother Sheehy, the wife of Nick Sheehy, the canteen-sergint—the Black Curse av Shielygh be on the whole brood that are above ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... highly-agitated condition of mind, with the result that officials acquire the methods of those who deal with the mentally unhinged; show themselves prepared for any display of eccentricity. Ever, as in life, you remark the people who arrive too soon, or too late; a few lucky ones come in the very nick of time. The last named are favourites, selected with no obvious reason by Fortune, and greatly envied by their contemporaries; it is usual for them to claim the entire credit to themselves. Apart ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... his own father; and the old woman is his grandmother. The robber chief's father was known as "Nick, the Highwayman," a terrible person whose name made everybody's heart beat ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... Dames, the battle of. Valence de, the English cognomen of the Lusignan family. Valence, Aymar de, his contest with Bruce; his pursuit of him; defeated by Bruce at Loudon Hill; Gaveston's nick-name for him; unites with other nobles against Gaveston; his character; his conduct at the death of Gaveston; sent by Edward II. to Scotland against Bruce. Valence, William de, half-brother to Henry III., opposition between him and the Barons. ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... felt that they were faltering and that our work was easier and our hope higher; then we cried our cries and pressed on harder, and in that very nick of time there arose close behind us the roar of the Markmen's horn and the cries of the kindreds answering ours. Then such of the Romans as were not in the very act of smiting, or thrusting, or clinging or shielding, turned and fled, and the whoop of victory ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... was for my own 'usbind, an' I can't say more than thet. Mr. Footley thinks a deal of me, 'e does! Why, only the other dy as I was goin' inter 'is shop 'e says "Good mornin', Mrs. 'Odges." "Good mornin', Mr. Footley," says I. "You've jest come in the nick of time," says 'e. "This gentleman an' myself," pointin' to another gentleman as was standin' there, "we was 'avin' a bit of an argument. Now you're a very intelligent woman, Mrs. 'Odges, and a good customer too." "I can say thet for myself," say I, "I gives ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... Bloomfield, rather mysteriously requesting him to pay a visit to the lost town of the Picket Posts and to report at length upon anything he might find in the only habitable building of the camp. Aided by a prospector named Nick Porter, Frank and his chums visited Happenchance and there found the professor. They had adventures in helping the professor get his location notice on file, and only Merry's fleetness of foot and good judgment saved a prospective bonanza ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... in the first courtyard, those who were intimate with Senor Ignacio included: a proof-corrector, nick-named El Corretor; a certain Rebolledo, both barber and inventor, and four blind men, who were known by the sobriquets El Calabazas, El Sapistas, El Erigido and El Cuco and dwelt in harmony with their respective wives playing the latest tangos, tientos and zarzuela ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Street, before a conscience-stricken factory; and he wept on his sack bed in the scullery because the prince and the princess, his august parents, would never know that he had died. A whit less gloomy were his imaginings of the said prince and princess rushing into the house, in the nick of time, just before life was extinct, and cutting him down. How they were to find him he did not know. This side-track exploration of possibilities was a symptom ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Julia, but never again. Not that I mean to quarrel with her. I'm not such a fool as to quarrel with a girl because she can't like me. I know how it all is. If that scoundrel had not come across my path just when he did,—in that very nick of time, all might have been right betwixt her and me. I couldn't have offered to marry her before, when I hadn't as much income as would have found her in bread-and-butter. And then, just as better times came to me, he stepped in! I wonder whether it will ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... scrambling in there, as hurly as 9 a clock, with their shiny morning faces, and with their scratchels on their backs, as the Poet says, and with their lunches in 'em, as praps the Poet didn't kno of; and arterwards, the LORD MARE and his Sherryffs went to Epping Forest and dined at a Pick Nick with a lot of Werderers, whatever they may be, and some common Counselmen, but, strange to say, they didn't have no Wenson! so they made Game of one another. They didn't arsk that Mr. PERCY LINDLEY, who's allers a finding fault ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various
... knew he had found her in the nick of time. She had told him that she had no money, no room in which to sleep, no prospect of work. Everything she had except the clothes on her back had been pawned to buy food and lodgings. But she was young and resilient. When she got back ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... wait for help. The Afridis could not bring themselves to rush the little party, but confined themselves to keeping up a heavy fire. Another Sikh was wounded; and the dust caused by the bullets almost blinded the others, who could scarcely see to reply. At last, just in the nick of time, a relieving party arrived and carried ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... chums, as well as many other cadets and boys and girls from that vicinity, had been using the hill for a couple of hours when the race between the Blue Moon and the Yellow Streak was proposed by Nick Carncross, the new ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... business there, unless it were to deprive her of a customer, or suggest what became of the self-consuming tea and sugar, and other general trifles. That would have been agreeable. The bashful, winning, glorious curiosity, with which little Ruth, when fiery-face was gone, peeped into the books and nick-nacks that were lying about, and had a particular interest in some delicate paper-matches on the chimney-piece; wondering who could have made them. That would have been worth seeing. The faltering hand with which she tied those flowers together; with which, almost blushing at her own fair self ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... rejoiced. "Call Satan in!" he ordered. "I know that rogue perfectly well, and he has come in the very nick of time. A scamp like that will be sure to ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... Marquise entered "tristement sur la scene." The entrance was made quietly, and, for a breathless second, no one realised that the heroine of the evening had at last appeared. Her Grace of Lossett began to fear she felt a little disappointed when, in the nick of time, a great poet, who sat near ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... linked with Peter's, and laughing. Said she had found him reading a 'Deadwood Dick' thriller.... One of Tracey's hobbies—" she broke off to explain, "—is collecting old-fashioned thrillers, like the Nick Carter, Diamond King Brady, Buffalo Bill and Deadwood Dick paper-bound books. Of course he didn't take up that hobby until a lot of other rich men had done it first. There was never anybody less original than poor Tracey.... Well, Flora gave up her place to Janet, and again ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... the big clock were at 12.45 exactly, the guard was about to wave his green flag. They were too late to look for their party; they simply pelted towards the nearest carriage, a porter opened the door and they scrambled in just in the very nick of time. ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... dwarf, had come to the clearing in the nick of time. He saw the open door. He beheld the rescuer bearing out the captive in his arms. Murder sprang up at once in his heart. He decided to kill the preacher then and there. This he had wanted to do for a long time. But the excitement of the occasion and his own ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... across to Trimble, and, as well as I was able, recover my abstracted sheet with the aid of the rod. It took a long time, and laid me open to dire penalties for disturbing the public peace. But it had to be done, and fortunately for me a row at the other end of the room called the monitor away in the nick of time. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... rather free of her person than a sturdy country wench. Her hands are as white as a fine lady's! By the Mass! and her hair smells of essences, I verily believe, and her hose are as find as a queen's. By the two horns of Old Nick, matters please me but ill as I find ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... was, when not doing the queen, cordial, cheerful in manner, loving to have children about her, to spoil them with cakes and see them romp and dance; free and easy, cynical, Rabelaisian, if I may use the expression, as such mongrel Frenchwomen are apt to grow with years; the nick-name which she gave to a member of a family where the tradition of her and her ways still persists, reveals a wealth of coarse fun which is rather strange in a woman who was once the Beatrice or Laura of a ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... nothing to hold them up, and then, without any warning at all, old Whitetail the Marsh Hawk had glided out across the Smiling Pool with his great claws stretched out to clutch Grandfather Frog, and Grandfather Frog had dived into the Smiling Pool with a great splash just in the very nick of time. ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... gaugers and their crony, Ould Nick, ran off wid the uncle of him, Nance and he and the childer lived together in their father's and mother's house; and if they didn't live and die happy, I wish that you and ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... broad minded and impartial students of history in the United States. The late Professor Moses Coit Tyler, of the University of Cornell, gave it as his opinion, "That the side of the Loyalists, as they called themselves, of the Tories, as they were scornfully nick-named by their opponents, was even in argument not a weak one, and in motive and sentiment not a base one, and in devotion and self-sacrifice not an unheroic one." The same sentiments were even more emphatically expressed by ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... Dennis. Ould Nick fly away with the roof of it! I took the remainder of the lease, per advice of my bride, Mrs. Brulgruddery: laid out her goodlooking hundred pound for the furniture, and the goodwill; bought three pigs, that are going into a ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... higher demands of imaginative prose—witness his Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow—but his forte is in miniature, and the orthodox dimensions of three volumes post-octavo would suit him almost as ill as would the Athenian vesture of Nick Bottom the spruce proportions of royal Oberon: Haliburton is inimitable in his own line of things; his measure of wit and humour—qualities unknown, or nearly so, to Cooper—is 'pressed down, and shaken together, and running over;' but his ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... pause, said: "By Jove! how lucky, Miss Daisy. You've come in the nick of time. Just finished our pool. Now you and Mrs. Halton shall play a single and I shall mark ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... above water. I could easily slide up the staff without taking out a single button; but once up, how could I remain there? I should certainly come slipping down again. Oh! that there was only a notch—a knot—a nail—if I only had a knife to make a nick; but knot, notch, nail, knife, nick—all were alike denied me. Stay! I was wrong, decidedly wrong. I remembered just then that while attempting to get over the barrel, I had noticed that the staff just under it was smaller than elsewhere. It had been flanged ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... of intellect, and the diffusion of knowledge, of infant schools and adult colleges, of gas-lights and rail-roads, of steam-boats and steam-coaches, of literature for nothing, and science for less! What are they and fifty other such nick-nacks compared with the vast strides made by this improving age in the grand art of puffing? Nay, are they not for the most part mere implements and accessories of that mighty engine of trade? What is half the march of intellect, but puffery? Why do little children learn their ...
— Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher • Mary Russell Mitford
... on beholding it, shivered with dread, And screamed, as he turned away quick; Not an old woman saw it, but raising her head, Dropp'd a bead, made a cross on her wrinkles, and said, "God help me from ugly old Nick!" ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... he "wished to look round," he said. So the morning was spent in impressing everyone with his shiny black suit of West-of-England broadcloth and his beautiful neckcloth and bunch of seals. But in the evening he climbed the pulpit; and there Old Nick himself, that lies in wait for preachers, must have tempted the poor fellow to preach on Womanly Perfection, taking his text ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... think of the right thing to say a fortnight after the opportunity, but this once the name Berkeley came to me in the nick of time, and I evened my score with its possessor for many a dirty trick he had put upon me. To suspect was to condemn with Charles, and I knew that if he heard me call Berkeley's name, that consummate villain would suffer the royal frown. ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... heard such funny humming noises and jingling like the rattling of chains an' things," said the driver, "that they got most scared to death and ran back home like the old Nick was after them. Ever since then folks has ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... catched him alone reading, and then told him, that if he did not find some way to earn his bread, he would turn him out of doors in a very short time; and so he would have done, sure enough, if my Lord Fitz-Owen had not taken him into his service just in the nick." ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... with a snap, and seeing Pilar standing there like a disappointed child balked of a surprise, he added: "However, I am grateful for the suggestion, as it helps me out of a dilemma. I was at a loss in what form to put what I must say to you—you have helped me in the nick of time. Pilar," he drew her on to his knee and kissed her, "at the seaside the matter was very simple, we had only to divide the bill between us. That will not do here. I am not well enough off to defray half the expense of such an establishment ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... "Nick don't work straight from the shoulder, Mr. Kendrick; but he's got a long arm with a lot o' elbows in it." McCorquodale shook his head. thoughtfully and looked serious. "There was a guy named Weiler hangin' around—I ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... able to dissuade her from her purpose of going out into the Indian country, and being her natural protector and an unincumbered bachelor, I decided to follow her. And now I feel very happy to have overtaken her in the nick of time." ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... is in warm, but not in cold. My second is in deck, but not in hold. My third is in lady, but not in man. My fourth is in meal, but not in bran. My fifth is in nick, but not in batter. My sixth is in din, but not in clatter. My seventh is in fright, but not in scare. My eighth is in stallion, but not in mare. My ninth is in county, but not in State. My tenth is in manner, but not in ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... fun flagged. Ben Paul, a husky country boy, proposed that two or three go to Nick Yonse's still house and procure a little "licker." Cousin Wilson frowned upon this proposal but as the boys were his guests he did not further protest. It was impossible to awaken anyone to get the matured ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Heaven wi' its jasper halls Is now the on'y town I care to be in.. Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls As we ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... pell-mell of unofficial citizens ever prancing along the edge of the pageant, huzza-ing and hosanna-ing, mostly looking back over their shoulders and shading their eyes; maidens strewing rose-leaves; and at last the orchestra crashing to a climax in the nick of which my neighbour turned to me and, with an assumption of innocent enthusiasm, whispered, I shouldn't wonder if this were Barrett.' I suppose (Mr. Barrett at that instant amply appearing) I gave way to laughter; but this didn't matter; the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Lor'! how she larrupped 'em,—she has a cruel heart, has n't she, Bob? Bob is a 'cute child, Mr. R——. Just as I was a thinking of turning her out neck an' crop, a gemman what lodges aloft, wot be a laryer, and wot had just saved my nick, Mr. R——, by proving a h-alibi, said, 'That's a tidy body, your Peg!' (for you see he was often a wisiting here, an' h-indeed, sin' then, he has taken our third floor, No. 9); 'I've been a speakin' to her, and I find she has been a nuss to the sick. I has a frind wots a h-uncle ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... what tricks they performed, or how they did it. What with the vexation about the dinner, and what with the provocation of the rogues coming back just in the nick of time to see the jewel with their own eyes, I own I lost my head. The first thing that I remember noticing was the sudden appearance on the scene of the Indian traveller, Mr. Murthwaite. Skirting the half-circle ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... localised it takes away their restfulness to one. One begins to see just all the places where they belong to somebody else, notice-boards struck up everywhere warning one to keep off the grass. And that's a nuisance. It raises Old Nick in one, and makes one long to commit all manner of wickedness which would never ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... however, occurred in an aged Macacus cynomolgus, kept in confinement whose moustaches were "remarkably long and human-like." Altogether this old monkey presented a ludicrous resemblance to one of the reigning monarchs of Europe, after whom he was universally nick-named. In certain races of man the hair on the head hardly ever becomes grey; thus Mr. D. Forbes has never, as he informs me, seen an instance with the Aymaras and Quichuas ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... it's no use snapping one's head off, if the night is howling like old Nick himself," answered Salina, ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... be scared at him, mum; that's only old Jock; he's as ugly as old Nick himself, but he knows better than to be very ugly to me. I can throw him in the gutter as easy as I could them young ones, and he knows it. That's Dirk's father, that is! Ain't ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... here we go! Now it's up to the guy what examines us. You'll breeze through—not a nick in you. Me—well, they're fussy about teeth, I'm told, and, of course, I had to have a swift poke in the mush that dented my beak. They may try to ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... must hide his diminished head; and from this vast repertory of all that is horrid and grotesque—more horrid on account of its grotesqueness—the feuilletonists, or short story-tellers, are not indisposed to draw. We back Danton any day against Old Nick. And how infinitely better the effect of introducing a true villain in plain clothes, relying for his power only on the known and undeniable atrocity of his character, than all the pale-faced, hollow-eyed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... this time she had not seen me, or even known of my insignificant existence; but suddenly, as though it were a sally of banter whose blade he parried in the nick of time, her laughter-bathed eyes darted past him and squarely met my own; her lips sobered into a half parted expression of interest and, some strange thought—perhaps unbidden—coming into her mind, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... little business in Bridge Street? Carr's. Old Jonas Carr's. He is retiring, you know—or perhaps you don't know—it's been kept secret for business purposes. I am glad to have got hold of it in the nick of time, and I am putting your little capital ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... blazes keeps these here women folks continually emergin' from their aliment and mixin' into other spheres? They're well enough ashore, but on soundin's and blue water they beat old Nick. And aboard a contrabandista, too! It's enough to make a Quaker kick his grandmother. Howsomdever, Morris is just soft-headed fool enough to like it, and think it all fine fun. I shouldn't wonder if he was ass enough to get spliced one of these days, and take his wife to sea. I think ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... up the steps from the pump room. He was in the nick of time. A large locker in the main compartment gave him refuge just as Pauline and Summers ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... want 'em. Our garden ain't much this year. Pa has had to work out all the time. The kids and me put in some seed—all we had—with a hoe. We ain't got no horse; our team died last winter. We didn't have much feed and it was shore a hard winter. We hated to see old Nick and Fanny die. They were just like ones of the family. We drove 'em clean from Missouri, too. But they died, and what hurt me most was, pa 'lowed it would be a turrible waste not to skin 'em. I begged him not to. Land knows the pore old things was entitled ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... had threatened it, but its safety was dearly bought. According to the tradition accepted in Asia Minor two hundred years later, a horde of Scythians under King Madyes, son of Protothyes, setting out from the Bussian steppes in pursuit of the Cimmerians, made their appearance on the scene in the nick of time. We are told that they flung themselves through the Caspian Gates into the basin of the Kur, and came into contact with the Medes at the foot of Mount Caucasus. The defeat of the Medes here ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... tavern as a rendezvous for a gang of pirates, who are to have their ship in waiting, in order to carry off a young lady with whom his lordship is enamored. It need not be said that Kean arrives at the nick of time, saves the innocent Meess Anna, and exposes the infamy of the Peer. A violent tirade against noblemen ensues, and Lord Melbourn slinks away, disappointed, to meditate revenge. Kean's triumphs continue through all the acts: the Ambassadress falls madly in love with him; the Prince ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said Sholto, eagerly. "Mind, if you refuse, and will not give it up after promising, I will nick that lying throat of yours with ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... strong-armed bully, who kept on thrusting and driving the boy sideways as, lithe and agile, he avoided or parried every thrust. At last his fate seemed sealed, for his arm was growing weak and his defence being beaten down, when with a quick movement and just in the nick of time Leoni made a sudden dart forward and turned aside a ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... and be close to the spot when the ordeal was being gone through with, and touch the sward-slip so unmistakably that all men might see that it was they who knocked it down. After this comes forward he who was to go through with the ordeal, and at the nick of time when he had got under the "earth-chain," these men who had been put up to it fall on each other with weapons, meeting close to the arch of the sward-slip, and lie there fallen, and down tumbles the "earth-chain", as was likely enough. Then men rush up between them and part ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... down Nick Ammons because his wife bought milk down the canyon. They had a sick baby, and it's not much you get in this thin stuff at the store. They put chalk in it, I think; any way, you can see somethin' ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... Then, in the nick of time, he made the acquaintance of a Mr William Arbuckle, a friend of his father-in-law, and a South African sheep farmer, home for a holiday; and this man strongly urged him to emigrate to South Africa and take up sheep farming. The idea powerfully appealed to my father from ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... hopeless of escape, he bade his companions good-bye. All at once it occurred to him to try taking off his clothes. This made just the difference required, and with a tremendous effort he got out of his prison-house in the very nick ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... to say," replied Dick Rover. "Our greatest trouble was with some mutineers who got drunk and wanted to run things to suit themselves. They might have got the best of us, but a warship visited the island just in the nick of time ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... he said with a flourish of his hand. "Good condition, too; only the soap dish has a nick. You can ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... round. Then they were compelled to resort to the substitutes of the Indians. Among some tribes the bark of the red willow, dried and bruised, was used; others, particularly the mountain savages, smoked the genuine kin-nik-i-nick, a little evergreen vine growing on the tops of the highest elevations, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... chasing through the undergrowth as if the very Old Nick was after him, swinging his cap as he ran, and shouting out some words ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... my master was cute with the cards, and that few was equal to him in any game with pasteboard or ivory; but, be my conscience, he met his match now, for if it was ould Nick was playin' he couldn't do the thrick nater nor the baron. He made every thing come up just like magic: if he wanted a seven of diamonds, or an ace of spades, or the knave of clubs, there it ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... aware that the Spartans had long been desirous of a peace, and that the Athenians had no longer the same confidence in the war. Both being alike tired, and, as it were by consent, letting fall their hands, he, therefore, in this nick of time, employed his efforts to make a friendship betwixt the two cities, and to deliver the other States of Greece from the evils and calamities they labored under, and so establish his own good name for success ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... man—as their ammunition was spent—but for the heroism of Ray, who had run the gauntlet through the Cheyennes all alone in the darkness, found Truscott's squadron going rapidly away in another direction, turned him to the rescue just in the nick of time, and now, weak and wounded, was being sent in to Russell; that there had been several men killed, quite a number wounded, and that among these latter were Blake, Wayne, and Dana; and that Blake, too, would be sent to Russell. Further particulars came every hour or two. Every report ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... has by some been supposed traceable to 'Old Nick'; but this is not probable, since St. Nicholas has been the patron-saint of sailors for many centuries. It was during the time of the Crusades that a vessel on the way to the Holy Land was in great peril, and St. Nicholas assuaged a tempest by his prayers. Since then he has been supposed to ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... eggs; add four ounces of white sugar, the rind of a lemon being rubbed with some lumps of it to take the essence. Then peel and beat it into a paste, with the juice of a large lemon, and mix all together with four or five ounces of warmed butter. Put a crust into a shallow dish, nick the edges, and put the above into it. When sent to table, turn the pudding out ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... that it did so happen,—luckily for Mr. Hastings,—it so happened, that the relief of Mr. Hastings, and the justice of the court, and the resolution never to relax its rigor, did all concur just at a happy nick of time and moment; and Mr. Hastings, accordingly, had the full benefit of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... interested, though his heart was like a lump of lead in his breast. "It's the least I can do for the poor little chap," he thought, "when he stays as caretaker in this lonely spot.—I wonder if I hadn't better drive into the barn, Rod, and leave the harness on Nick till I go in and see mother? Guess ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... said Ellen, kissing her. "I don't know what makes me say it I never used to. But I've got more to tell you I've had more visitors. Who do you think came to see me? you'd never guess Nancy Vawse! Mr. Van Brunt came in the very nick of time, when I was almost worried to death with her. Only think of her coming up here unknown to every body! And she stayed an age, and how she did go on! She cracked nuts on the hearth; she ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... a quiet smile, as he reloaded his gun; "this is not the first time that you and I have helped one another in the nick of time, Arrowhead; we shall be brothers, and good friends to boot, I hope, as long as ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... she rousing herself, "you're going to hurt me,—don't sir, it hurts," all in a groggy tone and in one breath. I inserted a finger between the lips of her quim, and tried gently to put it up, but felt an impediment. She had never been opened by man. I then put my prick carefully in the nick, and gave the gentlest possible movement (as far as I can ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Why walks Nick Flimsey like a malcontent! Is it because his money all is spent? No, but because the dingthrift now is poor, And knows not where i' th' world ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... was just going to refuse her demand and order her out of the kitchen, but the words died on his lips when he turned and beheld the beautiful Hyacinthia, and he answered politely, 'You have just come in the nick of time, fair maiden. Bake your cake, and I myself will ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... 1st, Cutting away or depressing the cap at the point where it meets the nick in the screw head, substantially as described, so that such cut away or depressed portion, while connected with and forming part of the cap shall lie within outline the nick in the ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... square by one foot long, we call one the "upright," which is simply brought to a point at one end, somewhat like a chisel. The second is the "slanting stick," which should be cut to about 8 in. long, having a nick in it about half an inch from one end, about half way through its depth; the other end is brought to a chisel point on its upper surface; the third, which is the "foot" or "bait stick," has a square notch, the thickness of the upright, cut in it, about ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... the luster of midday to objects below; When, what to my wondering eyes should appear But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick! More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted and called them by name: "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer! now, Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... The Leaf Turned Upside Down, rather heavy, but spacious and comfortable. I shall not describe my companions to you. There was one little fellow, called Petit Bleu, who was very sharp; a tall man, with a savage look, gray eyes and black hair, who was nick-named Tomahawk, the only one who never touched an oar, as he said he should upset the boat; a slender, elegant man, who was very careful about his person, and whom we called Only-One-Eye, in remembrance of a recent story about Cladel, and because ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... this. He was not hard on the captain. Nothing was further from his thoughts. Friend! Of course he was a good friend and a faithful servant. He begged Powell to understand that if Captain Anthony chose to strike a bargain with Old Nick to-morrow, and Old Nick were good to the captain, he (Franklin) would find it in his heart to love Old Nick for the captain's sake. That was so. On the other hand, if a saint, an angel with ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... Assembly published in Print, and seriously recommended by them, or to give any advantage to Malignants and Prophane persons, with whom it is frequent to cast upon all those who adhere to former principles, and cannot approve the present Engagement, the odious nick-names of Sectaries and Independents. For the beter discovery of such prophane mockers, we give these markes and characters. 1. They do prophanely and tauntingly abuse the name of the Spirit, under that name deriding the work of ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... went on to explain how they got the ways in their places, loosened the cradle, and wedged up the fore part of the vessel; then the stays were hastily removed; it was Begmand who had taken away the last from the stern amidst the fire and smoke, and so away went the ship just in the nick of time. Tom Robson ought really to have all the praise, since everything was ready to hand, and in the most ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... shrieking bird from her lips, the door opened to admit the prima amorosa, a lady whose mature charms and mellifluous manner suggested a fine fruit preserved in syrup. The newcomer was clearly engrossed in captivating the Count, and the latter amply justified his nick-name by the cynical complaisance with which he cleared the way for Odo by responding to ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... mounted the coal, he caught a glimpse of one of the desperadoes on top of the car and yelled to Ketchel and Jim who jumped just in the nick of time, and by sheer luck not uncommon in battles, escaped unhurt. As for the fireman he took a novel way of making his escape, by diving into the shelving bank of coal and letting it slide over him. In ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... Then, for his sake, ne'er stint your own delight; Throw boldly, for he sits to all that write; With such he ventures on an even lay, For they bring ready money into play. Those who write not, and yet all writers nick, Are bankrupt gamesters, for they damn ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... prayer rugs by the dozen which beat any I've seen in the bazaars of Cairo. For we haven't hired from Cook, but from an Egyptian millionaire of Alexandria called Mahmoud Baroudi, whom we met coming out, and who happened to want a tenant for his boat just in the nick of time. It isn't my money he needs, though I'm paying him what I should pay Cook for a first-rate boat, but he doesn't like leaving his crew and servants with nothing to do. He says they get into mischief. He was looking out for a rich ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... third day he picked up a schooner, dismasted and battered. As he approached, close-hauled on the wind, he saw her decks crowded by an unusually large crew, and on sailing in closer, made out among others the faces of his missing comrades. And he was just in the nick of time, for they were fighting a losing fight at the pumps. An hour later they, with the crew of the sinking craft, were ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... slep'. I only jest 'appened to close me eyes, sir. Ye see, I don't need much sleep, I don't,—four hours is enough for any man,—my pal Nick says so, and Nick knows a ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... Alfred, after divesting himself of some of his clothing, plunged in and pulled it to the shore. The pallid face of the man clinging to the log showed that he was nearly exhausted, and that he had been rescued in the nick of time. When Alfred reached shoal water he slipped his arm around the man, who was unable to stand, and carried ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... therefore there was no danger in falling through the upper one. But Bjaaland was able to tell us a different story. He had, in fact, fallen through the outer crust, and was well on his way through the inner one as well, when he got hold of a loop of rope on his sledge and saved himself in the nick of time. Time after time the dogs now fell through, and time after time the men went in. The effect of the open space between the two crusts was that the ground under our feet sounded unpleasantly hollow as we went over it. The drivers whipped up their dogs as ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... respectable parties, such as Messrs. Sharp and Salmon of Dublin, had been treated there. This was a hit at me; but there are certain situations in which people can't dictate their own terms: and, 'faith, I was so pressed now for money, that I could have signed a bond with Old Nick himself, if he had come provided with ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Jim, knocking the ashes from his pipe, moved into action. He plucked a double handful of the tall, dry grass, touched a match to it, and thrust it in the nick. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... be, Nick," returned Edmond with a smile. "I don't know how I could have gone through this year and a ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... advantage of a nick-name. Dickson thought he was being addressed as "Dogson" after the Poet's fashion. Had he dreamed it was Leon he would not have replied, but fluttered off into the shadows, and so missed a piece of ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... our many voyages," he continued. "Shipmates we were, shipmates we'll be; while Nick Gunn is alive you shall never want for company. Lord! Do you remember the Dutch brig, ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... I had the narrowest escape possible of intruding myself into another place of accommodation for distinguished people; in other words, I was very nearly being sent to college. Fortunately for me, my father lost a lawsuit just in the nick of time, and was obliged to scrape together every farthing of available money that he possessed to pay for the luxury of going to law. If he could have saved his seven shillings, he would certainly have ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... advancing on Nazareth had met with equal though not quite bloodless success. Arriving at dawn they, too, found the town asleep, and clattered through the streets in search of Liman von Sanders. He was warned in the very nick of time, however, and the cavalry had an interesting back view of a swiftly disappearing car in which sat Liman von Sanders in his pyjamas, followed at a respectful distance by some of his staff not so ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... Ruffords and some others turned an engine loose to run down the road for a head-ender with the freight that was bringing the soldiers. Dawson chased the runaway engine with the coupled-up Nadia outfit, caught it just in the nick of time to prevent a collision with 73, and brought it back. He's down in the car now, with one of the young women crying on his ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... the stream to see what prize could be worth so great an exertion. As they fought, the raccoons drew nearer and nearer to the porcupine, who did not offer to move. Another lurch would undoubtedly have brought them into contact with his bristling quills had they not in the nick of time discovered their danger. Instantly they separated and leaped back. The leap brought them to the slippery mud at the edge of the stream and the next moment both rolled ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... fringe of crowd, down c., exhibit especially all the symptoms of epilepsy, whooping-cough, and other ailments.] You love not me. [The crowd makes an ugly rush. LOR. appears likely to be dragged down and torn limb from limb, but raises one hand in nick of time, and continues:] Yet I deserve your love. [The yells are now variegated with dubious murmurs. A cobbler down c. thrusts his face feverishly in the face of another and repeats, in a hoarse interrogative whisper, 'Deserves our love?'] Not for the sundry ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... Nicias was aware that the Spartans had long been desirous of a peace, and that the Athenians had no longer the same confidence in the war. Both being alike tired, and, as it were by consent, letting fall their hands, he, therefore, in this nick of time, employed his efforts to make a friendship betwixt the two cities, and to deliver the other States of Greece from the evils and calamities they labored under, and so establish his own good name for success as a statesman for all future time. He found the men of substance, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, ...
— Twas the Night before Christmas - A Visit from St. Nicholas • Clement C. Moore
... heartily. "Ye arrived just in the nick o' time to save your bride, Phil." A remark which sent the whip rattling to the ground from the hands of Janice. "An' ye a king's officer!" he ended. "Bubble ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Lanpher, manager of the 88 ranch. He was followed by another rider, a lean, swarthy individual with a smooth-shaven, saturnine face. Racey knew the latter by sight and reputation. The man was one Skeel and rejoiced in the nick-name of "Alicran." The furtive scorpion whose sting is death is not indigenous to the territory, but Mr. Skeel had gained the appellation in New Mexico, a region where the tail-bearing insect may be found, and when the ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... is nearly two hours and a half late—won't be here until three, and at Denver it'll miss the 'Frisco Express; won't be another for a day. So Billy, who's in a hurry to get to the coast—the old Nick's got into him, I reckon—is goin' by the express on the B. P.; the train on the branch line that goes out there at two-ten connects with it, and so does the accommodation freight at two-forty. It's hard on Billy—he hates to miss any of Jimmy Grayson's ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... story of the continuous adventures of a motor car in the hands of Nat Trevor and his friends. It does seemingly impossible "stunts," and yet everything happens "in the nick ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... Frank, as two figures were discovered coming toward them. "Why, if we'd made all the arrangements ourselves we couldn't have done better, Bob. Here comes our reinforcements just in the nick of time. And if Eugene and his backers are still up yonder in the cliff dwellers' homes, they have stayed a little while too ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... positive, but they was a-chasin' a June bug in their room together, an' she heard the smash an' the next mornin' when she went in to make Hiram's side of the bed after Lucy (she says Lucy is a most sing'lar bed-maker) she see the nick on the brush, an' she says when she see the nick an' remembered how hollow it rung, she knew as it could n't possibly have been nothin' in that room except Hiram's head. She says if Lucy's begun on Hiram with a hairbrush now, ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... who starts banks, who concocts companies, who keeps a broker, as in the eighteenth century a woman kept a monkey, and in the twelfth a knight; whose especial art is to buy in at the right moments, and to sell out in the nick of time; who is great in railways and canals, and new bathing-places, and shares in fashionable streets; who chooses her lovers, thinking of concessions, and kisses her friends for sake of the secrets they may betray from their husbands—what other centuries ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... as the shikaree could do to get out of the way; and, had he not ducked his head in the very nick of time, he would certainly have received a blow upon his skull, that would have endangered ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... Book II of the "History of Rome." Translated by D. Spillan and Cyrus Edmonds. "Cocles" was a nick-name meaning the "one-eyed." With this story every school-boy has been made familiar through Macaulay's ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... undoubtedly very good fellows in their way: the former for his extreme readiness to put in special bail for a friend: and the latter for a certain trump-like punctuality in turning up just in the very nick of time, scarcely less remarkable. Many points in their character have, however, grown obsolete. Damons are rather hard to find, in these days of imprisonment for debt (except the sham ones, and they cost half-a-crown); ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... black-'aired fyce an' paytent boots! Hi bean 'ammerin' 'ide in horchestras since me tenth birthdye, but Hi knows a hangel w'en Hi sees one, an' lawst night Hi missed a 'ole bar on the snare fer lookin' up at 'er just once. Hi never see a brunette look so habsolutely hinnocent. Th' Ol' Nick's peekin' out o' brunettes' faces, somew'eres, mostly. Don't know w'at she myde me think of—m'ybe wreaths o' roses red an' pink, an' m'ybe crowns o' di'mun's—but Hi missed a 'ole bar on th' ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... they have 'em; Their stubbornenes and pride requires 'em greater. The Prince strikes iust ith' nick and strikes home nobely: This new pretending faction had fird all els; They had floong a generall ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... unpayshint, young fellur! thet ur's no use whetsomdiver. Yu'll need payshinse, an a good grist o' thet ur, afore ye kin warm yur shins at yander fires; but 'ee kin do it, an in the nick o' time too, ef yu'll go preezactly accordin' to whet old Rube tells ye, an keep yur eye well skinned and yur teeth from chatterin': I knows yu'll do all thet. I knows yur weasel to the back o' yur neck, an kin whip yur ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... continued Mr. Colquitt, "except that the missing infant had a small v-shaped nick on the outer edge of his right ear. Probably with the boy's growth, if he is still alive, the nick has become so small as to be barely noticeable, like the nick in Holmes' right ear. Mr. Hibbert came to Gridley only yesterday, and it happened that one of the first ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... Therein", Calcutta, 1869, p. 83), as practiced in the Chittagong Hills. The Tipporahs make use of an ingenious device to obtain fire; they take a piece of dry bamboo, about a foot long, split it in half, and on its outer round surface cut a nick, or notch, about an eighth of an inch broad, circling round the semi-circumference of the bamboo, shallow toward the edges, but deepening in the center until a minute slit of about a line in breadth pierces the inner surface of the bamboo fire-stick. Then a flexible ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... almost succeeded, German troops reached the suburbs of Warsaw, German guns were heard by the citizens of the town and Warsaw was in deadly peril, but Siberian troops arrived in the nick of time and Hindenburg was obliged to retire. (Vol. II, 462-466.) Still his main purpose was achieved. Russian armies in Galicia had been weakened to save Warsaw and were compelled to retire behind the San and the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... I trim it mostly with one good long cut on one side and sometimes turn it over and make a little nick on the other, but one good long cut is ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... tally generally used by bakers of the olden time in settling with their customers. Each family had its own nick-stick, and for each loaf as delivered a notch was made on the stick. Accounts in Exchequer, kept by the same kind of check, may have occasioned the Antiquary's partiality. In Prior's time the English bakers had the same sort ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... story is told here lived in the beautiful country of "Once upon a Time." His name, as I heard it, was Tommy Trot; but I think that, maybe, this was only a nick-name. When he was about your age, he had, on Christmas Eve, the wonderful adventure of seeing Santa Claus in his own country, where he lives and makes all the beautiful things that boys and girls get at Christmas. ...
— Tommy Trots Visit to Santa Claus • Thomas Nelson Page
... that sometimes God, as it were in revenge for injury done him, doth snatch away souls in the very nick of their backsliding, as he served Lot's wife, when he turned her into a pillar of salt, even while she was looking over her shoulder to Sodom (Gen 19:26). An example that every backslider should remember ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... nick the cook knock'd thrice, And all the waiters in a trice His summons did obey; Each serving man, with dish in hand, March'd boldly up, like our ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... own. But then their experiences were so much wider and more varied in that old charmed, sunny, fairy life; the knot of their difficulties was so readily cut, by a simple reference to some Fortunatus' purse, or the arrival in the very nick of time of some friendly fairy. Madelon did not draw the parallel quite far enough, or it might have occurred to her that benevolence did not become wholly extinct with the disappearance of fairies, and that friendly interference is not quite unknown even in these more prosaic days. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... round it a great woollen shawl from his own shoulders, and in one moment put out the deadly fire which was snatching at the sweet young life. Who was this gentleman, do you think, thus arrived at the very nick of time? Why, no other than Lady Bird's own Papa, come home from China a few weeks before ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... where the business of serving was carried on by the khansaman assisted by a group of white-robed domestics. Agitated whispers from behind the screen were infallible indications of mistakes retrieved in the nick of time; otherwise, the occasional blow of the ice hammer, or the rolling of the ice machine on the outer door-mat were the only sounds audible ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... where! I won't have any tomfoolery;—d'ye hear?" Whereupon the countess said that she did hear, and soon afterwards managed to escape. The valet then took his turn; and repeated, after his hour of service, that "Old Nick" in his tantrums had been more like the Prince of ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... cards here or you don't play none in my house. No living thumb-nail can nick no cards in my place and get away with it. Three kings and two trays is better than three chickens and two eggs. If you ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... numerous deficiencies in existing records even of modern date from a variety of sources not ostensibly connected with Bagford, Fenn, or any other culprit of this type, shewing that the process of disappearance was in universal operation, and that mere chance arrested it here and there just in the nick ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... Beehives"—and Mahony was continually being agreeably surprised by the margins it threw off in its metamorphoses. That came of his having placed the matter in such competent hands. The lawyer had, for instance, got him finally out of "Porepunkahs" in the nick of time—the reef had not proved as open to the day as was expected—and pulled him off, in the process, another three hundred odd. Compared with Ocock's own takings, of course, his was a modest spoil; the lawyer had made a fortune, and was now one of ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... faith saved him." Another says: "How quick the lad was! His courageous leap saved him." Another says: "Bless the child! He was in awful danger, and he just barely saved himself." Another says: "That man's word just reached the boy's ear in the nick of time, and saved him." Another says: "God bless that man! He saved that child." And yet another says: "That boy was saved by blood; by the sacrifice of ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... yet seen, barbarously and implacably hostile, and shamelessly dishonest. On the morning of July 11th, two of the men were engaged at the river, and five of the bullock-drivers were collecting their cattle. One of the natives, nick-named King Peter by the men, tried to snatch a kettle from the hand of the man who was carrying it, and on this action being resented, he struck the man with a nulla-nulla, stretching him senseless. His companion shot King Peter in the groin, and his majesty tumbled into the river and ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... Cows as much as they could remember of Midsummer Night's Dream. Their father had made them a small play out of the big Shakespeare one, and they had rehearsed it with him and with their mother till they could say it by heart. They began where Nick Bottom the weaver comes out of the bushes with a donkey's head on his shoulder, and finds Titania, Queen of the Fairies, asleep. Then they skipped to the part where Bottom asks three little fairies to scratch his head and bring him honey, ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... third season here," I said, "and I never even heard about any old creek bed. I never heard about Nick's Valley either." ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... of record that the deacon arrived, like Sheridan at Winchester, in the nick of time; that he rallied his flustered cohorts and led them to triumph—and then regretted the bargain he had made. But it was too late. He could not draw back. Wife and daughter and townsfolk were all against him, and he could not ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... Bob Short, the tanner; Nick Anvil, the blacksmith; Patty, the weaver's daughter—and the rest of 'em; come here, Patty, make a curtchey to the old soger—[PATTY comes forward.]—a pretty girl! I could have had her, but she wanted edication—she wanted the airs and graces, ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... laws of war; for instead of boxing fairly, he would kick, pull hair, bite, and scratch most unmercifully, and never fail to take every advantage of his antagonist after he had brought him to the ground. For these reasons he was soon dignified with the nick name of Dick Bear, even by the vulgar boys in the streets; and most of them afterwards took care never to engage with him unless when there were several other boys present to see fair play. One would think that such a rough hewn and slovenly mortal as we have been describing ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... Mr Underhill's voice behind, which all dreaded to hear. "What say you—'God save Queen Jane?' I say, God save Queen Mary! I serve not my Lord of Northumberland, for all the Papists nick [give me the nick-name] me his spy! I have not proclaimed King John—whereof, as all men do know, Queen Jane is but the feminine. I am a servant of the Queen's Majesty that reigneth by right, and that Queen is Mary. God defend the right, as ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... sake, don't get amused again," said Alice, deprecatingly. "Why, dear me, I thought the Old Nick and all his couriers had ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... note from above," declared Phil, talking to himself, though Larry was listening with both ears to what he said. "The message has come, and just in the nick of time to save us from a mighty unpleasant experience. I hope it holds good news ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... the gold beads by way of celebration, began a new era in Ann's life. There was no more secret animosity between her and Mrs. Dorcas. The doctor had come that night in the very nick of time. Thirsey was almost dying. Her mother was fully convinced that Ann had saved her life, and she never forgot it. She was a woman of strong feelings, who never did things by halves, and she not only treated Ann with kindness, but she ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... the Nicknamer.] Ye haue a figure by which ye play with a couple of words or names much resembling, and because the one seemes to answere th'other by manner of illusion, and doth, as it were, nick him, I call him the Nicknamer. If any other man can geue him a fitter English name, I will not be angrie, but I am sure mine is very neere the origninall sense of the Prosonomasia, and is rather a by-name geuen in sport, than a surname geuen of ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... Sandringham and Marlborough from her Royal mother and is, in 1902, the only unmarried member of the family. The Princess Maud was, as a girl, merry, pretty and clever; a capital all-round sportswoman and fond of horses, dogs, birds, yachting and riding; possessed at home of the nick-name "Harry," and said to be the Prince's favourite daughter; fond of incognito experiences, charities and amusements. The Princess Louise was a quieter and less striking character, and, like her younger sister, was afterwards allowed ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... running up to us with his clothes torn to tatters, and his hat and gun gone. He presented a curious picture. I heard the burghers jeer and chaff him as he approached, and called out to him: "What on earth have you been up to? It looks as if you had seen old Nick with a ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... thought to anything but an unknown woman, who has electrified my imagination and my passions. Is there, perhaps, more safety in meeting her and laying the ghost? Imagination plays us such damnable tricks. She may have a raucous voice, or too sharp a wit; or she may love another by this. I'll ask Nick to take ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... sharp cuts on the tree with his tomahawk, and putting his great toe in the nick, rose on it, made another nick higher up, and holding the smooth stem put his other great toe in it, and so on till in an incredibly short time he had reached the top and left a staircase of his own ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... the doctor in the nick of time to perform an inestimable service to the Motor Maids and to all those who knew and loved ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... told him the way of Salvation, prayed with him, and he prayed, and she left him at peace with God, and happy. An hour after she had gone, he became unconscious and never regained his senses. He died that morning. Just caught his soul in the nick of time, she did. That's the big thing about Adjutant Lee that stands out for mother and me, but I couldn't begin to tell you all the little things she did. Aye, but she bothered about us, she did. I never knew ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... one might almost say that he writes with colour. He is also an etcher of great merit, and an original sculptor. He has invented small bas-reliefs in bronze which can be attached to the wall, like sketches or nick-nacks; and he has applied his talent even to renewing the material for painting. He is an ingenious artist and a prolific producer, a roguish, but sympathetic, observer of the life of the small ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... I'm a promoter. I promote the well-being of these good mountain folks by giving them sight and by furnishing them with nick-nacks to delight the eye. If you-all are troubled with poor sight I'll be happy to fit you with glasses warranted to make you see double. More coffee, if you please. This is the real article. I think I'll have to make this ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... Thursday, and Friday, the recollections of the chief gods of this mythology. Mara (the nightmare) still torments the sleep of the English-speaking people; and the Evil One, Nokke (so says Laing), is the ancestor of Old Nick. ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... turning in my tracks and addressing a small brown-leafed beech. "What! little Hyla, are you still out? You! with a snow-storm brewing and St. Nick due here to-morrow night?" And then from within the bush, or on it, or under it, or over it, came an answer, Peep, peep, peep! small and shrill, dropping into the silence of the woods and stirring it as three small pebbles might ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... a few more yards, I felt a little cavity in the rough-hewn wall of rock that appeared deeper than the others; there I compressed myself, feeling flatter than a turbot, and absurdly resigned. It was the nick of time. The earth was trembling under the mechanical horror; it passed me, with a roar and rush of wind, by I know not how many inches; there were flashes of light, a screeching of machinery, an acrid smell of mineral oils and heated metal. Then all was over again, save for ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... world there is none thou mayst count upon * To befriend thy case in the nick of need: So live for thyself nursing hope of none * Such counsel I give ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... "In the nick of time, Ralph!" exclaimed Lord Tamerton, clasping his hand warmly. "We are trying to create a mediaeval atmosphere in keeping with our surroundings, and as host I was about to announce in the approved manner of Chivalry that the Champion of to-morrow's hunt shall be rewarded with the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... voice of life had been speaking with him face to face, and in his spirit, deep down, the love of the world was restlessly answering that call. Young Gaston showed more eagerness than the padre over this arrival of the vessel that might be bringing "Trovatore" in the nick of time. Now he would have the chance, before he took his leave, to help rehearse the new music with the choir. He would be a missionary too. A perfectly ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... his precautions, it was a wild night. There was continued tumult in the streets and, at one time, shortly before dawn, a gang of rioters actually broke into the palace and groped about in search of the queen's apartments. Just in the nick of time the hated Marie Antoinette hurried to safer quarters, although several of her personal bodyguard were killed in ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... pounced upon the derelict like wolves. I almost wish I was there to see the effect when they realize they have been fooled, and they find that that craft is loaded with stones. It was just done in the nick of time; they might have ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... military—that of an established superior indifferent to the deferential attitude he must needs enact. His curt nick of the head, for a response to the visitor's formal salutation, signified the requisite acknowledgment, like a city creditor's busy stroke of the type-stamp ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from the window, "ye got here just in the nick of time; for the wind's roaring from the west, and when a storm comes from that direction it's like to set by ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... have shown that we can shed our blood too. It is in the nick of time, too, just at the crisis. I don't want to exaggerate; it is only a scratch—but it was so deliberate, and—and so dramatic. The poor devil could not have chosen a worse moment. ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... graciously kissing her rosebud mouth and when she says: "Your majesty's slightest wish is a command to me, your servant!" and is about to surrender her loveliness to Cupid's forces and temporarily lose her heart, but her soul forever—in the very nick of time comes ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... the Chief, and took his orders. Ah me! shall I soon forget that damp winter morning, when we all had such hope at the office. One or two of the army fellows looked in at the window as they ran by, and we knew that they felt well; and though I would not ask Old Wick, as we had nick-named the Chief, what was in the wind, I knew the time had come, and that the lion meant to break the net this time. I made an excuse to go home earlier than usual; rode down to the house in the ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... one of the elder gentlemen. "Have you a private battery concealed about your person with invisible wires distributed throughout the city, that you seem to arrive at any and every spot just on the nick of time?" ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Pow-ha-tans (who, for this very reason, was known to the colonists by the name of his tribe, Pow-ha-tan, rather than by his real name of Wa-bun-so-na-cook) was asked his little daughter's name, he hesitated, and then gave in reply the nick-name by which he often called her, Po-ca-hun-tas, the "little tomboy"—for this agile young maiden, by reason of her relationship to the head chief, was allowed much more freedom and fun than was usually the lot of Indian girls, ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... a few minutes he had forged a fine sword of yellow gold with an ornamental handle. The shape was graceful and the blade keen and slender. It was evident to them all that the golden sword would not stand hard use, for the edge of the blade would nick and curl like lead, but the queen was delighted with the prize and took ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... Walker, and Miss Matilda Dahlmeyer of Jefferson City gave effective aid. Percy Werner, a lawyer of St. Louis, agreed to defend its legal status before the Legislature if necessary and in January it was introduced by Senator Robert J. Mitchell of Aurora and Representative Nick Cave of Fulton. It was reported favorably by the House Committee but when it came to a hearing before the Senate committee there appeared Miss Minnie Bronson from New York, secretary of the National Anti-Suffrage Association. The speaker ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... to Brightlingsea just in the nick of time; for on the day following his arrival home, a letter reached him from Captain Staunton announcing that gentleman's presence once more in England, and not only so, but that his ship had already discharged her inward cargo, and was loading again for ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... ails you Man that you change Colour so? 'Tis all a Lie Boy I warrant thee: And hadst thou not come just in the Nick of Time, I think o' my Conscience I shou'd have ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... schoolboys asked for "Nick Carter" she gave them those classics, "The Rollo Books"; and to the French-Canadians she gave, reasonably enough, the acknowledged masters of their language, Voltaire, Balzac, and Flaubert, till the ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... the nick of time, a troop of United States cavalry came dashing up to capture the renegade Indians, who surrendered; Blake also getting pictures of the dash of ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... overboard and were swimming about. On his way back to the Carpathia he passed one of the collapsible boats which was on the point of sinking with thirty passengers aboard, most of them in scant night-clothing. They were rescued just in the nick ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... 1st July, after a heavy night's rain, a voice from the high wet grass, about a hundred yards distant, cried out to the sentries in Arabic, "Don't fire! I am a messenger from Rionga to Malegge!" (my former nick-name). ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... throat at Guayaquil, and that young fellow up at the San Benito not half to be trusted—Robson can't make out his accounts; and here am I such a wretch that I can hardly tell what two and two make; and here's Ward, the very fellow to come in and set all straight in the nick of time; and I can't ask him so much as to look at a paper for me, because I'm not to ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... back to the camp Giant told how he had chanced to get into the mud. He was thankful that Shep had come along just in the nick of time, and thankful that the others had come also. Luckily he had a change of garments with him, and he lost no time, when he was rested, in putting on clean clothes and in washing out those which ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... what you're thinkin'," said Miss Mehitable cheerfully; "but the queerest thing and the nicest thing happened to me this mornin'. I got some money that I didn't expect. Just in the nick o' time, you see. We can ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... cried. "By all that is wonderful it is little Nick! Remember you? Why, we played soldiers together when we were children. ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... bad," said Wilhelm, slamming the door shut in the nick of time. Frederick's nerves were in a state of tension, not in a mere metaphoric sense. They produced a purely physical sensation, as of violin strings too ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... that will drive a modest girl to boldness, such as I have shown ever since the day I first met you at dear old Basel. It almost broke my heart when father—fatherland—when Burgundy made war on Switzerland." The word "land" was a lucky thought, and came to the girl just in the nick ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... many steps, however, the sound of running water halted me, and just in the nick of time, for I was walking straight into a ditch. By peering hard into the darkness and feeling my way I found a bridge. Then it did not take long to reach the light. But it was a saloon, and not the hotel. One peep into it served ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... light-headed in earnest. The wonder is that I did not fall off. Happily the horse was good and the ground easy, for I was powerless to do any guiding. I simply sat on his back in a silly glow of comfort, keeping a line for the dying sun, which I saw in a nick of the Iron Crown Mountain. A sort of childish happiness possessed me. After three days of imminent peril, to be free was to be in fairyland. To be swishing through the long bracken or plunging among the breast-high flowers of the meadowlands in a world of essential lights and fragrances, seemed ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... six o'clock and lasted for two hilarious hours. Yense Nelson had made a wager that he could eat two whole fried chickens, and he did. Eli Swanson stowed away two whole custard pies, and Nick Hermanson ate a chocolate layer cake to the last crumb. There was even a cooky contest among the children, and one thin, slablike Bohemian boy consumed sixteen and won the prize, a gingerbread pig which Johanna Vavrika had carefully decorated with ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... might be said to be a typical United States Army officer. His figure would probably fall short of the standard, but he was no less strong and healthy than his brother knights of the sword. His strength was more to be compared to that patient animal after which he was nick-named, the mighty carabao, but he lacked the grace of form and dignity of bearing that the average wearer of shoulder-straps in Uncle Sam's ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... that inlet before; had never seen it, probably never thought of it before, yet there they were, quietly seated in it— and, just in the nick ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... elated at the luck which had brought them to Honolulu in the nick of time, and at the success of Theriere's mission at that port. They had figured upon a week at least there before the second officer of the Halfmoon could ingratiate himself sufficiently into the goodwill of the Hardings ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... asked the price of his horses, and began to chaffer with him on the subject. To Canobie Dick—(for so shall we call our Border dealer)—a chap was a chap, and he would have sold a liaise to the devil himself, without minding his cloven hoof, and would have probably cheated Old Nick into the bargain. The stranger paid the price they agreed on; and all that puzzled Dick in the transaction was that the gild which he received was in unicorns, bonnet-pieces, and other ancient coins, which would have been invaluable to collectors, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... grip on life was, curiously enough, a summer boarder whom old Mrs. Spaulding had taken into her family in order to make both ends meet. Westford has been saved from rusting out by the advent in the nick of time of the fashionable summer boarder, and Mrs. Sidney Dale, whose husband is a New York banker, and who spent two summers there as a cure for nervous prostration, fascinated Edna without meaning to and made a new woman of her in the process. There ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... and simple, in which that marvellous little instrument which had served us in such good stead in this case was played up strongly, the detectaphone. Then followed a scene from another play in which a young girl was kidnapped and rescued by her lover just in the nick of time. Nothing could have been selected to arouse the feelings of the little audience to ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... in the Opera House that it occurred, and for an hour it had seemed that he could not place his money on a card without making the card a winner. In the lull at the end of a deal, while the game-keeper was shuffling the deck, Nick Inwood the owner of the game, remarked, apropos ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... practise the grouping of the figures on the blocks, and the Y always served as a model for trapeze exercises. My friend, on account of his birth-mark, which resembled a rude Y, was early dubbed by his brothers with the nick-name Yatil, this being the first words of the French couplet printed below the picture. Learning the French by heart, they believed the Y a-t-il to be one word, and with boyish fondness for nick-names saddled the youngest with this. It is easy to understand how the shape of this letter, borne ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... secret customs. Then he put on long hair and a venerable beard, stained his limbs with henna, and called himself Abdullah of Bushire, a half-Arab. In this disguise, with spear in hand and pistols in holsters, he travelled the country with a little pack of nick-knacks. In order to display his stock he boldly entered private houses, for he found that if the master wanted to eject him, the mistress would be sure to ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... farm, amid the grand scenery of the valley of the Adige, which deeply impressed itself on his youthful imagination and left its traces in all his verse. He went to school at Verona, where for his dullness he was nick-named the "mole," and afterwards he passed on to the University of Padua to study law, apparently to please his father, for in the charming autobiography prefixed to his collected poems he quotes his father as saying:—"My son, be not enamored of this coquette, Poesy; for with all her airs ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... carefully observed afterwards in Laramie City; and so great has been the change in that town in the habits of the people and the quiet appearance of the streets on Sunday, as compared with other towns in the territory, that it has been nick-named the "Puritan town" of Wyoming, and, I may add, rejoices ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... it is worthy of remark that the men who are ahead of the thought and feeling of the present day are crying out for more simplicity in our homes and furniture, as well as for more refinement and real architectural merit. No useless luxuries and nick-nacks, but plenty of public baths, and mosaic pavements laboriously put together by hard hand labour,—these are the points that Ruskin and the Romans liked ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... will wondrously lighten the burden that we have to carry, and the tasks which we have to perform. 'But for a moment,' makes all light. There was an old rabbi, long ago, whose real name was all but lost, because everybody nick-named him 'Rabbi Thisalso.' The reason was because he had perpetually on his lips the saying about everything as it came, 'This also will pass.' He was a wise man. Let us go to his school and learn ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... quickly, "I have been seeking you for weeks, and I find you in the nick of time. But there is no time to explain now. There were others with your captors; I saw the sledge following behind. We must get ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... floundering among the plotuses and cormorants, which were engaged in diving for their breakfast of small fish. At times it seemed as if nothing could save us from dashing in our headlong race against the rocks which, now that the river was low, jutted out of the water; but just at the very nick of time, Tuba passed the word to the steersman, and then with ready pole turned the canoe a little aside, and we glided swiftly past the threatened danger. Never was canoe more admirably managed: once only did the medicine seem to have lost something of its efficacy. ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... little Nick!" he cried. "By all that is wonderful it is little Nick! Remember you? Why, we played soldiers together when we were ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... to Ashbridge 'All," said Mr. Baker eagerly, "you'd a bin shot but for me. Some gents will never learn 'ow 'to 'old their guns. I knocked the barrel up just in the nick. That Mr. ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... Here lies poor Nick, an honest creature, Of faithful, gentle, courteous nature; A parlor pet unspoiled by favor, A pattern of good dog behavior, Without a wish, without a dream, Beyond his home and friends at Cheam. Contentedly through life he trotted, Along the path that faith allotted, Till ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... years, remarkably good-looking, with a brilliant pink and white complexion, beautiful brown hair, a pleasant voice, and a cheerful temper. She was the daughter of a man who kept a coffee-house in Mount Street, nick-named "Jew" Westbrook, because of his appearance. She had an elder sister, called Eliza, dark of complexion, and gaunt of figure, with the abundant hair that plays so prominent a part in Hogg's relentless portrait. Eliza, being nearly twice as old as Harriet, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... captain, "I guess we came just in the nick of time. You were about at the last ditch, but from all the signs you must have put up ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... there, might have been observed to be traceable in the very detail of her own appearance. "Company" in short was in the air and expectation in the picture. The flowers on the little tables bloomed with a consciousness sharply taken up by the glitter of nick-nacks and reproduced in turn in the light exuberance of cushions on sofas and the measured drop of blinds in windows. The numerous photographed friends in particular were highly prepared, with small intense faces, each, that happened in every case to be turned to the door. The pair ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... when I was wrecked and treated as a Russian spy. On this occasion a large Japanese fishing fleet was entirely destroyed. I was, of course, soaked to the skin and got badly bruised, and was once all but washed overboard, one of the Fijians catching hold of me in the nick of time. We cast anchor for the night, though we had only a few miles yet to go, but this short distance took us eight or nine hours next day, as this channel is nearly always calm. We had light variable ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... instant and faced the mob with their pikes, and for a moment forced them to give back, the prisoners would have been rescued at the very door of the inn. As it was they were dragged in, and the gates were flung to and barred in the nick of time. Another moment, almost another second, and the mob had seized them. As it was, a hail of stones poured on the front of the inn, and amid the rising yells of the rabble there presently floated heavy and slow over the city the tolling of ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... ignorant of military matters and utterly incapable of handling such a situation, he leaped on his horse and, spurring his way across the frozen ground to the sound of the firing, confronted the huddled and beaten division just in the nick of time. Meanwhile, General Lew Wallace—afterwards famous as the author "Ben Hur"—had arrived and thrown forward a brigade to cover the confused retreat, so that for the moment the Confederate ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... party is on excellent terms with himself and with everybody else. Generally he shoots fairly well, but there is a rollicking air about him, which disarms criticism, even when he shoots badly. He knows everybody, and talks of most people by nick-names. His sporting anecdotes may be counted upon for, at any rate, a succes d'estime. "I never laughed so much in my life," he begins, "as I did last Tuesday. There were four of us—Old SANDY, BUTCHER BILL, DICK WHORTLEBURY, and myself. SANDY ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... the scoutmasters. "We've got the cup but we had to wait a couple of hours for it. The merchants in the great metropolis of Bridgeboro are so slow that a turtle would be arrested for speeding there. Poke up the fire, Nick, we're cold, and I'll tell you all about our adventures. We've made ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... But for Stannard the hostiles would have gotten away, not only with Mrs. Bennett, but with Harris. Harris made a hare-brained attempt to rescue her single-handed. He only succeeded in running his own neck into a noose. Your wisdom, and God's mercy, sent Stannard just in the nick of time, and there's the whole situation in ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... without touching the water, which it can't burn; and finding plenty of fuel in the boat, which he gradually dismantled, taking first the thole-pins, then the seats, then the taffrail, and so on. This sort of thing, though, could not last forever, and at last, just in the nick of time, he came across a ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... store, they found a Belgian Army Medical officer engaged with a tired and flushed and dirty soldier. He was bandaging his left hand which had made a trail of blood splashes from the street to the counter. The right hand hung straight down from a nick in the dropped wrist where a tendon had been severed. He told them that they had grasped the situation. Seven men ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... to get rid of it.' Then Mr. Bulla spoke, and this was what upset me so much and made me think, 'Mr. Archer is a wonderful man,' he said with that horrible fat chuckle of his, 'he would plant stuff on Old Nick himself with the whole of the C.I.D. looking on.' I was bewildered and rather horrified, and I did not wait to hear any more. I crept away noiselessly, and I didn't want to be found as it were listening. Even then I did not understand that anything was wrong, but it happened ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... years of age before I stole any money, or got into any trouble; but I used to 'nick' little things, such as fruit, &c., when I was a kid. My father kept a small shop, but I was bound an apprentice to a very peculiar branch of the Sheffield trade; and before I had finished my apprenticeship ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... trace," replied the reporter; "besides, if by chance you had met with some deliverer there, just in the nick of time, why should he have abandoned you after having ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... there could be no mistake, "Faix, mister, and is yer name Charley?" It was then that he rose in bed and uttered the exclamation which I set down in the first line of this story. Charley Vanderhuyn could not tell whether he meant Charles Dickens or Nick. Perhaps you can. Indeed, it doesn't seem to ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... liable to slip out of the loop formed by the string, it should have a nick cut or filed in one side, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... relation existed between Katie and Marie for several years. About the time the girl went to Kenilworth and had her idyllic experience, Katie married. Nick was a good sort of a man, easy and happy, and a sober and constant labourer. Katie had saved some money, in her careful German way, had even a bank-account of several hundred dollars. It was not an exciting marriage; neither of them was ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... officer engaged with a tired and flushed and dirty soldier. He was bandaging his left hand which had made a trail of blood splashes from the street to the counter. The right hand hung straight down from a nick in the dropped wrist where a tendon had been severed. He told them that they had grasped the situation. Seven men ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... favour. Chellalu's Attai (the word here and hereafter signifies Mrs. Walker, "Mother's elder sister") had taught it to her; and whenever and wherever Chellalu saw her Attai, she immediately began to perform "Prick it and nick it" with great enthusiasm. But after she could walk, Chellalu would have nothing more to do with such childish things. "Show us Edward Rajah!" the older children would say; and instead of standing up with a regal dignity and crowning her curls with the appropriate gesture, Chellalu would merely ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... he cried, "I'll no' hae my dog scaret wi' bogles, and running down Auld Nick as if he were a hare. The dog shall ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... time then, of course. They laughed and questioned and explained until the dinner was in imminent danger of getting stone-cold on the dining-room table. Luckily, Alma and Frances remembered it just in the nick of time, and they all got out, somehow, and into their places. It was a splendid dinner, but I believe that Maxwell and Bertha Seeley didn't know what they were eating, any more than if it had been sawdust. However, the rest of the guests ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to the cage of the mice, whose cry of agony at the presence of the great enemy of mouse-kind had fortunately roused me from my lethargy,—for the rattle of the snake is but a drowsy sound, and will not awaken the sleeper. How the Mangouste came to appear on the scene at the nick of time, I know not. He might have come in at the open window, or possibly had been sleeping, since I missed him, among the trappings and traveller's gear with which the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... local peculiarities in various parts of the country. A marked illustration of this now before the public is Edward Milton Royle's "Squawman," recently at Wallack's Theatre. The dramatist has caught his picture just in the nick of time, just before the facts of life in the Indian Territory are passing away. He has preserved the picture for us as George W. Cable, the novelist, preserved pictures of Creole life of old New Orleans, made at the ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... would meet her in the lane, and they would loiter a moment together; she would admire his dogs, though he assured her earnestly that they were but sorry curs; and once, laughing at his staidness, she nick-named ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... increasing divisions among us of Conservatives, who, by a singular fatality, still indicate the plebeian origin which they would now so gladly disown by the term Democrats; and, on the other hand, of Republicans, nick-named at present Radicals—somewhat unjustly; since the term is strictly applicable only to a very limited ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... father's strike. Relieved of the weight upon his shoulders, Clen had a fighting chance for his life, but it is doubtful if he would have won had it not been that the Indian, missing him at last, returned in the nick of time, and with the aid of a loop of babiche, succeeded in drawing him from the water. The rest of the day was spent in drying Clen's clothing beside a miserable fire of brushwood, and the next day they made Fort ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... easily slide up the staff without taking out a single button; but once up, how could I remain there? I should certainly come slipping down again. Oh! that there was only a notch—a knot—a nail—if I only had a knife to make a nick; but knot, notch, nail, knife, nick—all were alike denied me. Stay! I was wrong, decidedly wrong. I remembered just then that while attempting to get over the barrel, I had noticed that the staff just under it was smaller than elsewhere. It had been flanged off at the top, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... one for Derues, whose brain was occupied by a confusion of criminal plans. The chance which had caused his acquaintance with Madame de Lamotte, and even more the accident of Brother Marchois appearing in the nick of time, to enlarge upon the praises which gave him so excellent a character, seemed like favourable omens not to be neglected. He began to imagine fresh villanies, to outline an unheard-of crime, which as yet he could not definitely trace ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 1903, off Japan, when I was wrecked and treated as a Russian spy. On this occasion a large Japanese fishing fleet was entirely destroyed. I was, of course, soaked to the skin and got badly bruised, and was once all but washed overboard, one of the Fijians catching hold of me in the nick of time. We cast anchor for the night, though we had only a few miles yet to go, but this short distance took us eight or nine hours next day, as this channel is nearly always calm. We had light variable breezes, and tacked repeatedly, but gained ground slowly. These waters seemed full of large ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... inflam'd with righteous hopes, Prepare their axes, wheels, and ropes, To bend the stiff-neck'd sinner; But should they sink in coming over, Old Nick may fish 'twixt France and Dover, And ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... his eye, Evelyn turned to her plate filled with a subtle melancholy. When would there be another dinner like this? Not, at all events, until the war was over. Nick had spoken about this—very definitely; there would be no more entertaining. She had agreed with him, of course, not, however, escaping the conviction that her husband's viewpoint was more or less in keeping with a certain unusual sombreness ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... by some been supposed traceable to 'Old Nick'; but this is not probable, since St. Nicholas has been the patron-saint of sailors for many centuries. It was during the time of the Crusades that a vessel on the way to the Holy Land was in great peril, and St. Nicholas assuaged a tempest by his prayers. Since ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... of it to take the essence. Then peel and beat it into a paste, with the juice of a large lemon, and mix all together with four or five ounces of warmed butter. Put a crust into a shallow dish, nick the edges, and put the above into it. When sent to table, turn the pudding out of ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... "Thou hast come in the nick of time, and 'twill be easier for me to leave home, as I am going ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... know what you're thinkin'," said Miss Mehitable cheerfully; "but the queerest thing and the nicest thing happened to me this mornin'. I got some money that I didn't expect. Just in the nick o' time, you see. We can ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... minded and impartial students of history in the United States. The late Professor Moses Coit Tyler, of the University of Cornell, gave it as his opinion, "That the side of the Loyalists, as they called themselves, of the Tories, as they were scornfully nick-named by their opponents, was even in argument not a weak one, and in motive and sentiment not a base one, and in devotion and self-sacrifice not an unheroic one." The same sentiments were even more emphatically expressed by Dr. Tyler ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... old enough I was sent to Tregony grammar school, my father being determined to give me a schooling befitting the position he hoped, in spite of his misfortunes, I should some day occupy. Now Nick Tresidder had been attending this same school for some months when I went. For this I was very glad, because I thought it would give me an opportunity for testing him. I had not been in the school a week, however, ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... wind died down in the nick of time, giving the men a chance to control the blaze. When it was evident the danger was past, the operator set up his apparatus again and prepared to continue his duties, ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... bicycle, then there were nine. Nine Christmas presents ranged in order straight; Bob took the steam engine, then there were eight. Eight Christmas presents—and one came from Devon; Robbie took the jackknife, then there were seven. Seven Christmas presents direct from St. Nick's; Bobby took the candy box, then there were six. Six Christmas presents, one of them alive; Rob took the puppy dog, then there were five. Five Christmas presents yet on the floor; Bobbin took the soldier ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... lithe little lady is arrayed in the ordinary garb of the nineteenth century with what is technically termed a 'pannier,' and large open sleeves, each of which, I fear, she must have found considerably in the way, as also the sundry lockets and other nick-nacks suspended from her neck. However, there they were. We put her in a cupboard, which had a single Windsor chair in it, and laid a stoutish new cord on her lap. Then came singing, which may or may not have been intended to drown any ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... would like them to have. I gave them some sherry, which they liked very much, except one boy who was a little sick and choked a good deal. He was rather greedy, and that's the truth, and I believe it went the wrong way, which I say served him right, and I hope you will say so too. Nick has had his roast lamb, as you said he was to, but he could not eat it all, and says if you do not mind his doing so he should like to have the rest hashed to-morrow with some greens, which he is very fond of, and so am I. He said he did not like to have ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... of good report. In my case I merely sought to prevent mental vacuity so that the seven devils of worry could not rush into, and take possession of, my empty mind; but I was indifferent, somewhat, to the kind of thought or mental occupation that was to keep out the thoughts of worry. A Nick Carter detective story was as good as a Browning poem, and sometimes better; a cheap and absurd show than an uplifting lecture or concert. How much better it would have been could I have had my mind so thoroughly under control—and ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... over again, as they rushed on, the bows were within an ace of diving into some wave, and the keel must often have shown, but by a dexterous turn of the tiller Kenneth avoided the danger just at the nick of time, and nothing worse happened than the leaping in of some spray, Scood silently sopping the gathering water with a large sponge, which he kept on wringing ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... defeated, in all ages, by inferior numbers. The Romans lost a great battle in the north of Italy to Hannibal, the Carthaginian, by this neglect alone. Now, this divine elixir gives in one moment force to the limbs and ardour to the spirits; and taken into Hector's body at the nick of time, would, by the aid of Phoebus, Venus, and the blessed saints, have most likely procured the Greeks a defeat. For note how faint and weary and heart-sick I was a minute ago; well, I suck this celestial cordial, and now behold me brave as Achilles ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... regiment, and if, as reputed, "Old Sauerkraut" (this was the name he got behind his back) had spies in all the companies, the adage about listeners was abundantly confirmed. In the secrecy of Jack's tent, however, the subject was freely discussed. Nick Marsh, the poet of the class, as became the mystic tendencies of his tribe, was for poisoning the detested Pomeranian—Oswald was a compatriot of Bismarck, often boasting, as the then slowly emerging statesman became more widely known, that he lived ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... indented like a Saw: which inequality of their limbs, I have further observ'd, not to remain always the same, but to be continually chang'd by a kind of fluctuating motion, not unlike that of the waves of the Sea, so as that part of the limb, which was but even now nick'd or indented in, is now protuberant, and will presently be sinking again; neither is this all but the whole body of the Luminaries, do in the Telescope, seem to be depress'd and slatted, the upper, and more ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... gone many steps, however, the sound of running water halted me, and just in the nick of time, for I was walking straight into a ditch. By peering hard into the darkness and feeling my way I found a bridge. Then it did not take long to reach the light. But it was a saloon, and not the hotel. One peep into it served to ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... Frenchmen who fought so stoutly with him for the possession of Hougomont. The Colonel, fowling-piece in hand, was watching the struggle, and seeing that Lord Saltoun was getting the worst of it awaited his opportunity when the big salmon's tail was in the air after a spring, and, firing in the nick of time, cut the fish's spine just above the tail, hardly marking it elsewhere. The Colonel occasionally fished the river with cross-lines, which are still legal although their use is now considered rather the "Whitechapel game." He resorted to the cross-lines, not in greed for fish ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... subsidised or led by Arabs of Zanzibar, were specially active. Working from Ujiji and other bases, they attacked some of the expeditions sent by the Congo Free State. Chief among the raiders was a half-caste Arab negro nick-named Tipu Tib ("The gatherer of wealth"), who by his energy and cunning had become practically the master of a great district between the Congo and Lake Tanganyika. At first (1887-1888) the Congo Free State adopted Stanley's suggestion ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Henri, who received it respectfully. Then she went out, feeling very much better and brighter because of a sadly needed dinner. She was bewildered, and excited; but she wasn't afraid. She accepted her miracle, which had come just in the nick of time, gratefully, with a childlike simplicity. But she used her blue eyes, and one day they met Peter Champneys's, regarding her with a good and kind satisfaction; for indeed she looked much better and brighter, now that she was no longer half starved. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called ...
— Twas the Night before Christmas - A Visit from St. Nicholas • Clement C. Moore
... rumours in the air concerning the loyalty of the district. Indeed, the Governor had arrived but twenty-four hours after a meeting had been held under the presidency of the Seigneur, at which resolutions easily translatable into sedition were presented. The Cure and the Avocat, arriving in the nick of time, had both spoken against these resolutions; with the result that the new- born ardour in the minds of the simple habitants had died down, and the Seigneur had parted from the Cure and the Avocat ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... designated by a soldier under the nick-name of 'Hand-to-his-Sword.' Vopiscus also mentions this as a name by which he was known in the army. 'Nam quum essent in exercitu duo Aureliani tribuni, hic, et alius qui cum Valeriano captus est, huic signum (cognomen) exercitus apposuerat ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... Just in the nick of time, however, Jack Brown, the boatswain, darted forward and gave the lieutenant a tremendous push, which sent him clear of the opening in the deck, but in a sitting position under the bulwark, against which his head went ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... have been nick-named, as Chicago, the Windy City; Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, etc. The hostess requests her guests to wear something suggestive of the nickname of the city represented. Each guest writes on a piece of ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... places, loosened the cradle, and wedged up the fore part of the vessel; then the stays were hastily removed; it was Begmand who had taken away the last from the stern amidst the fire and smoke, and so away went the ship just in the nick of time. Tom Robson ought really to have all the praise, since everything was ready to hand, and in the ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... byss' hid'e ous sheaf stew'ing a miss' pre'vi ous guile, yeo'man as sess' im'pi ous chyle chlo'ral ab'scess a'que ous rend know'ing sick'le par'ti cle wrench go'ing nick'el crit'ic al dearth con dole' tal'ents dil'i gent worth con trol' bal'ance el'e gant mirth en roll' si'lence fal'li ble earth dis pel' com peer' prel'a cy spurt fore tell' ad ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... Messer Francisco, and this is more to my liking than the last. We arrived just at the nick of time; another half minute and those young ladies would have been carried off. That was a rare blow you dealt their leader. I fancy he never came up again, and that that is why we got away without ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... entering the water to come across to her. They fascinated her by their very fierceness. Forgetting where she was for the instant, she stared dumbly at them until called to life and action by a scream from the locomotive's whistle. Then she sprang from the track just in the nick of time. She actually laughed as she saw two grayish-white wolf-tails bob here and there among the sage brush, as the wolves took flight at sight of ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... Yer nick is lik de tower of Daoeved, built for an armoury, what dey heng a thousan bucklers on, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... a sweet creature," said Paccard. "Did you see how he kicked me? Well, we deserved to be sent to old Nick; for, after all, we got him ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the shoulder, and my bullet shattered the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the blood foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding through the laurel bushes, so that it was ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... pity she don't go well in gear. The difficulty with those critters is to git them to start: arter that there is no trouble with them, if you don't check 'em too short. If you do they'll stop again, run back and kick like mad, and then Old Nick himself wouldn't start 'em. Pugwash, I guess, don't understand the natur' of the crittur; she'll never go kind in harness for him. When I see a child," said the Clockmaker, "I always feel safe with these ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... what you will tell me, and I shall answer that life is made up of little things as the body is formed of molecules. When all the molecules decay and go to the Old Nick, the body can no longer live. It is the same with life when all that composes it, colours it, makes it lovable, is lacking, turns out badly, when everything escapes, when not the slightest wish is realised, when everything vanishes, everything deceives. No, to go ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... speculation involved in the third receivership which was operated by Nucingen in 1826. [The Firm of Nucingen.] In 1833 M. du Tillet advised Nathan, then financially stranded, to apply to Gigonnet, the object being to involve Nathan. [A Daughter of Eve.] The nick-name of Gigonnet was applied to Bidault on account of a feverish, involuntary contraction of a leg ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... good morning!" shouted Sir Reginald, as his eyes fell upon the newcomer. "You are just in the nick of time. George, a cup of coffee for Herr von Schalckenberg! So you have made a start, Professor; but you must have done it very gently, for none of us was awakened by the movement of the ship. Where ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... appointment in 1797, together with Pinckney and Gerry, on the famous "X.Y.Z. "mission to France. From this single year's employment he obtained nearly $20,000, which, says his biographer, "over and above his expenses," was "three times his annual earnings at the bar"; and the money came just in the nick of time to save the Fairfax investment, for Morris was now bankrupt and in jail. But not less important as a result of his services was the enhanced reputation which Marshall's correspondence with Talleyrand brought him. His return to Philadelphia ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... wheels, Rend and ravel and tear and pick; What can resist these hooks of steel, Sharp as the claws of the ancient Nick? Cast-off mantle of millionaire, Pestilent vagrant's vesture chill, Rags of miser or beggar bare, All ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... about himself and the mine, till a saint must have loathed the two of them; Thompson, the mine superintendent, silent, slow and stupid, playing ghastly solitaire games in a corner with a pack of dirty cards; and me, Nick Stretton, hunching myself irritably on a hard chair till I could decently go to bed. Even the bush was better than night after night of that,—and suddenly I felt my thoughts bursting out, even if I had sense enough to keep my ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... especially St. Paul, who did not allow it to trouble them whether the highest or the lowest priest had said it, or had done it in God's Name or in his own. They looked on the works and words, and held them up to God's Commandment, no matter whether big John or little Nick said it, or whether they had done it in God's Name or in man's. And for this they had to die, and of such dying there would be much more to say in our time, for things are much worse now. But Christ and St. Peter and Paul must cover ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... had been this movement and so unlooked-for, that had I not sprung backwards in the very nick of time, this narrative of mine had ne'er been written. With a jeering laugh I knocked aside his sword, but even as I disengaged, to thrust at him, he knelt up and caught my blade in his left hand, and for all that ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... can return to the first set, now ripe for him; he must pass swiftly to each in turn, keeping his different lines of advance as nearly as possible level, fly from Armenia to Media, thence swoop straight upon Iberia, and then take wing for Italy, everywhere present at the nick of time. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... said Jurgen: "then that was the way of it! You were pleased, just in the nick of time, by my virtuous rebuke of the woman who tempted me. Yes, to be sure. Well, well! come now, you ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... "Aye; Old Nick himself would not be a bad acquaintance now—his smell of brimstone and sulphur might warm us up a ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... or three houses and an inn; there is likewise a species of barrack, where half a dozen soldiers are stationed. In the whole of Portugal there is no place of worse reputation, and the inn is nick-named Estalagem de Ladroes, or the hostelry of thieves; for it is there that the banditti of the wilderness, which extends around it on every side for leagues, are in the habit of coming and spending ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... when they started. She was radiant—shaking hands with everybody— waving her handkerchief from the deck—distributing bows and smiles like an empress. If ever a woman got what she wanted just in the nick of time that woman did. She'll be Lady Trevenna within a ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... no time to argue further with himself. He knew that he had been asleep, for how long he could not tell; but his heart throbbed as he felt that he had awakened just in the nick of time, and he ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... young men I love, and that love me, What you ask of my days, those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls, Soldier alert I arrive, after a long march, covered with sweat and dust; In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush of successful charge; Enter the captured works,...yet lo! like a swift-running river, they fade, Pass, and are gone; they fade—I dwell not on ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... did as he told me, and fought a boy as was trespassing on these very stocks; and he beat me—but I don't care for that; and that boy was a young gentleman, and going to visit the Squire; and so Nick Stirn—" ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... Shih-yin, as he returned the smile. "Just a while back, my young daughter was in sobs, and I coaxed her out here to amuse her. I am just now without anything whatever to attend to, so that, dear brother Chia, you come just in the nick of time. Please walk into my mean abode, and let us endeavour, in each other's company, to while away ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... was hardly recognizable. Every ledge, every branch and tiny twig held its feathery burden, or shook it softly upon the white mass covering the ground. Hardly a breath of air stirred, and the fir trees looked as though St. Nick had visited them in the night to dress a tree for every little ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Barney. "It's yersilf thot knows a hape more thin Oi thought yez did. Ye show yer good judgmint in surrunderin' to th' girruls, fer wan av thim alone wud capture yez av she set out to, an' ould Nick take th' ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... the Tailless Tyke was rough; not even Tammas denied he was ready. His brain was as big as his body, and he used them both to some purpose. "As quick as a cat, with the heart of a lion and the temper of Nick's self," ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... imperfect illustrations of this beautiful Romance to the young gentleman in question. As I cannot find, however, that he is known among his friends by any other name than "The Tripe-skewer," which I cannot but consider as a soubriquet, or nick-name; and as I feel that it would be neither respectful nor proper to address him publicly by that title, I have been compelled to forego the pleasure. If this should meet his eye, will he pardon ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray
... About twelve years of age, For so little a boy was remarkably sage; And, just in the nick, to their joy and amazement, Popp'd the gas-lighter's ladder close under the casement. But all would not do,—Though St. Megrin got through The window,—below stood De Guise and his crew. And though never ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... on his features the unvarying glance of withering contempt. He dared not come across him openly, since Montagu was so high in the school; and besides, though much the bigger of the two, Brigson was decidedly afraid of him. But he chose sly methods of perpetual annoyance. He nick-named him "Rosebud;" he talked at him whenever he had an opportunity; he poisoned the minds of the gang of youngsters against him; he spread malicious reports about him; he diminished his popularity, and embittered his feelings, by every secret and underhand ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... lingered in his ears long afterward. It was scarcely a gasp, nor moan, nor groan, but an inarticulate animal sound expressive of what the body feels when snatched in the nick of time from destruction. A moment later she had crawled through the darkness; her hands passed quickly over his sleeve, his shoulder, then found his ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... not there. Mrs. Wilders tells me she has come up alone, and in the very nick of time. But now be off, McKay, and lose no time. Be gentle with her: it will be a great shock, ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... with a custard paste The slim waist Of your tartlet-molds; the top With a skillful finger print, Nick and dint, Round their edge, then, drop by drop, In its little dainty bed Your cream shed: In the oven place each mold: Reappearing, softly browned, The ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... imagination of the youngsters. Thousands of times did they practise the grouping of the figures on the blocks, and the Y always served as a model for trapeze exercises. My friend, on account of his birth-mark, which resembled a rude Y, was early dubbed by his brothers with the nick-name Yatil, this being the first words of the French couplet printed below the picture. Learning the French by heart, they believed the Y a-t-il to be one word, and with boyish fondness for nick-names saddled the youngest ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... carried him off to their camp at Princeton. The dragoons were very gleeful over this unexpected exploit, but really they could not have done the Americans a greater service than to rid them of such a worthless creature. The capture of Lee came in the nick of time, for it set free his men to go to the aid of Washington. Even after this force and that sent by Schuyler had reached the commander-in-chief, he found he had only 6000 men fit ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... was just in the nick of time; but even with him we should have had to fall back if Cooke had not arrived with the guards. By the way, has any one heard what has taken ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... seem to be a fate in the way young Mr. Wescott just happened up to camp in the nick of time to find our guardian and fall in love with her, worse luck," and Lucile vindictively kicked a stone from the path as though it were the meddling Mr. Wescott himself. "And then to think he should like Jim, a poor little country boy, well enough to take him along ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... at my gate, I did not go at once to the house; I did not wish, then, to talk with Harriet. The things I had with myself were too important. I skulked toward my barn, compelling myself to walk slowly until I reached the corner, where I broke into an eager run as though the old Nick himself were after me. Behind the barn I dropped down on the grass, panting with laughter, and not without some of the shame a man feels at being a boy. Close along the side of the barn, as I sat there in the cool of the shade, I could see a tangled mat of smartweed ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... seems to play upon us, just in the nick of an affair; Monsieur d'Estrees, at that time ensign to Monsieur de Vendome, and Monsieur de Licques, lieutenant in the company of the Duc d'Ascot, being both pretenders to the Sieur de Fougueselles' sister, though of several parties (as it oft falls out ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... friends,' he said, 'that is too much! I know my wife. I trust her good sense utterly. Still it is possible for even the wisest of women to lose her judgment at times. But as for my trusty steward Thomas Salthouse, the steadiest man I have ever had in my employ, if even old Nick himself has managed to bewitch him, he must be a cleverer devil than ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... have I," answered he; "the devil take my father for sending me thither! The old put wanted to make a parson of me, but d—n me, thinks I to myself, I'll nick you there, old cull; the devil a smack of your nonsense shall you ever get into me. There's Jemmy Oliver, of our regiment, he narrowly escaped being a pimp too, and that would have been a thousand pities; for d—n me if he is not one of the prettiest fellows in the whole world; ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... you thought to bring them," said Miles. "Nick Jones told me the wolves are uncommonly hungry for so early in the year, and they are in great numbers too. He trapped twenty ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... House that it occurred, and for an hour it had seemed that he could not place his money on a card without making the card a winner. In the lull at the end of a deal, while the game-keeper was shuffling the deck, Nick Inwood the owner of the game, remarked, apropos ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... has a nice little income. He hears that her income is to be halved; and we know that if an allowance begins by being halved, as likely as not it will be stopped altogether before long. He saw that clearly enough. Then in the very nick of time this cheque comes along. He sends it to the bank with this letter of instructions, and murders Lord Loudwater so that he cannot disavow them. What more of ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... was almost always called 'Oscar'—but he had a nick-name, 'Grey-crow,' which the boys would call him when they wished to annoy him, and which he resented greatly. It was derived in some mysterious way from the name of an island in the Upper Loch Erne, within easy reach ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... doctor in the nick of time to perform an inestimable service to the Motor Maids and to all those who knew and loved Miss ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... that way, when she stopped as soon as she met him; I can't swear right now whether Tejon was running away, or whether he was just simply running!" He laughed ruefully. "She's an awful little tease—just plumb full of the old Nick, even if she does look as innocent and as meek as their pictures of the Virgin Mary. She had us both guessing, let me tell you! He was pretty blamed insulting, though, and I'd have licked the stuffing out of him right then and there, if she hadn't swung in and played the joker the way ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... strong creature who was not a man. Lightfoot, wild with love and anxiety, had shot past Old Mok just as he laid down his bundle of arrows, and, when she saw her husband's peril, had leaped forward with arrow upon string and slain his latest assailant in the nick of time. Now, with arrow notched again and a face ablaze with murderous helpfulness, she hovered near, intent only upon sending a second shaft into ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... water, little ominous whirlpools not caused by wind. Presently there emerged a long shadow, like a black expanse of rock:—unmistakably a mugger. And in that moment she felt exquisitely grateful to the hand that had seized her in the nick of time. The next—she wrung her own together ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... on, Mas' Nick, honey, and go to bed. I'll pour a bucket of cistern water over you and rub you down so as you'll sleep like a bug in a rug," the staunch old comrade crooned, with a mother note in his voice, as he took father's heavy hoe and shouldered ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of the river to Pineville while the dam was being built to enable the gunboats to pass down the river. Colonel Molineux was relieved from command of a recruiting party which he had been in charge of, called the "Louisiana Scouts," but the Regiment nick-named them the "Jay-hawkers." The gunboats having safely passed the dam, the army commenced ...
— History of the 159th Regiment, N.Y.S.V. • Edward Duffy
... families are in the two elevens, mingled with the yeomen and whoever can best do the business. Fallow field and Beckley, without regard to rank, have drawn upon their muscle and science. One of the bold men of Beckley at the wickets is Nick Frim, son of the gamekeeper at Beckley Court; the other is young Tom Copping, son of Squire Copping, of Dox Hall, in the parish of Beckley. Last year, you must know, Fallow field beat. That is why Nick Frim, a renowned out-hitter, good to finish ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... reading the other day of an apparatus invented for the ejecting of gentlemen who subsist upon free lunches. It is so arranged that when the fellow gets both hands into the victuals, a large hand descends upon him, jams his hat over his eyes—he is seized, turned toward the door, and just in the nick of time an immense boot comes from the other side, kicks him in italics, sends him out over the sidewalk and lands him rolling in the gutter. I never hear of such a man—a boss—that I don't feel as though that machine ought to be brought into ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... distinguished from the natural, by a penetrating eye. That gentleness is ever liable to be suspected for the counterfeited, which is so excessive as to deprive people of the proper use of speech and motion, or which, as Hamlet says, makes them lisp and amble, and nick-name God's creatures. ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... a villain himself," said Random grimly. "However, Cockatoo arrived unluckily on the scene, and when he found she had parted with the emerald, and had written out the truth, he stabbed her. If we hadn't come just in the nick of time, he would have annexed that confession, and the truth would never have become known. No one," ended Random, rising and stretching himself, "would connect Braddock or Cockatoo with the death ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... Just the right shade of deference about using the first name—big wheel to bigger wheel. "Has Nick Emmert been talking to you about the Big Blackwater ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... Frederick went on, "the blessedly impetuous young woman, blurted out in the nick of time that I am Rose's husband, you behaved exactly as a man would have behaved to ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Weller, making his first appearance in "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club"? And who has not revelled in the lively scene in the White Hart when Mr. Pickwick and his friends arrived in the nick of time to prevent the ancient but still sentimental Rachael from becoming Mrs. Jingle? It is not difficult to understand why that particular instalment of "Pickwick" was the turning-point of the book's fortunes. Prior to ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... you see me without bruise or scratch. Only Yorick and I got tangled up with a herd of buffaloes on the Kajiar Road. In his fright, the little fool slipped half over the khud, and if a knight-errant had not fallen from heaven, in the nick of time, we should both be lying somewhere in the valley by now, 'spoiling a patch of ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... "bon-jour, maman." A hearty shake of the hand completed his adieu, as we pushed off into the lake, and left him smoking his kin-nee-kin-nick[9] and waiting until the spirit should move him to take up his long Indian trot towards his home ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... enemy of our souls. But the thought will wondrously lighten the burden that we have to carry, and the tasks which we have to perform. 'But for a moment,' makes all light. There was an old rabbi, long ago, whose real name was all but lost, because everybody nick-named him 'Rabbi Thisalso.' The reason was because he had perpetually on his lips the saying about everything as it came, 'This also will pass.' He was a wise man. Let us go to his school and learn ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Indeed ejaculated Bernard we have come in the nick of time Ethel he added. Yes said Ethel in ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford
... given you one face, and you make yourselves another; you jig, you amble, you nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... the islands, and that killing ought not to be allowed within a zone of that radius; but, on the other hand, the effort of the British counsel was to make this zone as small as possible. They had even contended for a zone of only ten miles radius. But just at the nick of time Sir Robert Morier intervened at St. Petersburg. No one but himself and the temporary authorities of the Russian Foreign Office had, or could have had, any knowledge of his manoeuver. By the means which his government gave him power to exercise, he in some way secured privately, from the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... felt himself grasped firmly and drawn swiftly through the water, and the next thing he knew, he was in the light and air again, and was being handed up to the top of the wharf by men who passed him carefully from one to the other. In the very nick of time rescue had come, and Bert was ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... record that the deacon arrived, like Sheridan at Winchester, in the nick of time; that he rallied his flustered cohorts and led them to triumph—and then regretted the bargain he had made. But it was too late. He could not draw back. Wife and daughter and townsfolk were all against him, and he could not ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... Phil explained. "The old gentleman asked me why I did not address him in his own tongue, since I evidently understand it; and then went on to say that we arrived here just in the nick of time, as the villagers were about to torture him to death, to secure the favour of some god or devil of whom they appear to be particularly afraid. And I said that he might depend upon us to protect him so long as we have the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... brother, the desperate outlook in the future, it is true, were real; but her lack of health was the lens which magnified her suffering into hideous dimensions. The desire to get rid of it by one sudden plunge was strong upon her, and the friendly hand which at the nick of time intervenes in romances did not rescue her. Nevertheless, she held back and passed on. Afterwards the thought that she had been close to suicide was for months a new terror. She was unaware that the distance between us and dreadful crimes is much ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... much did we have when we were married? Why, little girl, you just got through saying that the happiest days we ever spent were up there in the woods when money was so scarce that we knew the date on every dollar we owned—and every scratch and nick on them—and the dimes ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... to be made as to who was the smart chap in Virginia that did these things. The papers became wary and read Enterprise items twice before clipping them. Clemens turned his attention to other matters to lull suspicion. The great "Dutch Nick Massacre" did not follow until ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... kind. He watched her face with wonder, and a little fear, for which he was angry with himself. He noted the three grains de beaute and the smile that seemed to break high on her cheek, in a small nick, like that on the cheek of a Japanese doll. She frightened him, made him feel shy, yet made him feel at ease, too, as though her own were contagious; and his impression of her was softly permeated with the breath of violets. Jack disapproved of perfumes; but he really couldn't tell ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... to have each thing in its season, doing without it at all other times. I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... boat is gone! what prank next? Thou careless unthrift, ill-luck follows i' thy wake. She has slipped anchor, and the little Kitty is gone to the Manx herring-boats. I am ruined, thou limb of Old Nick! thou ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... seemed to recognize some trick Of mischief happened to me, God knows when— In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then, Progress this way. When, in the very nick Of giving up, one time more, came a click As when a trap shuts—you're ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... precisely on what day, but probably the most glorious one in Akakiy Akakievitch's life, when Petrovitch at length brought home the cloak. He brought it in the morning, before the hour when it was necessary to start for the department. Never did a cloak arrive so exactly in the nick of time; for the severe cold had set in, and it seemed to threaten to increase. Petrovitch brought the cloak himself as befits a good tailor. On his countenance was a significant expression, such as Akakiy Akakievitch had never beheld there. He seemed ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... imp of evil brook to lie hidden in the Holy Hole behind the very altar?" said Mrs. Woodford. "But I hear Nick bringing in supper, and I must leave you for the present. God in His mercy bless you, His poor child, and ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Nick Carter's adventures, which are published exclusively in the NEW MAGNET LIBRARY, conceded to be among the ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... immediately opposite our house; the finest fellow to drop in a' nights, about nine or ten o'clock,—cold bread-and-cheese time,—just in the wishing time of the night, when you wish for somebody to come in, without a distinct idea of a probable anybody. Just in the nick, neither too early to be tedious, nor too late to sit a reasonable time. He is a most pleasant hand,—a fine, rattling fellow, has gone through life laughing at solemn apes; himself hugely literate, oppressively ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... staid, stiff—rumped, wall—eyed, old first lieutenantish—looking veteran, with his coat of a regular Rodney cut, broad skirts, long waist, and standup collar, over which dangled either a queue, or a marlinspike with a tuft of oakum at the end of it,—it would have puzzled Old Nick to say which. His lower spars were cased in tight unmentionables of what had once been white kerseymere, and long boots, the coal—skuttle tops of which served as scuppers to carry off the drainings from his coat—flaps in bad weather; he was, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... O coenobite, Monastical gregarian, You differ from the anchorite, That solitudinarian: With vollied prayers you wound Old Nick; With dropping shots he ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Roosevelt glare, And hoots, "I won't be dickied with - I'll shoot!" Then all the passengers get in and root. Loud cheers of, "Put him off!" and "Make him square!" Till Mr. Holdfast with an injured air Pungles his nick and ends ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... Ascension Day M. Manzoni introduced me to a young courtesan, who was at that time in great repute at Venice, and was nick-named Cavamacchia, because her father had been a scourer. This named vexed her a great deal, she wished to be called Preati, which was her family name, but it was all in vain, and the only concession her friends would make was to call her ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... delicately Charles Lamb could hold the balance in such an essay as Dream Children. Great-grandmother Field is just in her place, upright, graceful, and the best of dancers; and Alice's little right foot plays its involuntary movement in the nick of time; and when Uncle John died, the "children fell a-crying" at the narrative and asked about the mourning which they were wearing. It is all just important enough, just trivial enough, to carry its fragile burden of sentiment—so much, and no more. The charm is complete. ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... squire, heartily. "Ye arrived just in the nick o' time to save your bride, Phil." A remark which sent the whip rattling to the ground from the hands of Janice. "An' ye a king's officer!" he ended. "Bubble ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... office, very unlike the Squire's, and pulled White off his stool before he knew I was there. He told me I had just come in the nick of time, for he wants to go to some forsaken watering place down the Gulf—as Madame Lajeunesse said "Law baw"—and that immediately. So, I get my two weeks next month, by which time I hope to have got that next of kin matter straightened out. Then, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... all in good nick," said Tresco, as he drew the cork of the bottle, and poured some of the spirit into the pannikin. "Here's luck," and he drank ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... was thinking of giving the comfortable mother that admonition which the policeman had so narrowly escaped? I know not what would have happened if the merry goddess, seeing things rushing to this dreadful climax, had not stopped the train in the nick of time at a wayside station and caused a breathless lady, pushing parcels before her, to clamber in. The mother's surprised stare was of necessity diverted to the new-comer. A parcel thrust into Priscilla's hands brought her back of necessity ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... whose corps was then at the foot of Boar Hill, north of the manor-house, was paying his court to the handsome widow Babcock, in the parsonage, when he was surprised by a force of yagers, rangers, and Loyalist light horse, and got away in the nick of time.[2] The parsonage, unlike the manor-house, was often visited by officers on their way hither and thither, but I will not say it was for this reason that Miss Sally Williams, the sister of Colonel Philipse's wife, preferred living in the ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... it, and to the urchin he had left in charge of it? He owed a thousand dollars on its purchase, which he had promised to pay yesterday. Then, too, he had neglected his house account at the University Club, and it was long overdue. That remittance from his father had come just in the nick of time. Suddenly he recalled placing the check in his bill-case, and he searched himself diligently, but found nothing. That reminded him that he had won a bet or two on the football game and the money needed collecting. There was the shooting ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... made of sheets of note-paper, the fold of which forms the shoulder pieces. The doll is laid on the paper, with head and neck lapping over the fold, and the line of the dress is then drawn a little larger than the doll. A small round nick to form the collar is cut between the shoulders of the dress, and a slit is made down the back through which the doll's head can be passed. After the head is through it is turned round. (Of course, ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... jasper halls Is now the on'y town I care to be in.. Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... the last we felt that they were faltering and that our work was easier and our hope higher; then we cried our cries and pressed on harder, and in that very nick of time there arose close behind us the roar of the Markmen's horn and the cries of the kindreds answering ours. Then such of the Romans as were not in the very act of smiting, or thrusting, or clinging or shielding, turned and fled, and the whoop of ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... received a letter from his father, in Bloomfield, rather mysteriously requesting him to pay a visit to the lost town of the Picket Posts and to report at length upon anything he might find in the only habitable building of the camp. Aided by a prospector named Nick Porter, Frank and his chums visited Happenchance and there found the professor. They had adventures in helping the professor get his location notice on file, and only Merry's fleetness of foot and good judgment saved a prospective bonanza mine ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... sense of unreality. Every fault or vice has its counterbalancing virtue represented. Lady Clonbroney, vulgarly ashamed of her country, is set off by the patriotic Lady Oranmore; the virtuous Mr. Burke forms too obvious a pendant to the rascally agents old Nick and St. Dennis. It is needless to say that the exclusively virtuous people are deadly dull. It is the novel with a purpose written by a novelist whose strength lies in the delineation of character. ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... at the nick of time, Ladislas. Another three minutes, and it would have been all over ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... bawl!" answers one of the new arrivals, impatiently beating with his fists upon the door. "There's no necessity for closing the door either, for who is likely to come? Even if you left it wide open, nobody would stray in, I'll be bound, save your pal, Old Nick, ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... in this while the "take" grew fainter and ceased at least near the shore? Out in the middle, where few flies managed to float, the trout were at it till dark. But near shore there was just one trout who never stopped gorging all day. He lived exactly opposite the nick in the distant hills, and exactly a yard farther out than I could throw a fly. He was a big one, and I am inclined to think that he was the Devil. For, if I had stepped in deeper, and the water had come over my ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... poor Nick, an honest creature, Of faithful, gentle, courteous nature; A parlor pet unspoiled by favor, A pattern of good dog behavior, Without a wish, without a dream, Beyond his home and friends at Cheam. Contentedly ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... ever and anon for blessed sight of her where she flitted lightly to and fro, she bidding me take heed lest I cut myself. Cut myself I did forthwith, and she, beholding the blood, must come running to staunch it and it no more than a merest nick. And now, seeing her thus tender of me who had endured so many hurts and none to grieve or soothe, I came very near ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... nedrig, low, rascally. nedsteg, see nedstiga, ned|stiga (-steg, -stigit, -stigen), to step down, descend. nedt, downwards. nej, no. nek|a (-ade, -at), to deny, refuse. nerifrn, from below. ner, see ned. nere, down. nick|a (-ade, -at), to nod. nidingsdd (-et,—), villainous deed. niding (-en, -ar), outlaw, villain. nidingsfunder, no sing., malicious artifices. nidingsstng (-en, -stnger), niding post, pillory. njuta (njt, njutit, njuten), to enjoy. nog, indeed, enough. ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... allusion to his dark skin infuriates Neville to that violent degree, that he flings the dregs of his wine at Edwin Drood, and is in the act of flinging the goblet after it, when his arm is caught in the nick of ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... we felt that they were faltering and that our work was easier and our hope higher; then we cried our cries and pressed on harder, and in that very nick of time there arose close behind us the roar of the Markmen's horn and the cries of the kindreds answering ours. Then such of the Romans as were not in the very act of smiting, or thrusting, or clinging or shielding, turned and fled, and the whoop of victory rang around ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... asked for "Nick Carter" she gave them those classics, "The Rollo Books"; and to the French-Canadians she gave, reasonably enough, the acknowledged masters of their language, Voltaire, Balzac, and Flaubert, till the horrified priest forbade from the pulpit ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... British heads. In the meantime, other engineers had traced out the road from the bay to the battery. Led by their officers the French regulars set to work with such goodwill that the road was ready next day for the siege train of twenty-two cannon, now landed in the nick ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... Mrs. Truslove—who has a nice little income. He hears that her income is to be halved; and we know that if an allowance begins by being halved, as likely as not it will be stopped altogether before long. He saw that clearly enough. Then in the very nick of time this cheque comes along. He sends it to the bank with this letter of instructions, and murders Lord Loudwater so that he cannot disavow them. What more of a case do ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... strenuous press To sow good seed; There was that saving from distress In the nick of need; There were those words in the wilderness: ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... little lady is arrayed in the ordinary garb of the nineteenth century with what is technically termed a 'pannier,' and large open sleeves, each of which, I fear, she must have found considerably in the way, as also the sundry lockets and other nick-nacks suspended from her neck. However, there they were. We put her in a cupboard, which had a single Windsor chair in it, and laid a stoutish new cord on her lap. Then came singing, which may or may not have been intended to drown any noise in the cupboard; but, after some ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... of the Durrnberg, the dry brownish limestone showed its bare front to the morning sun. We entered the offices, partly contained in the rock, and applied for admission into the dominion of the gnomes. Our arrival was quite in the nick of time, for we had not to be kept waiting, as we happened to complete the party of twelve, without which the guides do not start. It was a Tower of London business; and, as at the Tower, the demand upon our purses was not ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... Parliament—peers, namely, and women; and yet it was soon known through the whole length and breadth of the county that the present electioneering fight was being carried on between a peer and a woman. Miss Dunstable had been declared the purchaser of the Chace of Chaldicotes, as it were, just in the very nick of time; which purchase—so men in Barsetshire declared, not knowing anything of the facts—would have gone altogether the other way, had not the giants obtained temporary supremacy over the gods. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... then, to talk with Harriet. The things I had with myself were too important. I skulked toward my barn, compelling myself to walk slowly until I reached the corner, where I broke into an eager run as though the old Nick himself were after me. Behind the barn I dropped down on the grass, panting with laughter, and not without some of the shame a man feels at being a boy. Close along the side of the barn, as I sat there in the cool of the shade, I could see a tangled mat of smartweed and catnip, and the boards of ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... one consolation; the law! the law! She could have no legal proof, and intuition goes for nothing in a court of justice. All the suspicion went against Guy Waring, and Guy Waring—well, Guy Waring had fled the kingdom in the very nick of time, and was skulking now, Heaven alone knew where or why, in the remotest depths ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... When every one else deserts him, she takes a cab into the city, and employs some clever friend, who has always been hopelessly in love with her—and for whom she entertains, unknown to her husband, a Platonic brotherly regard—to intervene in the nick of time, and to ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... up on the south side of the tree left a clean nick across and two inches deep in the middle. The chopper then stepped forward one pace and on the north-northwesterly side, eighteen inches lower down than the first cut, after reversing his hands—which is what few can do—he rapidly chopped a butt-kerf. Not a ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... shell from the sutural angle on the outer lip, consisting of four whorls which rapidly enlarge; the inside expanded out, disk nearly flat exhibiting one distinct whorl; the columella lip narrow, rather long, flattened; the outer lip thin, truncated; the nick of the imperfect perforation placed about one-third the length of the outer lip from the end of the columella lip: length six inches, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... message out of the air one night and by accident had found a code message in it revealing a German plot to dynamite a great dam and destroy a munition city; and later the wireless patrol had run down the dynamiters themselves in the very nick of time, after the state police had failed to find them, and ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... unseen hand was stretching forth in the hour of my need, somebody's deft fingers snatched the tangled web that had gone so far astray in the weaving, and in the nick of time made a hazardous effort to smoothen the silken threads for the busy loom that waits not for the slow ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... was a nick name given to the western peasantry of Scotland, from then using the words frequently in driving strings of horses. Hence, as connected with Calvinistical principles in religion, and republican doctrines in policy, it was given as a term of reproach to the opposition party in the latter years ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... I was sent to Tregony grammar school, my father being determined to give me a schooling befitting the position he hoped, in spite of his misfortunes, I should some day occupy. Now Nick Tresidder had been attending this same school for some months when I went. For this I was very glad, because I thought it would give me an opportunity for testing him. I had not been in the school a week, ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... the grey old capital of Scotland in the very nick of time. The Old Town, a tangle of narrow alleys and close courtyards, surrounded by tall houses with endless tiers of floors, was just being deserted by the rich and fashionable world for the New Town, which lies beyond a ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... deck, Hozier helped to adjust the remaining rope around the captain's portly person. They were lifted clear of the trembling forecastle almost simultaneously, and in the very nick of time. Already the skeleton of the ship's hull was beginning to slip off into deep water. The deck was several feet lower than at the moment of the vessel's final impact against the rocks. Even before the three reached the ledge from which their ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... his foe stronger; the axe had flown out of his hand also, while the strange man still kept a hold of his short-sword; and presently, though he still struggled all he could, he saw the man draw back his hand to smite with the said sword; and at that nick of time the foeman's knee was on his breast, his left hand was doubled back behind him, and his right wrist was gripped hard in the stranger's left hand. Even therewith his ears, sharpened by the coming death, ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... some far-fetched parallel to her own. But then their experiences were so much wider and more varied in that old charmed, sunny, fairy life; the knot of their difficulties was so readily cut, by a simple reference to some Fortunatus' purse, or the arrival in the very nick of time of some friendly fairy. Madelon did not draw the parallel quite far enough, or it might have occurred to her that benevolence did not become wholly extinct with the disappearance of fairies, and ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... sleep and dreams he's paid his fare. And when you squeak he gets the Roosevelt glare, And hoots, "I won't be dickied with - I'll shoot!" Then all the passengers get in and root. Loud cheers of, "Put him off!" and "Make him square!" Till Mr. Holdfast with an injured air Pungles his nick and ends ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... Rend and ravel and tear and pick; What can resist these hooks of steel, Sharp as the claws of the ancient Nick? Cast-off mantle of millionaire, Pestilent vagrant's vesture chill, Rags of miser or beggar bare, All are ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... onto us as a side-line. You listen to me! Batson Reeves was the man that lied to the girl I was engaged to thirty years ago, and broke us up and kept us apart till I came back here and licked him, and saved her just in the nick of time. What do you think of a man of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... History is adamant against any other conclusion. No one can quite escape his age, his civilization, and his peculiar disposition; from which it seems to follow that not even the unanimous censure of generations can utterly discredit anything. The admission comes in the nick of time: history was on the point of calling attention to the attitude of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to Gothic, Romanesque, ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... November 4th, 1812. He passed his boyhood on his father's farm, amid the grand scenery of the valley of the Adige, which deeply impressed itself on his youthful imagination and left its traces in all his verse. He went to school at Verona, where for his dullness he was nick-named the "mole," and afterwards he passed on to the University of Padua to study law, apparently to please his father, for in the charming autobiography prefixed to his collected poems he quotes his father as saying:—"My son, be not enamored of this coquette, Poesy; for with all her airs ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... felt that, among the countless evidences of the ordering of Providence by which the war for the preservation of the Union was signalized, not the least striking was the raising up of this remarkable man, to accomplish alone, and in the very nick of time, a work which at once became ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... his day, and common almost up to our own: a river-god, bearded, crown of reeds, urn, general dampness and uproariousness of temper, all quite correct; and a nymph, whom he pursues, who prays to the Virgin huntress to save her from his love, and who, just in the nick of time, is metamorphosed into a mossy stone, dimly showing her former woman's shape; the style of thing, charming, graceful, insipid, of which every one can remember a dozen instances, and which ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... take part in it: he "wished to look round," he said. So the morning was spent in impressing everyone with his shiny black suit of West-of-England broadcloth and his beautiful neckcloth and bunch of seals. But in the evening he climbed the pulpit; and there Old Nick himself, that lies in wait for preachers, must have tempted the poor fellow to preach on Womanly Perfection, taking his text ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sailed on carelessly amidst a stream of insults and shouts. Its greater power enabled it to disdain collisions which would have run down frailer vessels. Besides, Tahoser's crew were so skilful that their vessel seemed endowed with life, so swiftly did it obey the rudder and avoid in the nick of time serious obstacles. Soon it had left behind the heavily laden boats with their cabins filled with passengers inside, and on the roof three or four rows of men, women, and children crouching in the attitude so dear to the Egyptian people. These individuals, so kneeling, might have ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... should have seen her when they started. She was radiant—shaking hands with everybody— waving her handkerchief from the deck—distributing bows and smiles like an empress. If ever a woman got what she wanted just in the nick of time that woman did. She'll be Lady Trevenna within ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... and a part of a battery!" was the announcement. "They are coming along as though they were followed by the Old Nick himself!" ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... he warn't," he repeated, when the captain laughed when Seth mentioned his sensations at the time and detailed his thoughts, "fur he came just in the nick of time to grip holt o' me; and if he hadn't ben thaar I guess it 'ud a ben all sockdolagar with Seth, I does! He must have got what ye call a call, that he must! Guess you'd a thought him a angel, if you'd been ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... "You let my Nick in," murmured Beezy sleepily, and Creed laughed out in sudden relief. It was the wooden-legged rooster, coming across the little side porch and making his plea ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... nobler than greatness. And then the faces that come about us at such a time, with their tales of old friendships or generous rivalries. I have seen to-day fifty fellows of whom I remember only the nick-names;—they are now degenerated into scheming M.P.'s, or clever lawyers, or portly doctors; -but at Montera they leave the plodding world of reality for one day, and regain the dignities of sixth-form ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... There the slave-raiders, subsidised or led by Arabs of Zanzibar, were specially active. Working from Ujiji and other bases, they attacked some of the expeditions sent by the Congo Free State. Chief among the raiders was a half-caste Arab negro nick-named Tipu Tib ("The gatherer of wealth"), who by his energy and cunning had become practically the master of a great district between the Congo and Lake Tanganyika. At first (1887-1888) the Congo Free State adopted Stanley's suggestion of appointing Tipu Tib to be its governor of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... was that of a slight, strong creature who was not a man. Lightfoot, wild with love and anxiety, had shot past Old Mok just as he laid down his bundle of arrows, and, when she saw her husband's peril, had leaped forward with arrow upon string and slain his latest assailant in the nick of time. Now, with arrow notched again and a face ablaze with murderous helpfulness, she hovered near, intent only upon sending a second shaft ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... time-veiled copper and brass. His flawless frame was covered with tight-banded muscle. There was no appearance of fat. His skin was smooth—without wrinkles. He was young; about forty years, or less. But there was the nick of a tusk-stroke in one ear; and a small red devil in ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... top of the little clearing where the boatman had forced his way in amongst the tangled growth, and gone on hewing his way through bush, thorn, vine, and parasitical growth, to reappear just in the nick of time with the bustard-looking bird hanging from ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... now, and I know it, and dad knows it," Nick assured him. "I'm going home! You'd better be glad you are not mixed up in this thing," he said, turning to the third boy. "You are safe awhile ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... yards long, should not be less then twelve; you are to fasten that line to any bow neer to a hole where a Pike is, or is likely to lye, or to have a haunt, and then wind your line on any forked stick, all your line, except a half yard of it, or rather more, and split that forked stick with such a nick or notch at one end of it, as may keep the line from any more of it ravelling from about the stick, then so much of it as you intended; and chuse your forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep the fish or frog from pulling the forked stick ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... not until the end of the week that Dick Rover came into contact with Tad Sobber, a stocky youth, with a shock of black hair and eyes which were cold and penetrating. Sobber was with a chum named Nick Pell, and both eyed Dick in a calculating ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... gun going off accidentally, ranks high. Servants should carry their guns with the cock down on a piece of rag, that covers the cap: take it all in all, it is the best plan for them. A sportsman will find great convenience in having a third nick cut in the tumbler of his lock, so as to give an additional low half-cock, at which the cock just clears the nipple; it will prevent the cap from falling off or receiving a blow. I have long used this plan, and find no objections to it: many pistols are furnished with this ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... were guilty but Roxana; she suspected that the others were guilty, but she did not know them to be so. She was horrified to think how near she had come to being guilty herself; she had been saved in the nick of time by a revival in the colored Methodist Church, a fortnight before, at which time and place she "got religion." The very next day after that gracious experience, while her change of style was fresh upon her and she was vain of her purified condition, her master left a couple dollars ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sense into the child. There ain't no nonsense in Mandy, an' ye won't find her equal in the land for peddlin' fruit an' sech. I've kep' her rustlin' from morn till night. When a woman idles, the ole Nick gits away with her mighty quick. I've salted that down many a long year. No, sir, Mandy is mine, an' Mandy will do jest as I say. She minds me well, does Mandy. She won't marry till I give the word—an' I ain't agoin' to ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... it some time. Hank, you're on board just in the nick of time. I found out what the trouble was with the carriage of the gun and repaired it while you were amusing yourselves out there. Get in lively, now, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... 77, St. James's Street, nick-named the Two Sevens, kept by Messrs. T. C. C. T. is a well-known House, where things are conducted with great civility and attention, and the best possible treatment may generally be relied upon, though they are rather sparing of refreshments, and apt to grumble ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... forgeries. You will find alterations in my banker's book, too, I expect. We'll look into it all to-morrow. Come along, Dickson, my sly little weasel; I've a gay night's work for you; I'm going to leave all my property to my cousin Nick, my bitterest enemy, and a lawsuit with it that'll break his heart. There's fun for ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... chairs for we have much to talk of, And we have Ullad and Muirthemne, and here Is Conall Muirthemne in the nick of time. ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... in her humiliation, is there anybody mad enough to fancy that she wouldn't snap up Plank in such a fix? ... And make it look like a jilt for Quarrier? ... But Plank must do his part on the minute; Plank must step up in the very nick of time; Plank, with his millions and his ambitions, was bound to be a winner anyway, and Sylvia might as well be his pilot and use his money. ... And Plank would be very, very grateful—very useful, a very good friend to have. ... And Leila would learn at last that he, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... those fascinating and lovely fays whom the ancients termed Naiads; and unless her pride is insulted or her jealousy awakened by an inconstant lover, her temper is generally mild and her actions beneficent. The Old Nick known in England is an equally genuine descendant of the northern sea-god, and possesses a larger portion of his powers and terrors The British sailor, who fears nothing else, confesses his terror for this terrible being, and believes ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... Midsummer or Christmas: but the world I had found out in Cooke's edition of the British Novelists was to me a dance through life, a perpetual gala-day. The six-penny numbers of this work regularly contrived to leave off just in the middle of a sentence, and in the nick of a story, where Tom Jones discovers Square behind the blanket; or where Parson Adams, in the inextricable confusion of events, very undesignedly gets to bed to Mrs. Slip-slop. Let me caution the reader against this impression of Joseph Andrews; for there is a picture of Fanny in ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... here," I said, "and I never even heard about any old creek bed. I never heard about Nick's ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... thus unmolested by the native tribes, but our safety consisted chiefly in the rapidity of our movements, and their terror of strangers wholly unknown, perhaps unheard of, arriving on the backs of huge animals, or centaurs whose tramp they had only heard at nightfall. Like Burns's "Auld Nick," ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... such other like games, cutting at the nick, is a great aduantage, so is cutting by Bumcard, finely vnder or ouer: stealing the stock or ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... five minutes I was considerably astonished on hearing a salvo as of a volley of musketry, and iron pipes flying up and down in all directions. Then a general shout, and off went the Tartars, as if Old Nick was at their heels, halloing most fearfully. They did not run far, but brought up about three hundred yards from where they started, and demanded their pipes back. I asked them what was the matter; when they ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... questions and, even if they don't laugh at you, you have the feeling they may be laughing inside. Her present thoughts were so delectable and engrossing that Missy did not always hear when she was spoken to. Toward the end of the meal, just as she caught herself in the nick of time about to pour vinegar instead of cream ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... little ominous whirlpools not caused by wind. Presently there emerged a long shadow, like a black expanse of rock:—unmistakably a mugger. And in that moment she felt exquisitely grateful to the hand that had seized her in the nick of time. The next—she wrung her own together ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... my bag in at the window, leapt upon the footboard and turned the handle. Although the entrance to the tunnel was perilously near now, I managed to wrench the door open and to swing myself into the carriage. Then, by means of the strap, I reclosed the door in the nick of time, and sank, panting, upon the seat. I had a vague impression that the black chauffeur, having recovered himself, had raced after me to the uttermost point of the platform, but, my end achieved, I was callously indifferent ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... An' why not? Do what you can an' go ahead! That's the way! That whole crowd don't deserve no better. Not Wehrhahn an' not Friderici. An' anyhow, it was a good thing, Mrs. Fielitz. It was done just in the nick o' time! Now he's gone an' broken with them fellers, an' everybody knows it. There ain't no goin' back now. Now he belongs to us, Mrs. Fielitz, an' I never would ha' thought ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... was rather plain than rich, Nor fitted over well; Yet, tho' no macaroni, Nick, He ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... hard, and studying to improve himself in branches of knowledge in which he feels himself deficient. He is practising very temperate habits: for half a year past he has taken to drinking water only, avoiding all sweets, and eating no "nick-nacks." He has "sowens and milk,' (oatmeal flummery) every night for his supper. His friend having asked his opinion of politics, he says he really knows nothing about them; he had been so completely engrossed by his own business ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... rules of honour, or to the established laws of war; for instead of boxing fairly, he would kick, pull hair, bite, and scratch most unmercifully, and never fail to take every advantage of his antagonist after he had brought him to the ground. For these reasons he was soon dignified with the nick name of Dick Bear, even by the vulgar boys in the streets; and most of them afterwards took care never to engage with him unless when there were several other boys present to see fair play. One would think that such ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... entails no small trouble to secure in the nick of time the game demanded by the huntress who has recently fallen a captive to my net. As assistant-purveyors I have a few small schoolboys, who, released from the tedium of their declensions and conjugations, ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... just long enough to give an opportunity for having it towed home. One late afternoon we were hurrying across the mesa to supper, when our magneto flew off into the ditch, scattering screws in all directions. Fortunately, a kind of Knight Errant to our family appeared just in the nick of time to take us home and send help to the wreck. I once kept a garage in San Diego open half an hour after closing time by a Caruso sob in my voice over the telephone, while my brother-in-law's miserable chauffeur hurried over ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... thing? That cup has been here for forty years, and hundreds of people have drunk from it, and it has never been broken. Aunt Julia dropped it down the well once, but they fished it up, not hurt a bit except for that little nick in the rim. I think it is bound up with the fortunes of the King family, like the Luck of Edenhall in Longfellow's poem. It is the last cup of Grandmother King's second best set. Her best set is still complete. Aunt Olivia has it. You must ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had abandoned Big Springs and fallen back to Huntersville, the soldiers were permitted to break ranks, while Colonel Marrow and Major Keifer, with a company of cavalry, rode forward to the Springs. Colonel Nick Anderson, Adjutant Mitchell and I followed. We found on the road evidence of the recent presence of a very large force. Quite a number of wagons had been left behind. Many tents had been ripped, cut to pieces, or burned, so as to render ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... villain himself," said Random grimly. "However, Cockatoo arrived unluckily on the scene, and when he found she had parted with the emerald, and had written out the truth, he stabbed her. If we hadn't come just in the nick of time, he would have annexed that confession, and the truth would never have become known. No one," ended Random, rising and stretching himself, "would connect Braddock or Cockatoo with the ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... call came in the nick o' time," O'Malley put in. "We located Sim and trailed him from the mess to his hideout. It was one of our own Nissen huts the boys had been using to store bedding in. The rats had moved the piles of bedding away from the back end ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... not a troll at all, but a fairy-godmother, who had taken the form for good purposes. I would have said fairy-godfather, but I have never come across a fairy-godfather in all my reading, and I must be truthful. Well, the fairy-godmother came along right in the nick of time—and, of course, you know who married and ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... contempt on the material achievements of science and the Liberal party as being mere 'machinery,' means to an end, which men mistakenly worship as though it possessed a real value in itself. He divides English society into three classes: 1. The Aristocracy, whom he nick-names 'The Barbarians,' because, like the Germanic tribes who overthrew the Roman Empire, they vigorously assert their own privileges and live in the external life rather than in the life of the spirit. 2. The Middle Class, which includes the bulk of the nation. For them he borrows ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... shall be harpooned for a certainty!" Obviously the rest of the room thought so too, and they all waited expectantly. It was a tense moment—something had to be done and done quickly. An inspiration came to me. Just in the nick of time I seized an unembroidered bit firmly between the finger and thumb of both hands and held it a safe distance from me for the medal to be fixed; the situation was saved. A sigh of relief (or was it disappointment?) went up as the General returned to finish the citation, and contrary to ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... two, I believe, were going to murder the old man in the hammock, if we had not come in the nick of time. What ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... mate, "the Rock-scorpions are right. They have pounced upon the derelict like wolves. I almost wish I was there to see the effect when they realize they have been fooled, and they find that that craft is loaded with stones. It was just done in the nick of time; they might have compelled us ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... eleven, somewhat after the fashion of the Hawkshaws of "yellow back" fame, who, if our memory serves us right, were so punctual that their appearance anywhere was described as being in the "nick o' time," only in this instance he was expected and did not "drop from the sky," ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... his volatile disposition. For some time indeed he had supported himself comfortably in this way; for through friends of his family he had had good introductions, and, although he wasted a good deal of money in buying nick-nacks that promised to be useful and seldom were, he had no objectionable habits except inordinate smoking. But it happened that a pupil—a girl of imaginative disposition, I presume—fell so much ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... mind. Aw'm capt whativer made Becka ax her, for ther's hardly a woman i'th ginnel but what had leever goa a' mile another rooad nor meet her; but aw declare shoo's comin' sailin' daan like a fifty-gun ship! Talk abaght owd Nick, an' ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... The room was comfortably and solidly furnished with good mahogany and horsehair. It had a snug fireside, and a couple of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the wild country behind the house. What it most developed was, an unexpected taste for little ornaments and nick-nacks, of which it contained a most surprising number. They were not very various, consisting in great part of waxen babies with their limbs more or less mutilated, appealing on one leg to the parental affections from under little cupping glasses; ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... he approached, close-hauled on the wind, he saw her decks crowded by an unusually large crew, and on sailing in closer, made out among others the faces of his missing comrades. And he was just in the nick of time, for they were fighting a losing fight at the pumps. An hour later they, with the crew of the sinking craft, were ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... harbor after our many voyages," he continued. "Shipmates we were, shipmates we'll be; while Nick Gunn is alive you shall never want for company. Lord! Do you remember the Dutch brig, ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... pencil, that one might almost say that he writes with colour. He is also an etcher of great merit, and an original sculptor. He has invented small bas-reliefs in bronze which can be attached to the wall, like sketches or nick-nacks; and he has applied his talent even to renewing the material for painting. He is an ingenious artist and a prolific producer, a roguish, but sympathetic, observer of the life of the small ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... with deliberation, prudence, and intelligence. On the frontiers, or lines, as it is the custom to term the American boundaries, he had become acquainted with a Tuscarora, known by the English sobriquet of "Saucy Nick." This fellow, a sort of half-outcast from his own people, had early attached himself to the whites, had acquired their language, and owing to a singular mixture of good and bad qualities, blended with great native shrewdness, he had wormed himself into ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... was picked up by a party who came in the nick of time. They were going by across journey ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... connection with Mr. Holymead was that after he had left the ladies and was walking in the direction of the cab-rank he spoke to one of the former occupants of the gallery. This was a man known to the police and his associates as "Kincher." His name was Kemp, and how he had obtained his nick-name was not known. He was a criminal by profession and had undergone several heavy sentences for burglary. He was a thick-set man of medium height, about fifty years of age. Apart from a rather heavy lower jaw, he gave no external indication of his professional pursuits, but looked, with his brown ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... 630 Tsin induced Ts'in to join in an attack upon Cheng, the object being, of course, to revenge similar personal rudenesses; however, Cheng diplomacy was successful in inducing Ts'in to abandon Tsin in the nick of time: this was one of the very few cases in which Ts'in interfered, or was about to interfere, in "orthodox" affairs. In 592 Tsin sent a hunchback envoy to Ts'i; it so happened that at the same time Lu sent one who was lame, and ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... had five grown-up sons that looked just alike. The eldest could gulp up the ocean at a mouthful; the second was hard enough to nick steel; the third had extensible legs; the fourth was unaffected by fire; the fifth lived without breathing. They all concealed their peculiar traits, and their neighbors did ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... I could from the file, filling in the blanks by talking to people who had been at ATIC during the early UFO era. Many of these people were still around, "Red" Honnacker, George Towles, Al Deyarmond, Nick Post, and many others. Most of them were civilians, the military had been transferred ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... to surprise you," said Betty gleefully, noting with pride how splendid he looked in his uniform. "You don't seem at all glad to see us. Mrs. Watson," remembering her manners in the nick of time, "this is a friend of ours from Deepdale—Allen Washburn. He didn't know ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... just nick it, Give card—get wine ticket; Walk round through the Babel, From table to table, To find—a hard matter— Your name in a platter; Your wish was to sit by Your friend Mr. Whitby, But stewards' assistance ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... a man who was called Hall of the Side. He was the son of Thorstein Baudvar's son (1). Hall had to wife Joreida, daughter of Thidrandi (2) the Wise. Thorstein was the name of Hall's brother, and he was nick-named Broad-paunch. His son was Kol, whom Kari slays in Wales. The sons of Hall of the Side were Thorstein and Egil, Thorwald and Ljot, and Thidrandi, whom, it is said, the ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... hard stick held upright between the palms of the hands, a spark will before long be generated in the hole in the other stick, which is kept in place on the ground by the feet. By blowing on the spark, a little piece of dried grass, stuck in a nick in the edge of the hollow, will be set alight and ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... reach down to Lady Boyd's corrupt heart; had there been, she would have first cleansed her own heart with it, and would then have shown her son how to cleanse his. But, as Rutherford says, she also had come now to that 'nick' in religion to cut off a right hand and a right foot so as to keep Christ and the life everlasting, and so had her eldest son, Lord Boyd. As Bishop Martensen also says, 'Many a time we cannot avoid feeling a deep sorrow for ourselves because of the ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... before he had quite finished his complaint. "Oh, we would love to give you a pet name, Gilly, because you do mean as much to us as our best friends anywhere. By taking a few letters away from your proper name and adding a little 'nick' to the syllable, ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... that war had passed that way. It had; there were traces everywhere of its grim visitation. But here its heavy hand had been laid lightly upon town and village. It was as if a wave of poison gas of the sort the Germans brought into war had been turned aside by a friendly breeze, arising in the very nick of time. Little harm had been done along the road we traveled. But the thunder of the guns was always in our ears; we could hear the steady, throbbing rhythm of the cannon, muttering away to ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... happen as often in real life, at least one cannot count upon it with the certainty of the theater. But when Miss Primrose Cash knocked upon the door of the Phipps' sitting room and delivered her call to the seance, she was as opportune and nick-of-timey as was ever a dramatic Governor's messenger. Certainly that summons of hers was to Galusha Bangs a reprieve which ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... too hasty. It was mescal—an explosive in liquid form that is brewed or stilled or steeped, or something, from the juices of a certain variety of cactus, according to a favorite family prescription used by Old Nick several centuries ago when he was residing in this section. For its size and complexion I know of nothing that is worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with mescal, unless it is the bald-faced hornet of the Sunny South. It goes down easily enough—that is ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... she came floundering once again over the partition, and guarding my loins, I leapt into the next compartment, seeing the affair had become a sauve qui peut, and devil take the hindmost: and at the nick of time, when she was about to descend like a wolf on a fold, I most fortunately perceived a bell-handle provided for such pressing emergencies and rung it with such unparalleled energy, that ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... it allus was, I guess," with a chuckle at his own wit, "but Ol' Swaller-tail sold it, long ago. Ol' Nick Cragg, his father afore him, sold a lot of it, they say, and when he died he left half his ready money an' all his land to Hezekiah—thet's Ol' Swallertail—an' the other half o' his money to his second ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... sure, two saddles; but little by little the Indians were working around their position, and would have crawled upon them within an hour or two but for Jake's daring ride for help and the blessed coming of the blue-coats in the nick of time. Folsom swore he'd never forget their services ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... you shall hear tell of on the Main from Panama to St. Catherine's, aye, by the horns of Nick there be none of all the coastwise Brotherhood quicker or readier when there's aught i' the wind than Abnegation, and you can lay ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... were very serious. A yell followed, and a young chief rushed towards the strait, with frantic cries, as if bent on leaping across the chasm. He was followed by a hundred warriors. Mark now made the signal to Juno. Not a moment was lost by the undaunted girl, who touched off her gun in the very nick of time. Down came the grape, hissing along the Reef; and, rebounding from its surface, away it leaped across the strait, flying through the thickest of the assailants. A dozen more suffered by that discharge. Waally now saw that a crisis was reached, and ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... lamp. As she beholds him under the door-lintel, the lamp falls from her hands, the kerosene blazes on the floor, and the straw mat takes fire. They do not heed this—they do not see it—they are on the wings of an ecstatic embrace. And the father, chancing to arrive in the nick of time, with a curse and a cuff, saves them and ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... got back just in the nick of time," said Titania admiringly. "You see I was all alone most of the afternoon. Weintraub left the suitcase about two o'clock. Metzger came for it about six. I refused to let him have it. He was very persistent, and I had to threaten to set Bock at him. It was all I could do to hold ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... the idea of setting here in the road all night," explained Persis, still with an air of relief. "Seems fairly providential your coming along in the nick o' time." ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... tenterhooks of expectation was one of my aristocrats or one of my marine beauties: for they knew I had a footing in both these—shall we say circles? As to themselves they were the bohemian circle, not very wide—half a dozen of us led by a sculptor whom we called Prax for short. My own nick-name was ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... concert, filling with their melody, nature's own, the woods and groves wherein these feathered songsters "sport, live, and have their being." Whilst millions of men are sunk in the arms of "the drowsy god." What is the angler about, has he slept soundly, and then awoke in the very nick of time? Or have his slumbers been somewhat broken and disturbed by dreams of crafty old Trout? No matter, he is astir, he has pocketed his tackle, and not neglected something for the inner man; rod ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... Shortcake; "his brother neer brought me ony wild-deukes, and this is a douce honest man; we serve the family wi' bread, and he settles wi' huz ilka weekonly he was in an unco kippage when we sent him a book instead o' the nick-sticks,* whilk, he said, were the true ancient way o' counting between tradesmen and customers; and sae they are, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... It's all a snarl to me. Sometimes I think the world goes on the toss-up-a-penny plan, and again it seems almost as if Old Nick himself was ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... turned; and after it The whole flock followed safe—four, five, six, seven, Yes, they were all there safe. He hoped they'd win Back to their lines in safety. They deserved, Even if they were Germans.... 'T was no sin To wish them luck. Think how that beggar swerved Just in the nick of time! He, too, must try To win back to the lines, though, likely as not, He'd take the wrong turn: but he couldn't lie Forever in that hungry hole and rot, He'd got to take his luck, to take his chance Of being sniped by foes or friends. He'd be With any luck in Germany ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... and the old man soon got his opportunity, not to lift it out in the ordinary way, but to clap the net upon it as it struggled on the shallow, and pin it most cleverly to the shingle, hauling it out without accident. It was only done in the nick of time; two yards farther down would have been ruin. Everybody said it was a perfectly shaped specimen of the bright ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... astonished the whole Corporation of London; and then taking out a large old watch, with an enamelled back—doubtless more German than its master—he said, as he lifted up his carpet-bag, "I must be off—tempos fugit, and I must arrive just in time to nick the vessels. Shall get to Ostend, or Rotterdam, safe and snug; thence to Paris. How my pretty Fan will have grown! Ah, you don't know Fan—make you a nice little wife one of these days! Cheer up, man, we shall meet again. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the rescue!" shouted Mr. Blades as he dashed across the street; "come on, Pet! here we are in the thick of it, just in the nick of time!" and, closely followed by Charles Larkyns, Mr. Fosbrooke, Mr. Smalls, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... do him good," Captain Doolan said disdainfully. "I have no patience with a man who is forever working himself to death, riding about the country as if Old Nick were behind him, and never giving himself a minute for diversion of any kind. Faith, I would rather throw myself down a well and have done with it, than work ten times as hard as ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... thought," said Peter. "And seeing him like that I thought I'd just go down and fetch myself a cup o' tea; but no sooner was I out o' the room than he must have slipped out and dressed hisself—shamming, you know—and if I hadn't come back in the nick o' ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... fairly shows himself as an original and delightful author. His boys are always masterly. Nothing could be truer to Nature, more nicely distinguished as to idiosyncrasy, while alike in expression and in limited range of ideas, or more truly comic, than the two that figure in this story. Nick Whickson, too, the good-natured ne'er-do-well, who is in his own and everybody's way till he finds his natural vocation as an aid to a dealer in horses, is a capital sketch. The hypochondriac Squire ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... at once fall in love with this new "Chicken Little" of the far western prairies—the same being an affectionate nick-name given to a dear little girl and always used when she was very, very good—but when she misbehaved ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... 'ain't: this here's the pike to Taneytown, where Sykes's boys come sweatin', after an all-night march, jest in the nick to save our second day. The Emmetsburg road's thar.—Whar was ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... though small, came just in the nick of time, because of the Saratoga-trunk scheme not proving a success. In less than one hour after I had made the deal, the landlord asked me to pay in advance. I immediately flew into a rage and demanded him to make out my bill for what we had had and receipt ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... such blooming bad luck as we have," Ed observed, "they're probably in jail somewhere! I don't think I ever saw anything in a worse mess! The very Old Nick seems ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... Budge Street, before a conscience-stricken factory; and he wept on his sack bed in the scullery because the prince and the princess, his august parents, would never know that he had died. A whit less gloomy were his imaginings of the said prince and princess rushing into the house, in the nick of time, just before life was extinct, and cutting him down. How they were to find him he did not know. This side-track exploration of possibilities was a ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... days more of opposition would have compelled him to give up the strife. Nothing saved him but the belief, on the part of his antagonists, that Gibbons was backing him. It was not the case; he had no backer. But this error, in the very nick of time, induced his opponents to treat for a compromise, and he ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... greenish eyes marked sleepily the distant dust, where Mr. Sanford's Nick Stoner was leading a brilliant field, steadily overhauling the ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... profit—the pretended speculation involved in the third receivership which was operated by Nucingen in 1826. [The Firm of Nucingen.] In 1833 M. du Tillet advised Nathan, then financially stranded, to apply to Gigonnet, the object being to involve Nathan. [A Daughter of Eve.] The nick-name of Gigonnet was applied to Bidault on account of a feverish, involuntary contraction of a leg ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... reptile can be, he canted, to remedy the error, but the impetus of his ten-foot bulk was still upon him; it carried him by. You cannot stop ten feet of bulk and five-feet-seven of girth of flesh and bone and muscle and armor-plates, going at Old Nick may know how many knots, in half-a-yard, you know; and it was the half-a-yard that ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... I looked at Skinny and he was chopping away at one sapling for dear life. He had it all full of nicks and every nick had a place ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... both slain near Amphipolis, Nicias was aware that the Spartans had long been desirous of a peace, and that the Athenians had no longer the same confidence in the war. Both being alike tired, and, as it were by consent, letting fall their hands, he, therefore, in this nick of time, employed his efforts to make a friendship betwixt the two cities, and to deliver the other States of Greece from the evils and calamities they labored under, and so establish his own good name for success as a statesman for all future time. He found the men of substance, the elder men, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... you Man that you change Colour so? 'Tis all a Lie Boy I warrant thee: And hadst thou not come just in the Nick of Time, I think o' my Conscience I ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... "This is Mr. Nick Ogilvie," said Jack's father after introducing the boys. "He will take charge of any operations we may commence in this territory. He is an old oil man, and knows ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... comfort, and the discipline of his men. Notwithstanding that he was a very strict disciplinarian—and Kentucky troops have little love of discipline—he was very popular with his men. They retaliated by nick-naming him "Bench-leg," or "Old flint-lock," and admired him all the more intensely, the more frequently that he showed them that they could never deceive him nor attempt it with impunity. Once, thinking that the health of his regiment ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... man and honest man, do acknowledge to have received of Nick and Froth, the cheating tapster, the sum of twenty pounds, which money I have bestowed (to the tapster's content) among the poor of the parish, out of whose pockets this aforesaid tapster had picked the aforesaid sum, not after the ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... from the puissant army of Beelzebub been approaching, their terror could not have been greater. Yet fear kept many from escaping, while they knew not which way to run for safety. Rigby in the nick of time galloped up to this awful and hostile appearance, crying out to his troops that he would soon demolish the bugbear. This saying encouraged some of the runaways, who followed him to the combat. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... nigger," (we are pursuing the train of reflections that passed through the mind of the Arab sheik,) "old Nick burn him!—thinks I've got more than my share of this lucky windfall. He wants these boys bad,—I know that. The Sultan of Timbuctoo has given him a commission to procure white slaves,—that's clear; and ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... the music-loving bishop, "here comes a harper in the nick of time, and now I care not how long they tarry. Ho! honest friend, are you come to play ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... and pompous Visitor, and next to the dishevelled Prioress, adding: "And now, Sir Commissioner, for all that I have done in the cause of justice I ask pardon of you who wear the King's grace and majesty as I wore old Nick's horns and hoofs, since otherwise the Abbot and his hired butchers, who hold themselves masters of King and people, will murder me for this as they have done by better men. Therefore pardon, your Mightiness, pardon," and he kneeled down ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... on these branches was therefore far from wasted. Rather it was one of the series of fortunate measures, somewhat blindly entered upon, which served the University well; but it is equally true that the abandonment of the policy came only in the nick of time, for the Regents were already ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... a kirn that would not kirn, or a batch of bread that would not rise; a flock of sheep to be gathered together on a stormy night, or a bundle to be carried home by some weary labourer; Aiken-Drum, as we learned to call him, always got to know of it, and appeared in the nick of time. It looked as if we had all got wishing-caps, for we had just to wish, and the work ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... come just in the nick of time. I had almost forgotten you while I was looking after my horses, and I wanted to hand you over to an acquaintance. I was thinking of asking you, good friend," he continued, turning towards the dealer, "if you would not take this little chap along with you, as ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... graphite or metal dust on slip-rings so that the current will leak or short circuits will occur. When a motor is idle, nick the ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... slightest connection with him, in places of public resort. He, however, has no scruple about claiming my acquaintance, even when his common-sense, if he had any, might teach him that I would as willingly exchange a nod with the Old Nick. It was but the other day that he got into a large brass kettle at the entrance of a hardware-store, and thrust his head, the moment afterwards, into a bright, new warming-pan, whence he gave me a most merciless look of recognition. He smiled, and so did I; but these childish tricks ...
— Monsieur du Miroir (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bull, draws its attention to him by means of violent gestures. As the bull charges, the banderillero steps towards him, dexterously plants both darts in the beast's neck, and draws aside in the nick of time to avoid its horns. Four pairs of banderillas are planted in this way, rendering the bull mad with rage and pain. Should the animal prove of a cowardly nature and refuse to attack repeatedly, banderillas de fuego (fire) are used. These are furnished with fulminating crackers, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... between the ranges is a bed of soft white sandstone, through which the different creeks have cut deep courses; the stones on the surface (igneous principally), are composed of iron, quartz, dark black and blue stone, also a bright red one, all run together and twisted into every sort of nick, as also with the limestone, and many other sorts which I do not know. This plain is covered with a most hard spinifex, very difficult to get the horses to face. In another creek, about one mile south-west from the camp, is a large water hole which ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... north and west, was scrupulously swept and dusted; furniture rubbed; little white knitted mats laid on the dressing-table; the chintz curtains taken down and put up again; a new nice chamber set of white china was bought, for the pitcher of the old set had an ugly nick in it and looked shabby; the towel rack was filled with white napery; the handsomest Marseilles quilt was spread on the bed; the stove was blackened and polished. It looked "very respectable," Anne said, when ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... the famishing fulness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation, Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast? Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror, Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death: Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... been constant scenes of mutual but unpretending kindnesses; and this under circumstances that naturally awakened all the most generous and manly sentiments of their natures. When young men, their laughing messmates had nick-named them Pylades and Orestes; and later in life, on account of their cruising so much in company, they were generally known in the navy as the "twin captains." On several occasions had they fought enemies' frigates, and captured them; on these occasions, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to-morrow, he ain't going to pull up stakes in such a hell of a hurry. He'll pack what furs he's got, and he'll pick up what traps he's got out. That would take him several days, anyway. My son, we're in the nick of time!" ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... to be heir of Avenel at last, Master Roland, after my lord and lady have gone to their place," said Adam; "and as I have but one boon to ask, I trust you will not nick me ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... creature whose mysterious habit of living upon the surface of the pond as well as underneath made the children's nick-name a necessity. And now it was attempting a raid on land as well. But land was not its natural place. Something certainly had happened, or was ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... thinkin' on, Pazon Arbroath!" said "Feathery" Joltram, suddenly rising from his chair and showing himself in all his great height and burly build. "Zummat for a zermon on owd Nick, when tha're wantin' to ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... me knows," said her brother. "I lost count—and lost some of the knives, too. I've an idea Bill Beresford picked up one I dropped—the one Lance Western gave me; it's got a tortoise-shell handle, and a nick out of the big blade—and gave ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... just that! An' why not? Do what you can an' go ahead! That's the way! That whole crowd don't deserve no better. Not Wehrhahn an' not Friderici. An' anyhow, it was a good thing, Mrs. Fielitz. It was done just in the nick o' time! Now he's gone an' broken with them fellers, an' everybody knows it. There ain't no goin' back now. Now he belongs to us, Mrs. Fielitz, an' I never would ha' thought it ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... of our souls. But the thought will wondrously lighten the burden that we have to carry, and the tasks which we have to perform. 'But for a moment,' makes all light. There was an old rabbi, long ago, whose real name was all but lost, because everybody nick-named him 'Rabbi Thisalso.' The reason was because he had perpetually on his lips the saying about everything as it came, 'This also will pass.' He was a wise man. Let us go to his ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... are all got together at this sale of fineries and nick- nacks. You call them goods; but if you do not take care they will prove evils to some of you. You expect they will be sold cheap, and perhaps they may for less than they cost; but if you have no occasion for them they must be dear to you. Remember what poor Richard says— Buy what thou hast no ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... enough I was sent to Tregony grammar school, my father being determined to give me a schooling befitting the position he hoped, in spite of his misfortunes, I should some day occupy. Now Nick Tresidder had been attending this same school for some months when I went. For this I was very glad, because I thought it would give me an opportunity for testing him. I had not been in the school a week, however, when my father came to fetch me away. The reason was that Richard Tresidder ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... pigs, to come in for their share; so I will forestall events a little; I will cut off the burs when they have matured, and a few days of this dry October weather will cause everyone of them to open on the ground; I shall be on hand in the nick of time to gather up my nuts." The squirrel, of course, had to take the chances of a prowler like myself coming along, but he had fairly stolen a march on his neighbors. As I proceeded to collect and open the burs, I was half prepared to hear ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... queerest bird here—a fellow as good-looking as you, who had me follow the taxi occupied by a hunchback with a face like Old Nick." The man hesitated and went on haltingly: "It might sound goofy, mister, but there was something funny about my fare. He jumped out, asked me the charge, and, in the moment I glanced at my taxi-meter, he disappeared. Yes, sir. Vanished, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... "The usual lot: Nick Jones, master, Stee Jenkin, Bobby Poole, and Mr. Ferrars. A perfect Jonah that man is, and disaster follows wherever he goes," said Oily Dave, with a melancholy shake ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... right. They have pounced upon the derelict like wolves. I almost wish I was there to see the effect when they realize they have been fooled, and they find that that craft is loaded with stones. It was just done in the nick of time; they might have compelled ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... went into the shop and explained to Lizzie how matters stood. She kept what she called a bookseller's shop as well as the post-office; but the supply of books corresponded exactly to the lack of demand for them, and her chief trade was in nick-nacks, from marbles and money-boxes up to concertinas. If he found the post-mistress in an amiable mood, which was only now and then, the caller led up craftily to the object of his visit. Having discussed the weather ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... condition, but attributed his antics to part of the programme; and he most certainly would have been drowned, had it not been for Lilian Rosenberg, who, being quite by chance, in front of the house, perceived he was drunk, the moment he came on the stage. She flew to the wings, and, just in the nick of time, got two of the supers to haul him out of the tank. Of course, it was announced—with a pretty apology—by Mr. Hamar, that Mr. Curtis had been taken ill. Kelson immediately came on with ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... square tower of the cathedral. The Palace is really on a level with it, so great is the rise in the ground. This apartment, like all the rooms indeed, is richly perfumed by flowers; exquisite china and silver nick-nacks are everywhere, and the Bishop evidently does not believe in the untold troubles associated with the presence of peacocks' feathers. There are several fans made from the "unlucky" stalks. One table seems given ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... against representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois movement. German Socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding economic conditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted thereto, the very things whose attainment ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... at whose elbow the Devil during prayer Sate familiarly, side by side, Declared that, if the Tempter were there, 35 His presence he would not abide. Ah! ah! thought Old Nick, that's a very stale trick, For without the Devil, O favourite of Evil, In your carriage you ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... that this problem arrived, the telephone business was fairly well established. It had outgrown its early days of ridicule and incredulity. It was paying wages and salaries and even dividends. Evidently it had arrived on the scene in the nick of time—after the telegraph and before the trolleys and electric lights. Had it been born ten years later, it might not have been able to survive. So delicate a thing as a baby telephone could scarcely have protected itself against the powerful currents of electricity ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... propitious. But the foe declined to oblige; he lay low all day, presumably imbibing coffee. In the afternoon, heavy rains, which made piquet duty none too pleasant, came down in torrents. Tents had just been pitched at our redoubts in the nick of time. The three men killed on Tuesday were buried with military honours. The funeral was large—the Colonel, his staff, and several sections of the Town Guard marching in ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... with the promise of pride in the past; Flushed with the famishing fulness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation, Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast? Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror, Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death: Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional exquisite error, Bathed ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... wisht you could 'a' been allowed To jest look on and see it all,— And heerd the girls and women bawl And wring their hands; and heerd old Jeff A-cussin' as he swung hisse'f Upon his hoss, who champed his bit As though old Nick had holt of it: And cheek by jowl the two old wrecks Rode off as though they'd ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... sword—you may draw it and feel, For this is the blade that I bore that day— There's a notch even now on the long grey steel, A nick that has never been rasp'd away. I bow'd my head and I buried my spurs, One bound brought the gliding green beneath; I could tell by her back-flung, flatten'd ears, She had fairly taken the bit in her teeth— (What, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... are ahead of the thought and feeling of the present day are crying out for more simplicity in our homes and furniture, as well as for more refinement and real architectural merit. No useless luxuries and nick-nacks, but plenty of public baths, and mosaic pavements laboriously put together by hard hand labour,—these are the points that Ruskin and the Romans liked ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... "They nick-named me 'Silent' in jail, because I wouldn't talk," he said in a husky tone. "God knows!—what inducement had ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... again, Ken saw the glitter in his savage eyes, and thought it was all over when, in the very nick of time, a revolver spat and turned the fierce ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... of agony at the presence of the great enemy of mouse-kind had fortunately roused me from my lethargy,—for the rattle of the snake is but a drowsy sound, and will not awaken the sleeper. How the Mangouste came to appear on the scene at the nick of time, I know not. He might have come in at the open window, or possibly had been sleeping, since I missed him, among the trappings and traveller's gear with which the room ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... cattle of the boy ranchers were saved, and the rustlers captured. Tired horses were staked out near grass and water, and while the cavalry established their camp, Bud and his friends began to wonder how it was the troopers had arrived in the nick of time. ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... penn'orth o' scraps turned into a big beef-steak almost. They used to wonder how I got so much for the money. But I'm always afraid o' being found out—or of losing the blessed spy-glass—or of some one pinching it. So we got to do what I always said—make some use of it. And if I go along and nick your father's dibs we'll make our fortunes ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... no' hae my dog scaret wi' bogles, and running down Auld Nick as if he were a hare. The ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... recollect, however, that some men were ignorant of book-keeping; our baker, for instance had a wooden tally, in which he made a notch for every loaf of bread, and of course we had the corresponding tally. They were called nick-sticks. ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... character, and as minor figures where will we find anything better than Miss Wansey, and Mr. P. Pipkin, Esq. The picture of Mr. Dink's school, too, is capital, and where else in fiction is there a better nick-name than that the boys gave to poor little Stephen Treadwell, "Step Hen," as he himself pronounced his name in an unfortunate moment when he saw it in print for the first time in his ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... how they got the ways in their places, loosened the cradle, and wedged up the fore part of the vessel; then the stays were hastily removed; it was Begmand who had taken away the last from the stern amidst the fire and smoke, and so away went the ship just in the nick of time. Tom Robson ought really to have all the praise, since everything was ready to hand, and in ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... when not doing the queen, cordial, cheerful in manner, loving to have children about her, to spoil them with cakes and see them romp and dance; free and easy, cynical, Rabelaisian, if I may use the expression, as such mongrel Frenchwomen are apt to grow with years; the nick-name which she gave to a member of a family where the tradition of her and her ways still persists, reveals a wealth of coarse fun which is rather strange in a woman who was once the Beatrice or Laura of a poet. She was active, mentally and bodily, never giving up her multifarious reading, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... visit. The height of the Jebel el-Abyaz, whose colour makes it conspicuous even from the offing when sailing along the coast, was found to be 350 (not 600) feet above the plain. The Grand Filon, which a mauvais plaisant of a reviewer called the "Grand Filou," forms a "nick" near the hill-top, but does not bifurcate in the interior. The fork is of heavy greenish porphyritic trap, also probably titaniferous iron, with a trace of silver,[EN22] where it meets the quartz and the granite. Standing upon the "old man" with which we had marked the top, I counted five ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... the breath out of him for the moment. The poacher leapt up, and aimed a terrific kick at his fallen opponent. The man would have received a severe injury had not the scouts swept into action at the very nick of time. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... and they would doubtless have killed him, but for two men who dragged him from their clutches in the nick of time. These two men were the one-armed Joe and Edward Chester, just returned from the West Indies, whom the former had met by accident that day. They took the locksmith to his home, while the raging crowd brought furniture from neighboring houses and built a bonfire of it to burn ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... Dutchman—"blutroth die Segel, schwarz der Mast"—she nears rapidly, enters the fiord and casts anchor hard by Daland's boat, and Vanderdecken comes ashore. It is the seventh year, and he has the usual short respite in which to seek the maid who will redeem him. He has a long soliloquy; then, in the nick of time, Daland awakes, comes on deck, unjustly reproaches the watchman for dozing, hails the Dutchman, and joins him on the rocks for a chat. They soon grow friendly and strike a bargain. Daland is to take the stranger home with him, and ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... exclamation, seized, held it fast, wrapped round it a great woollen shawl from his own shoulders, and in one moment put out the deadly fire which was snatching at the sweet young life. Who was this gentleman, do you think, thus arrived at the very nick of time? Why, no other than Lady Bird's own Papa, come home from China a few weeks ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... and then, as a half dozen bullets whistled by his head, urging him to do something, he finished his dash for the rock, throwing himself down behind it just as a half a dozen more bullets striking on the stone told him that he had done the right thing in the very nick of time. ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... reason, I fancy, is not so much that man is a hopeless fool, as that Time, so far as he is concerned, has, as we know, only just begun: it being, of course, conceivable that the creation of a perfect society of men, as the first requisite to a regime of culture, must nick to itself a longer loop of time than the making of, say, a stratum of coal. A loquacious person—he is one of your cherished "novel"-writers, by the way, if that be indeed a Novel in which there is nowhere any pretence at novelty—once ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... heard it, and in the nick of time. The door of the shed was thrown violently open, and out plunged Jim, his hair on fire and his clothes singed and smoking. He brushed the sparks off himself as if they were flakes of snow. Quick as thought, he tore 'Liza's halter from its fastening, pulling ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... existing between these two excellent individuals might have been ruined and annihilated for a comparative trifle, had not a surprising and indeed almost miraculous thing happened, by some kind of freak of destiny, in the nick of time. Mr Sandbach was sticking close to Mr Gale, and Mr Gale was following in the leisurely footsteps of the very shabby man, possibly debating within himself whether he should boldly demand the return of his half-sovereign, when lo! a golden coin seemed to slip from ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... same formula of the song sung by the prisoner is usual. Not uncommon, too, is a TOKEN carried by Sophia when she pursues her lost adorer, to insure her recognition. It is half of her broken ring. Once more, why does Sophia leave home to find Bateman in the very nick of time? Thackeray's version does not tell us; but Scottish versions do. 'She longed fu' sair her love to see.' Elsewhere a supernatural being, 'The Billy Blin,' or a fairy, clad in green, gives her warning. The fickleness ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... beamed. Evidently he had not had a talk all day, and felt he must expand and let himself out to somebody. I appeared in the nick of time, and came in for all his honey. He rose, went to a bookcase, ran his eye along a shelf, took down a volume, and began, in a low tone: "'Cooperation is the mighty lever upon which an effete society relies to extricate itself from its swaddling-clothes and take ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... day, and common almost up to our own: a river-god, bearded, crown of reeds, urn, general dampness and uproariousness of temper, all quite correct; and a nymph, whom he pursues, who prays to the Virgin huntress to save her from his love, and who, just in the nick of time, is metamorphosed into a mossy stone, dimly showing her former woman's shape; the style of thing, charming, graceful, insipid, of which every one can remember a dozen instances, and which immediately brings up to the mind a vision of grand-ducal ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... fire. They were just entering the water to come across to her. They fascinated her by their very fierceness. Forgetting where she was for the instant, she stared dumbly at them until called to life and action by a scream from the locomotive's whistle. Then she sprang from the track just in the nick of time. She actually laughed as she saw two grayish-white wolf-tails bob here and there among the sage brush, as the wolves took flight at sight ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... these accessions in the nick of time, two millions and a quarter of whites was a meagre outfit for stocking a virgin farm of fifteen hundred miles square, to say nothing of its future police and external defence against the wolves of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... home. One late afternoon we were hurrying across the mesa to supper, when our magneto flew off into the ditch, scattering screws in all directions. Fortunately, a kind of Knight Errant to our family appeared just in the nick of time to take us home and send help to the wreck. I once kept a garage in San Diego open half an hour after closing time by a Caruso sob in my voice over the telephone, while my brother-in-law's miserable chauffeur hurried over for ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... been nick-named, as Chicago, the Windy City; Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, etc. The hostess requests her guests to wear something suggestive of the nickname of the city represented. Each guest ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... herself and her sons-in- law—as an apple of discord in the Romany camp. She employed her grandchild, Leonora, to open relations in a friendly way with Lavengro, and then to persuade him to eat of a "drabbed" of poisoned cake. Lavengro was grievously sick, but was saved in the nick of time by the appearance upon the scene of a Welsh preacher, Peter Williams, and his wife—two good souls who wandered over all Wales and the greater part of England, comforting the hearts of the people with their doctrine, and ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... Now isn't that good luck, my turnin' up just in the nick o' time to see you home? Here, catch hold of my arm. The wind's fit to tear the lamp-posts up ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... the windlass got loose from our grip, and down went the bucket and Happy. A loud splash came to us, and grabbing the handle again, we worked like Trojans. A volley of curses came from that well which would have shocked Old Nick himself. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... was your wife, I'd be along with you those nights, Christy Mahon, the way you'd see I was a great hand at coaxing bailiffs, or coining funny nick-names for the ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... into everlasting fire. There was no knife in Ardross Castle that would reach down to Lady Boyd's corrupt heart; had there been, she would have first cleansed her own heart with it, and would then have shown her son how to cleanse his. But, as Rutherford says, she also had come now to that 'nick' in religion to cut off a right hand and a right foot so as to keep Christ and the life everlasting, and so had her eldest son, Lord Boyd. As Bishop Martensen also says, 'Many a time we cannot avoid feeling a deep sorrow for ourselves because of the bottomless depth ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... by letting the fire burn so low?' he growled. 'I have only arrived in the nick of time.' And while the prince hastily threw a log on the stove and blew on the ashes to kindle a glow, his master gave him a severe box on the ear, and warned him that if ever it happened again it would fare badly ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... the lad said, recovering himself, "that it is a great pity you could not have obtained the situation of Devil's Advocate. I have read that years ago someone was appointed to defend Old Nick when the others were pitching into him, and to show that he was not as black as he was painted, but was a respectable gentleman who had ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... am going to become a combination of Nick Carter and Sherlock Holmes, and my first efforts will be directed toward finding out who and what Mr. Henry ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... cloak from the hook. Nick Bramham unpinned his drawing and rolled it under his arm. They turned out the lights and set off down the street, holding on their way through all the people, motor cars, omnibuses, carts, until they reached Leicester Square, five minutes before Jacob reached it, for his way was slightly ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... despondency to write to her mother, and then lingered awhile with the letter before her, her head in her hands, pondering with emotion what she and Philip owed to George Anderson, who had, it seemed, arrived by a night train, and walked up to the hotel, in the very nick of time. As to the accident itself, no doubt the guide, a fine swimmer and coureur de bois, would have been sufficient, unaided, to save her brother. But after all, it was Anderson's strong arms that had drawn him from the icy depths of the lake, ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to our cause. Hooker badly, very badly wounded. Hooker fought the greatest number of fights,—was never worsted in the Peninsula, nor in the August disasters, and he alone has the supreme honor of a nick-name, by the troopers' baptism: the Fighting Joe. Hooker, not McClellan, ought to command the army. But no pestilential Washington clique, none of the West-Pointers, back him, and the pets, the pretorians, may have refused to obey ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... desperately to its neck. Fortunately the water remained shallow, and the adventurous Englishman was just congratulating himself on getting safely across without mishap when there came a despairing shriek from Ling, the bridle was wrenched from Frobisher's hand, and he wheeled in the saddle in the nick of time to see Ling's mule lose its footing and sink back into the swirling torrent, flinging the shrieking Korean off its back into the water. The man immediately disappeared from view, all that was visible of him being a hand and an arm, waving frantically to and fro and ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... father's farm, amid the grand scenery of the valley of the Adige, which deeply impressed itself on his youthful imagination and left its traces in all his verse. He went to school at Verona, where for his dullness he was nick-named the "mole," and afterwards he passed on to the University of Padua to study law, apparently to please his father, for in the charming autobiography prefixed to his collected poems he quotes his father as saying:—"My ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Well, to my mind, Travers may as well get himself used to places that are hot and filled with smoke—fur if he ain't one of Old Nick's own ones, I ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... lo'e weel my Charlie's name, [love] Tho' some there be abhor him: But O, to see auld Nick gaun hame, [going] And Charlie's faes before ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... Betty jubilantly, while the hand that held the steering wheel shook with relief. "You darling, wonderful house. Gracie, dear, I think it showed on the horizon just in the nick of time. Look behind ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... they were made slaves. Nick Toliver bought 'em. He was their first master, far as I heard 'em say. After old man Nick Toliver died, Tom Brewer bought my mother. Toliver and Brewer were the only two masters ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... their limbs, I have further observ'd, not to remain always the same, but to be continually chang'd by a kind of fluctuating motion, not unlike that of the waves of the Sea, so as that part of the limb, which was but even now nick'd or indented in, is now protuberant, and will presently be sinking again; neither is this all but the whole body of the Luminaries, do in the Telescope, seem to be depress'd and slatted, the upper, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... have thought it the least attractive of employments to one of his volatile disposition. For some time indeed he had supported himself comfortably in this way; for through friends of his family he had had good introductions, and, although he wasted a good deal of money in buying nick-nacks that promised to be useful and seldom were, he had no objectionable habits except inordinate smoking. But it happened that a pupil—a girl of imaginative disposition, I presume—fell so much in love with him that she betrayed her feelings ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... Cape Bajoli straight for Marseille. They run both ways between Mallorca and Minorca without touching. Hooray! who says our luck isn't stupendous? Here we are, not having made enough southing, and heading so as to fetch Gibraltar without sighting the islands at all; and then in the nick of time up comes a dea ex machina in the guise of the Eugene Perrier to shove us on the course again. In main-sheet, and then, blow me if we won't have a bottle of that vermouth by way of celebrating the event in a way at once highly becoming ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... Thursday afternoon the police from Athenry made an attack, they were chased with motor-cars for a distance of about four miles back to Athenry, where the forces of the Crown only just managed to get into their barracks in the nick of time. ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... sitting up in the window with his legs crossed, and his arms folded, and his face making you think of the Old Nick?" asked Tommy. ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... learned his first big lesson, and the good of it never left him, and often saved his life; just as surely as his father's great speed and strength saved it on this morning, in the very breathless nick of time when his throat had been bared to the knife that ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... answers, and was able in one moment, after so much delay and vexatious argument for and against with himself, to resolve the problem upon the points of how, why, when, where, how much, and in what, matter might or might not be real, and was upon the very nick of settling the last little point—namely, sive an non (that is, whether it were real or no)—when, as luck would have it, or rather, as his own beastly appetite and senile greed would have it, he broke off sharp at hearing the dinner-gong or bell, ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... was seen to suddenly dart, with an activity they would hardly have expected in him, across the road. He was only in the nick of time. ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... came on the world's stage "just in the nick of time," and almost immediately had to begin hewing out a path for himself. He was born in the workshop, as was Mozart, and learned music simultaneously with speaking. Stirring times they were in which he first saw the light, and so indeed continued with ever-increasing intensity, like a good ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... was rejoiced to receive, just in the nick of time, such a store of playthings with which to load his sledge, and he sent word to Glossie and Flossie to be ready ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... spent—but for the heroism of Ray, who had run the gauntlet through the Cheyennes all alone in the darkness, found Truscott's squadron going rapidly away in another direction, turned him to the rescue just in the nick of time, and now, weak and wounded, was being sent in to Russell; that there had been several men killed, quite a number wounded, and that among these latter were Blake, Wayne, and Dana; and that Blake, too, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... in Panten that Column has stood cogitative ever since; well to left of Loudon and his struggles; but does not, till the eleventh hour, resolve to push through. At the eleventh hour;—and lo, in the nick of time, Mollendorf (our Leuthen-and-Hochkirch friend) got his eye on it; rushed up with infantry and cavalry; set Panten on fire, and blocked out that possibility and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... male is called nix, the female nixie, the generic term for both being nicker, from a root which perhaps means 'to wash.' There is perhaps some truth in the statement which would derive the Satanic patronymic of 'Old Nick' from these beings, as spirits extremely familiar to the Teutonic mind. On fine sunny days the nixies may be seen sitting on the banks of rivers, or on the branches of trees, combing their long golden locks. Previous ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... studying to improve himself in branches of knowledge in which he feels himself deficient. He is practising very temperate habits: for half a year past he has taken to drinking water only, avoiding all sweets, and eating no "nick-nacks." He has "sowens and milk,' (oatmeal flummery) every night for his supper. His friend having asked his opinion of politics, he says he really knows nothing about them; he had been so completely engrossed by ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... Hughie, indignantly. "It's more than half, then. And it's bully good stuff, too. It'll nick any knife in the school"; and Hughie dived into his pocket and pulled out his knife with a handful ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... come to fight in the Vende, where he was noticed for his courage and his quality of leadership. He was an excellent tactician, a skill which he had learned in Prussia, where he had served for a considerable time in the Foot-guards of Frederick the Great; hence his nick-name of "The Big Prussian." He had an irreproachable military turn-out, spick and span, curled and powdered, with a long pig-tail, big, highly polished riding boots and withal, a very martial bearing. This smart appearance was ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... of his oats, and a-coaxin' him, and jist as he goes to put his hand upon him, away he starts all head and tail, and the rest with him: that starts another flock, and they set a third off, and at last every troop on 'em goes, as if Old Nick was arter them, till they amount to two or three hundred in a drove. Well, he chases them clear across the Tantramer marsh, seven miles good, over ditches, creeks, mire holes, and flag ponds, and then they turn and take a fair chase ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... he was a woman," added Montigny, with a sneer. "Sit up, can't you?" he went on, giving another shake to the murdered body. "Tread out that fire, Nick!" ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... occasional advantage of a nick-name. Dickson thought he was being addressed as "Dogson" after the Poet's fashion. Had he dreamed it was Leon he would not have replied, but fluttered off into the shadows, and so missed ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... ounces of white sugar, the rind of a lemon being rubbed with some lumps of it to take the essence. Then peel and beat it into a paste, with the juice of a large lemon, and mix all together with four or five ounces of warmed butter. Put a crust into a shallow dish, nick the edges, and put the above into it. When sent to table, turn the pudding out of ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... themselves. But when the newcomers lost an important football contest, Oak Hall woke up to the true condition of affairs, and Dave and his chums quickly regained their places on the eleven, and then won a grand victory. During this time Link Merwell, in company with another bad boy named Nick Jasniff, became a student at Rockville Military Academy, a rival institution of learning. Both bullies did their best to make trouble for our hero, but, as before, he exposed them, and this time they had to flee to ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... you did it!" insisted Mr. Swift, "and you did it in the nick of time. Now I wouldn't for a moment think of offering you a reward for saving my son's life. But I do feel mighty friendly toward you—not that I didn't before—but I do want to help you. Alec, I will go into this business with you. We'll take a chance! I'll invest ten thousand dollars, ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... you're thinkin'," said Miss Mehitable cheerfully; "but the queerest thing and the nicest thing happened to me this mornin'. I got some money that I didn't expect. Just in the nick o' time, you see. We can ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... start a smart game, or a paying one—something as knocks 'em, dear boy, No matter, mate, whether it's mustard, or rhymes, or a sixpenny toy; They'll be arter you, nick over nozzle, the smuggers of notions and nips, For the mugs is as 'ungry for wrinkles as broken-down bookies ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... gamekeeper over to Ashbridge 'All," said Mr. Baker eagerly, "you'd a bin shot but for me. Some gents will never learn 'ow 'to 'old their guns. I knocked the barrel up just in the nick. That ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... and I'm not hurt," said the girl reassuringly, as her father ran towards her with a look of anguish on his face. "You just came in the nick of time; they were going to ambush you. Don't let the horses go too near the corral, as they will be stampeded again. A dead bear ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... and another soldier, a father of a large family, nick-named "uncle," threw up their arms and fell heavily upon the ...
— The Shield • Various
... Kirk. The old sexton was standing by the grave of Burns' father, and described to me the route of "Tam o' Shanter." He showed me the chinks in the sides through which the kirk seemed "all in a bleeze," and he pointed out the identical place on the wall where Old Nick was presiding over the midnight revels ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... dismay as she sees his face wrung by despair. Eileen turns her head away with a little cry, as if she would hide her face in the bedclothes. A sudden fierce resolution lights up Murray's countenance—hoarsely.) You're just in the nick of time, Miss Gilpin! Eileen! Listen! You'll believe Miss Gilpin, won't you? She knows all about it. (Eileen turns her eyes questioningly on ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... six years old when de war commence poppin' in Charleston. Mammy and pappy say dat I was born on de Graham place, one of de nineteen plantations of my old marster, Nick Peay, in 1854. My pappy was name Bob and my mammy name Salina. They had b'longed to old Marse Tom Starke befo' old Marse Nick bought them. My brudders was name Bob and John. I had a sister name Carrie. They was all ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... have any tomfoolery;—d'ye hear?" Whereupon the countess said that she did hear, and soon afterwards managed to escape. The valet then took his turn; and repeated, after his hour of service, that "Old Nick" in his tantrums had been more like the Prince of ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... was a staid, wall-eyed veteran, with his coat of a regular Rodney cut, broad skirts, long waist, and stand-up collar, over which dangled either a queue, or marlinspike with a tuft of oakum at the end of it—it would have puzzled old Nick to say which. His lower spars were cased in tight unmentionables of what had once been white kerseymere, and long boots, the coal-scuttle tops of which served as scuppers to carry off the drainings from his coat-flaps in bad weather; he was, in fact, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... carried a gleaming axe to prove he was a woodman, but seldom had cause to use it because he lived in a magnificent tin castle in the Winkie Country of Oz and was the Emperor of all the Winkies. The Tin Woodman's name was Nick Chopper. He had a very good mind, but his heart was not of much account, so he was very careful to do nothing unkind or to hurt ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the world I had found out in Cooke's edition of the British Novelists was to me a dance through life, a perpetual gala-day. The six-penny numbers of this work regularly contrived to leave off just in the middle of a sentence, and in the nick of a story, where Tom Jones discovers Square behind the blanket; or where Parson Adams, in the inextricable confusion of events, very undesignedly gets to bed to Mrs. Slip-slop. Let me caution the reader against this impression of Joseph Andrews; for there ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... first-rate families are in the two elevens, mingled with the yeomen and whoever can best do the business. Fallow field and Beckley, without regard to rank, have drawn upon their muscle and science. One of the bold men of Beckley at the wickets is Nick Frim, son of the gamekeeper at Beckley Court; the other is young Tom Copping, son of Squire Copping, of Dox Hall, in the parish of Beckley. Last year, you must know, Fallow field beat. That is why Nick Frim, a renowned out-hitter, good to finish a score ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Dexie, I have been wondering what your name is, ever since I came. Is it an abbreviation or a nick-name?" said Plaisted, anxious to turn the conversation. "I have never met with a young lady ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... but there was no sound, and then I thought that the diamond might cleave to the side with damp, or perhaps be wrapped in wool. Scarcely was the locket well in my hand before I had it undone, finding a thumb-nick whereby, after a little persuasion, the back, though rusted, could be opened on a hinge. My breath came very fast, and I shook so that I had a difficulty to keep my thumbnail in the nick, yet hardly was it opened before exalted expectation gave ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... way myself," agreed Douglas. "But he didn't hold a grudge against me. He's not that kind. And I think he was so lonely he'd have been glad to feed the Old Nick himself." ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... the army, like school boys, almost all have "nick-names." Mine was called the "Dutch" from the fact of its having been raised in that section of the country between Saluda River and the Broad, known as "Dutch Fork." A century or more before, this country, just above Columbia and in the fork of the two rivers, was settled by ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... real little Sherlock Holmes, though?" he jeered presently. "Got Old Sleuth skinned for fair and Nick Carter eating out of your hand! You damned skypilot!" His voice cracked. "You're all alike! Get a man on his back and then ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... "Glad to see you, Nick," said the fellow who had foretold the speedy apprehension of the letter-writer, as already related. "Cursed fool to come to London so soon. Knew you would be ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... special friends Eru Te Whangoa and Kirsty Lammergaw are present but Lily Chen and Likofo Komom'baratse and Jean LeBrun are not; we have Cray Patterson who is one of my special enemies but not Blazer Weigh or the Astral Cad; the rest are P. Zapotec, Nick Howard, Aro Mestah, Dillie Dixie, Pavel Christianovitch, Lennie ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... used to five per cent from a certain quarter, they cannot be content with four, particularly the small holders; so this reduction of the Navy Five per Cents unsettled several thousand capitalists, and disposed them to search for an investment. A flattering one offered itself in the nick of time. Considerable attention had been drawn of late to the mineral wealth of South America, and one or two mining companies existed, but languished in the hands of professed speculators. The public now broke like a sudden flood into these hitherto sluggish channels of enterprise, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... that during the year St. Nick, as he was commonly called, was busy manufacturing and preparing wonderful toys to be distributed throughout the country among the children who were deserving. In order to know to whom the presents were ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... the "old nick" was to pay, "Truth indeed is stranger than fiction," His prayers were so tedious and long, People slept, till the benediction. And then came another, on trial, Who actually preached in his gloves, His manner so awkward and ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... you there was great game up? I was just wanting some one to help me. Met you in the nick of time." ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... three of the most determined bailiffs from amongst the tribe, and to their care was committed the keeping of the supposed body in the old barn. Associated with these worthies were a couple of ill-conditioned country blackguards, who, for the sake of a bottle of whisky, would keep company with Old Nick himself, and who expected, moreover, to hear "a power o' news" from the "gentlemen" from Dublin, who, in their turn did not object to have their guard strengthened, as their notions of a rescue in the country parts of Ireland were anything but agreeable. The night ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... had almost arrived for Keane's foreclosing. The family had already left Grantley Hall, taking little with them save the family jewellery, pictures, and nick-nacks. Flora had gone to Torquay, Jack was in town, and his father preparing to resume his sword, and once more fight for his country. The eventful morning itself came round. Keane was early at his office. He was in an unusually happy frame ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... on the tree with his tomahawk, and putting his great toe in the nick, rose on it, made another nick higher up, and holding the smooth stem put his other great toe in it, and so on till in an incredibly short time he had reached the top and left a staircase of his own making behind him. He had hardly reached the top when he slid down to ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... saw the advocacy of the use of manipulation and deception in order to maintain power as being the idea of a disreputable foreign country. Indeed, Machiavelli was seen as a satanic figure who was known as 'Old Nick', a still-used reference to the devil, and the machiavel became a stock figure on the early modern stage, a tradition which the portrayal of ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... When the days are at shortest) to get it in rhyme; Till then it was lock'd in my box at Parnassus; When that subtle companion, in hopes to surpass us, Conveys out my paper of hints by a trick (For I think in my conscience he deals with old Nick,) And from my own stock provided with topics, He gets to a window beyond both the tropics, There out of my sight, just against the north zone, Writes down my conceits, and then calls them his own; And you, like a cully, the bubble can swallow: Now who but Delany that writes like ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Almost lost the petroleum launch in the evening. The waves were constantly breaking into it and filling it, the gunwale was burst in at two places, and the heavy davits it hung on were twisted as if they had been copper wires. Only just in the nick of time, with the waves washing over us, some of us managed to get it lashed to the side of the ship. There seemed to be some fatality about ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... of manufacturing items of the horrible style, but on one occasion he overdid this business, and the disease worked its own cure. He wrote an account of a terrible murder, supposed to have occurred at "Dutch Nick's," a station on the Carson River, where Empire City now stands. He made a man cut his wife's throat and those of his nine children, after which diabolical deed the murderer mounted his horse, cut his own throat ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... further, begging to be allowed to run away so as not to keep Billy Cheever waiting, Rosie Fay was noticing with relief that her mother was asleep at last. Thor's sedative had taken effect in what the girl considered the nick of time. Having smoothed the pillow, adjusted the patchwork quilt, and placed the small kerosene hand-lamp on a chair at the foot of the bed, so as to shade it from the sleeper's eyes, she ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... playground. Of course I was shown the exact (?) spot where the little ark was found among the bullrushes in the River Nile. When Pharoah's daughter saw the little child she was touched and thus the destiny of a nation hung on the cry of a little child. Miriam, the sister of Moses appeared just in the nick of time and when the princess told her to call one of the Hebrew women her feet hardly touched the ground in her effort to get her mother to the spot. When the little hands were held out toward the joyous mother she was told to ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... be crazy over you, anyway. She nearly wept when she telephoned me. And I've been out for hours hunting you, stirred up the old lady on your floor at your home, and a lot of hospitals and other places, and then just came on you in the nick of time. I hope you've learned your lesson, to be a good little girl after this ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... to adjust sights, as the enemy were within "point-blank" range. Enfilading the enemy these guns were raking his flank with fire, whilst he was preparing to make a final rush down into the wadi. Had not this move been circumvented in the "nick of time," it is impossible to estimate the disastrous consequences which would have ensued. Almost at once, the deadly fire of the two machine-guns began to tell their tale, and odd Turks here and there suddenly ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... lamp falls from her hands, the kerosene blazes on the floor, and the straw mat takes fire. They do not heed this—they do not see it—they are on the wings of an ecstatic embrace. And the father, chancing to arrive in the nick of time, with a curse and a cuff, saves them and his house ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... morning till 5:30 the next morning. With all that, I was supposed to lead my regiment across a bridge to take a position guarding a new bridge in course of construction; but the bridge, as we discovered in the nick of time, was mined; twenty minutes later ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... timely warning of the close proximity of the Indians. While feeding their cattle, settlers were shot from ambush by the lurking foe; and on March 11th, a family barricaded within a burning house, which they were defending with desperate courage, were rescued in the nick of time by the militia. No episode from Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales surpasses in melancholy interest Harry Hicks's heroic defense of his little fort on Bean Island Creek. Surrounded by the Indians, Hicks and his family took refuge within the small outer palisade around his humble home. ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... his last "impression" here While yet his heart was warm, Just in the "nick" closed his career, And ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... Tilchester, "you have arrived in the nick of time to save Babykins from turning into a hospital nurse. She thinks the costume becoming, and threatens to leave us for the wounded heroes. Cannot ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... husband's bent head, inclined her own again slightly to the other men, and let the portiere close behind her. It had been as dramatic an entrance and exit as the two visitors had ever seen upon the stage. It was as if Aram had given a signal, and the only person who could help him had come in the nick of time to plead for him. Aram, stupid as he appeared to be, had evidently felt the effect his wife's appearance had made upon his judges. He still kept his eyes fixed upon the floor, but he said, and this time with ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... where they grow;"—his little ragamuffin who indignantly denies that he has broken his promise not to gamble away his sixpences at pitch-and-toss because he has gambled them away at "neevie-neevie-nick-nack,"—and similar figures abound in his tales,—are all creations which make one laugh inwardly as we read. But he has a much higher humour still, that inimitable power of shading off ignorance into knowledge and simplicity into wisdom, which makes his picture of Jeanie Deans, for instance, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... Slick said, "It's a pity she don't go well in gear. The difficulty with those critters is to git them to start: arter that there is no trouble with them, if you don't check 'em too short. If you do they'll stop again, run back and kick like mad, and then Old Nick himself wouldn't start 'em. Pugwash, I guess, don't understand the natur' of the crittur; she'll never go kind in harness for him. When I see a child," said the Clockmaker, "I always feel safe with these women-folk; for I have always ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... ventur'd forward on the light, And, vow! Tam saw an unco sight! Warlocks and witches in a dance, Nae light cotillion new frae France, But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, Put life and mettle in their heels. As winnock-bunker, in the east, There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast; A touzie tyke, black, grim, and large, To gie them music was his charge; He screw'd the pipes, and gart them skirl, Till roof and rafters a' did dirl.— Coffins stood round like open presses, That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses; And, by some devilish ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... again uttering his threat, the driver, with a skillful twist, rolled a cigarette and, leaning forward just in the nick of time, he deliberately shared the half-match with his blustering companion. In that instant the blue eyes above the pipe looked straight into the black eyes above the cigarette, and a faint twinkle of approval met ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... how long the affair might have lasted but for the fact that a husband, or somebody, unexpectedly turned up—a husky little man with a cast in one eye, who looked uxorious to an alarming degree. He carried her off in the nick of time to save Mr. Eames from social ostracism, mental dotage, and financial ruin. Her mere appearance had made him the laughing-stock of the place; her appetite had led him into outlays altogether incompatible with his income, chiefly in the matter of pastries, macaroons, fondants, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... perplexity and anxiety came the news that Jed on his way home had been thrown from his horse, which was a young and vicious one, and had broken his leg. Jed was to act the part of Nick Bottom that evening, and he did it well! Now what in the world was she to do? ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... for his gun. Just then something, a breathtaking intuition—I'll never know what—made me turn my head. I saw the bartender deliberately aim a huge gun at Steele. If he had not been so slow, I would have been too late. I whirled and shot. Talk about nick of time! Blandy pulled trigger just as my bullet ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... a blockhead who will spoil everything. However, as we have nobody else, we must make use of him. But where shall we find him?—Ah! here he is in the very nick ...
— The Flying Doctor - (Le Medecin Volant) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... wined by said W——, and who threatened to lynch me. I backed up into a corner of the hotel piazza, laid my hand on an imaginary revolver, threatening to shoot, and was defending myself with a whirling chair, when the sheriff's posse rushed to my deliverance in the nick of time, and W—— was forced to hand over ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... my counter-spy, an honest little Irish boy, in the creditor's shop, that I had secured with a little douceur of usquebaugh; and he outwitted, as was natural, the English lying valet, and gave us notice just in the nick, and I got ready for their reception; and, Miss Nugent, I only wish you'd seen the excellent sport we had, letting them follow the scent they got; and when they were sure of their game, what did they find?—Ha! ha! ha!—dragged out, after a world of labour, a heavy box of—a load of ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... page, About twelve years of age, For so little a boy was remarkably sage; And, just in the nick, to their joy and amazement, Popp'd the gas-lighter's ladder close under the casement. But all would not do,—Though St. Megrin got through The window,—below stood De Guise and his crew. And though never man was more brave than St. Megrin, Yet fighting a score is extremely fatiguing; He thrust ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... merry: he will prove you his sin out of the bible, and then ask if you will not take that authority. He never sees the church but of purpose to sleep in it, or when some silly man preaches, with whom he means to make sport, and is most jocund in the church. One that nick-names clergymen with all the terms of reproach, as "rat, black-coat" and the like; which he will be sure to keep up, and never calls them by other: that sings psalms when he is drunk, and cries "God mercy" in mockery, for he must ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... pockets, they cast longing looks and wondered, as they had no stockings, where Santa Claus could put their presents when he had brought them. To all this show and preparation there was one exception: one place shrouded in total darkness—it was the shop of Nick Baba, the village shoemaker. That was for the time deserted; left to its dust, its collection of worn-out soles, its curtains of cobwebs, and its compound of bad, unwholesome odors. This darkness and neglect was about to end, however, and give ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... one of my marine beauties: for they knew I had a footing in both these—shall we say circles? As to themselves they were the bohemian circle, not very wide—half a dozen of us led by a sculptor whom we called Prax for short. My own nick-name ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... darting humid fires: all faithful tokens of the imminent approaches of the last gasp of joy. It came on at length: the baronet led the extasy, which she critically joined in, as she felt the melting symptoms from him, in the nick of which, gluing more ardently than ever his lips to hers, he shewed all the signs of that agony of bliss being strong upon him, in which he gave her the finishing titillation; inly thrilled with which, we saw plainly that she answered it down with all effusion of spirit and matter ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... some are made of the same materials as their mats; and others of the twisted fibres of cocoa-nuts. These are not only durable but beautiful; being generally composed of different colours, and studded with beads made of shells or bones. They have many little nick-nacks amongst them; which shews that they neither want taste to design, nor skill to execute, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... round involuntarily, lest any one should have heard; Mouse was the nick-name for the Prince. Like all who rule with irresponsible power, the Prince had spies everywhere. He was not a cruel man, nor a benevolent, neither clever nor foolish, neither strong nor weak; simply an ordinary, a very ordinary being, who chanced to sit upon a throne because his ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... where they sat, and a light patch had appeared at it. "He's staring! Lord, how he's staring! I say, can you see this?" Erik called out, holding up a gin-bottle. Then, as he drank: "Your health! Old Nick's health! He smells, the pig! Bah!" The others laughed, and the face at ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... had not run out on the instant and faced the mob with their pikes, and for a moment forced them to give back, the prisoners would have been rescued at the very door of the inn. As it was they were dragged in, and the gates were flung to and barred in the nick of time. Another moment, almost another second, and the mob had seized them. As it was, a hail of stones poured on the front of the inn, and amid the rising yells of the rabble there presently floated heavy and slow over the city the tolling of the ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... we've made you laugh. Oh, I bet we have! Ma an' me can stand it, but, mister, I don't want folks to laugh at my children, and there's other things I don't want to happen to 'em. Buddy's a wild hoss and he's got a streak of the Old Nick in him. And Allie ain't broke no better 'n him. I got a feelin' there may be trouble ahead, an'—sometimes I 'most wish we'd never had no oil ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... conscience, and I'll whisk the devil like a whirligig among you. Now let me ask you a question seriously. Did you ever see any body eat any hasty-pudding? What faces they make when it scalds their mouths! Phoo, phoo, phoo! What faces will you all make when old Nick nicks you? Now unto a bowl of punch I compare matrimony; there's the sweet part of it, which is the honey-moon: then there's the largest part of it, that's the most insipid, that comes after, and that's ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... certain quarter, they cannot be content with four, particularly the small holders; so this reduction of the Navy Five per Cents unsettled several thousand capitalists, and disposed them to search for an investment. A flattering one offered itself in the nick of time. Considerable attention had been drawn of late to the mineral wealth of South America, and one or two mining companies existed, but languished in the hands of professed speculators. The public now broke like a sudden flood into these hitherto sluggish channels of enterprise, and ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... all these accessions in the nick of time, two millions and a quarter of whites was a meagre outfit for stocking a virgin farm of fifteen hundred miles square, to say nothing of its future police and external defence against the wolves of the deep. It barely equaled the original population, between the two oceans, of nomadic ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... confinement whose moustaches were "remarkably long and human-like." Altogether this old monkey presented a ludicrous resemblance to one of the reigning monarchs of Europe, after whom he was universally nick-named. In certain races of man the hair on the head hardly ever becomes grey; thus Mr. D. Forbes has never, as he informs me, seen an instance with the Aymaras and ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... at once, one answered from behind, who had entered as he spoke, unobserved: Ha! Maharaj, then, as it seems, I am come in the very nick of time, to save thy city from ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... localised. Directly a person is localised it takes away their restfulness to one. One begins to see just all the places where they belong to somebody else, notice-boards struck up everywhere warning one to keep off the grass. And that's a nuisance. It raises Old Nick in one, and makes one long to commit all manner of wickedness which would never have ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... avoided his trail, and followed a course that diverged so far to the right that he first reached the village passed by Jack in his canoe. His arrival, as sometimes happens in this life, was in the very nick of time. From the red men, who showed a friendly disposition toward him, he learned that not only had a pale face youth passed down the stream in a canoe, but a young warrior aflame with passion ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... fight, all inexperienced, the battle of life. On Mr. Verdant Green it had such an overwhelming effect that when his scout, Filcher, entered the room he found his master looking very red about the eyes, and furiously wiping the large spectacles from which his nick-name, "Gig-lamps," ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... of Nicholas Crimins, though by most of his customers he was irreverently called by a diminutive of that name. The principal part of his business undoubtedly came from the side of the establishment with the short name; but it was known to the stable-fraternity that on occasion "Old Nick" would make an advance to a needy borrower who was "down on his luck" of at least fifteen per cent, of almost any article's value. Saddles, bridles, watches, pistols, scarf-pins, and all the indiscriminate belongings of a race-track population were to be found in his "store." ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... housing the women for the night. Despite his precautions, it was a wild night. There was continued tumult in the streets and, at one time, shortly before dawn, a gang of rioters actually broke into the palace and groped about in search of the queen's apartments. Just in the nick of time the hated Marie Antoinette hurried to safer quarters, although several of her personal bodyguard were ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... toys up to our housetops, and then bounded down the chimney to fill the stockings so hopefully hung by the fireplace. His friends called his Santa Claus, and those who were most intimate ventured to say "Old Nick." It was said that he originally came from Holland. Doubtless he did, but, if so, he certainly, like many other foreigners, changed his ways very much after landing upon our shores. In Holland, Saint Nicholas is a veritable saint and often appears ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... man by the name of Joe Nick, called Old Nick by a great many white people of me city. Joe was owned by Rueben Rogers, a lawyer and farmer of Howard County. The farm was situated about 2-1/2 miles on a road that is the extension of Main Street, the leading street of Ellicott City. They never ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... larger colonial empire if she had chosen to have it. History teaches us that in the development of European colonization there are some nations, like the Spaniards and Portuguese, that have come too early in the field. There are other nations, like England and Russia, that have come in the nick of time. And, finally, there are nations that have come too late. The German people have arrived too late in the race for colonial empire. They may regret it, but surely it would be monstrous to use the fact as a grievance against the people of this country. ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... active ther's praises, for th' idle ther's blame, If they'd harken to th' saand of its voice. An when flaggin a bit, how refreshin to feel As you pause an look raand on the throng, At the clank o' the tappet, the hum o' the wheel, Sing this plain unmistakable song:— Nick a ting, nock a ting; Wages keep pocketing; Workin for little is better nor laikin; Twist an twine, reel an wind; Keep a contented mind; Troubles are oft ov a body's ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... left, but it is far more rare to find one who, in his very first trial at arms, can keep his head clear, and be able to reply to a question, as Edgar says you did, in a calm and even voice. Now, tell me, who was this man to whose aid you arrived just at the nick of time?" ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... John, let's rather land; we will rid the world of that vermin, and inn there for nothing. Old Nick go with thee for me, quoth Panurge. This rash hairbrained devil of a friar fears nothing, but ventures and runs on like a mad devil as he is, and cares not a rush what becomes of others; as if everyone was a monk, like his friarship. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Batson Reeves. But we seem to have more or less of it shoved onto us as a side-line. You listen to me! Batson Reeves was the man that lied to the girl I was engaged to thirty years ago, and broke us up and kept us apart till I came back here and licked him, and saved her just in the nick of time. What do you think of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... those that I mentioned before which come unexpectedly. The captain of her was an old man, well known upon the island, who had traded here once in two or three years for more than thirty years past. He had a remarkably large head, and therefore was commonly known by a nick-name they had given him of Cabuco de Toro, or Bull's-head. He had not been here a week, before he came to the governor, and told him, with a most melancholy countenance, that he had not slept a wink since he came into the harbour, as the governor was pleased to allow three English prisoners ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... Europeans, and arm and equip them after American methods. This he did, and in six months he appeared at Shanghai at the head of three bodies of Chinese, splendidly drilled and under iron discipline. He arrived in the nick of time, and, routing a vastly superior force, saved the ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... be pointed out. The sons of first-rate families are in the two elevens, mingled with the yeomen and whoever can best do the business. Fallow field and Beckley, without regard to rank, have drawn upon their muscle and science. One of the bold men of Beckley at the wickets is Nick Frim, son of the gamekeeper at Beckley Court; the other is young Tom Copping, son of Squire Copping, of Dox Hall, in the parish of Beckley. Last year, you must know, Fallow field beat. That is why Nick Frim, a renowned out-hitter, good to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to see you! I have been dreaming about you the whole night, the whole night, and I was afraid you must be ill. Ah! if you only knew how sweet you are! You have come in the nick of time! You will be my salvation! You are the only person who can save me! There is to be a most original wedding here tomorrow," she went on, laughing, and tying her husband's cravat. "A young telegraph clerk at the station, called Tchikeldyeev, is going to be married. He is a handsome ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Brecknock, in which he unfortunately killed his kinsman, he was compelled to fly into England to avoid a threatened prosecution, and became the implacable enemy of Owain Glyndowr, whom he attempted to assassinate. Gam, it may be supposed, was his nick-name, as he called himself David Llewellyn; and there are good grounds for supposing that Shakspeare has caricatured him in Captain Fluellin. His descendants, however, conceiving that his prowess ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... Captain Cronin's right bower, and I thinks as how this guy is the joker of the deck trying to make a dirty deuce out of me. But, if you want to see the girl, she's right upstairs. His work was a little speedy on first acquaintance. Nick, keep your eyes on this machine, for we may get another call on this floor—This way gentlemen. Watch your step, for ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... his sack bed in the scullery because the prince and the princess, his august parents, would never know that he had died. A whit less gloomy were his imaginings of the said prince and princess rushing into the house, in the nick of time, just before life was extinct, and cutting him down. How they were to find him he did not know. This side-track exploration of possibilities was a symptom ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Clearly Nick was no simpleton; he was gaining time; he might not yet know which side I belonged to. I must end this matter. The night was cool. I had no blanket or overcoat. While walking I had been warm, but now ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... to sleep and dreams he's paid his fare. And when you squeak he gets the Roosevelt glare, And hoots, "I won't be dickied with - I'll shoot!" Then all the passengers get in and root. Loud cheers of, "Put him off!" and "Make him square!" Till Mr. Holdfast with an injured air Pungles his nick and ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... trembling hand contrasting with his friend's firmness. They had invented a "little language" for this sport: firing was called tiring; hitting, colping; missing, mancating, etc. It was in fact a kind of pigeon Italian. Shelley acquired two nick-names in the circle of his Pisan friends, both highly descriptive. He was Ariel and the Snake. The latter suited him because of his noiseless gliding movement, bright eyes, and ethereal diet. It was first ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... ripe for him; he must pass swiftly to each in turn, keeping his different lines of advance as nearly as possible level, fly from Armenia to Media, thence swoop straight upon Iberia, and then take wing for Italy, everywhere present at the nick of time. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... large preparations, however; longer to think of than to do; especially as Winthrop took upon himself the most of what was done. One or two nick-nackeries of preparation, in the shape of a new basket, a new book, and a new shawl, seemed delightful to Winnie; though she did not immediately see what she might want ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... describes him as a man of prodigious strength, and of such uncommon stature as to approach almost to a gigantic size. He wore a beard above a foot long, and his face as well as his body was covered with dark red hair, from which his nick-name originated. The description given by Sir Walter Scott does not entirely correspond with this portraiture. "His stature," says that writer, "was not of the tallest, but his person was uncommonly strong and compact." The great peculiarity of his frame was the great length ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... affords a distant and picturesque view of the great square tower of the cathedral. The Palace is really on a level with it, so great is the rise in the ground. This apartment, like all the rooms indeed, is richly perfumed by flowers; exquisite china and silver nick-nacks are everywhere, and the Bishop evidently does not believe in the untold troubles associated with the presence of peacocks' feathers. There are several fans made from the "unlucky" stalks. One table seems given up to the congregating ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... met you in the nick of time," said the old thane courteously. "From your dress I take it that you are one of the Frankish paladins we were on the way to see. But do they always talk good Wessex at the court of ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... come in the nick of time," he said. "We sail to-morrow in search of the Dutch. You shall all serve on board. There's work to be done, and I have not too many officers or men to do it. After we have thrashed the Dutch, I promise you, should my life be spared, to inflict due ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... we of the fighting and reconnaissance squadrons began to hear interesting yarns from the corps squadrons that specialised in contact patrols. An observer saved two battalions from extinction by calling up reinforcements in the nick of time. When two tanks slithered around the ruins of Courcelette two hours before the razed village was stormed, the men in the trenches would have known nothing of this unexpected advance-guard but for a contact machine. The pilot and observer of another bus ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave the luster of midday to objects below; When, what to my wondering eyes should appear But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick! More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted and called them by name: "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer! now, Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the porch, to the ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... Wesleyan day-school; but the bells that fetched them out were those on which he had sounded runaway peals in former days, and with his eyes shut he could have sworn to old Dymond's double-knock. The cart that rattled its load of empty cans up the street belonged to Nicholas Retallack ("Old Nick"), the milkman, and that was Retallack beside it, returning from his morning round. The Emigrant took the cigar from his mouth and blew a lazy cloud. But for Retallack he might never have seen South Africa or known Johannesburg. Retallack had caught him surreptitiously milking ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... going to dine before retiring," he muttered to himself. "The Old Nick take the luck! They have all the good times, while I have only ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... "drive th' cattle down from th' Cup Rim right away. We'll run those two bunches under Blue Pine an' Nick Bob out toward th' Black Coulee. Tell 'em t' keep close t' th' others. I trust th' Indians, but there ain't no Indian livin' can meet Courtrey's white renegades in courage an' wits. Then we'll start right ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... age, snapped in two. A tiny shined spot, hardly deep enough to be called a nick, in its tarnished, smudged surface was all the mark that the ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... ventured Osterberg, as the boat quickly widened the distance from the shore, "you just came in the nick of time, George; I believe they ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... the moment of impact Darrin rang the bridge signal to the engine-room for full speed astern. Nor was this command executed an instant too soon. Just in the nick of time Dave's gallant little ship drew back out of the fearful hole that she had torn ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... necessary to adjust sights, as the enemy were within "point-blank" range. Enfilading the enemy these guns were raking his flank with fire, whilst he was preparing to make a final rush down into the wadi. Had not this move been circumvented in the "nick of time," it is impossible to estimate the disastrous consequences which would have ensued. Almost at once, the deadly fire of the two machine-guns began to tell their tale, and odd Turks here and there suddenly remembered "a very urgent appointment". Within ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... cried Mr Underhill's voice behind, which all dreaded to hear. "What say you—'God save Queen Jane?' I say, God save Queen Mary! I serve not my Lord of Northumberland, for all the Papists nick [give me the nick-name] me his spy! I have not proclaimed King John—whereof, as all men do know, Queen Jane is but the feminine. I am a servant of the Queen's Majesty that reigneth by right, and that Queen is Mary. God defend the ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... skirmishers had swept the field, after Davies thought the struggle at an end, and was unprepared for the stealthy blow. Nothing but Brannan's vigilance, and the warning cry which caused the lieutenant to turn in the nick of time, had saved his life. Red Dog in irons lay in the log guard-house. Thunder Hawk, on parole,—for White had dared the wrath of the bureau and refused to let McPhail have him,—walked the garrison at will. Mr. Davies, still weak and languid, lay in the big hospital tent, really ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... insisted Mr. Swift, "and you did it in the nick of time. Now I wouldn't for a moment think of offering you a reward for saving my son's life. But I do feel mighty friendly toward you—not that I didn't before—but I do want to help you. Alec, I will go into this business with you. We'll take a chance! I'll invest ten thousand dollars, ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... I'd kill the deal. He knew better'n to try to nick me for three hundred bucks on his danged, worthless note. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... could he forget me? Jacob Tripple, your hand! A kiss, Little Scout! Why, your old father's 'most young again, and his good girls shall dine like other good girls, after all! How very thoughtful of Griffin to send it in the nick of time, too. Come, sit up again before it gets cold, and I wish we had something as hot to drink Griffin's health in. Why, I believe I could sing a song again if we had ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... believe, were going to murder the old man in the hammock, if we had not come in the nick of time. What have you ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... de use o' tellin' chillen 'bout a Santy er a Nick, An' de sto'ies dat a body allus tol'? When de harf is gray wid ashes an' you has n't got a stick Fu' to warm dem when dey little toes is col'? Wha 's de use o' preachin' 'ligion to a man dat's sta'ved to def, An' a-tellin' him de Mastah will pu'vide? Ef you want to tech ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... then the "old nick" was to pay, "Truth indeed is stranger than fiction," His prayers were so tedious and long, People slept, till the benediction. And then came another, on trial, Who actually preached in his gloves, His manner so awkward and queer, That we settled ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... was real silver, but it was of old-fashioned shape. Solid as the furniture was, and still after so many years of service worth money, yet it was chipped by kicks from iron-shod boots, which had also worn the dingy carpet bare. There was an absence of the nick-nacks that strew the rooms of people in 'Society.' There was not even a bell-handle to pull; if you wanted the maid of all work, you must open the door and call to her. These little things, trifles as they may be, repelled her. It was a bitter cup ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... the lenders, who, as members of religious communities, could not seek redress at law, and, moreover, those "lucky hits" which were made by penniless Europeans in former times by pecuniary help "just in the nick of time" were no longer possible, for every known channel of lucrative transaction was in time taken up ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... a meadow in which was a flock of fine fat geese, on which he smiled and said, "I come in the nick of time, you are sitting together quite beautifully, so that I can eat you up one after the other." The geese cackled with terror, sprang up, and began to wail and beg piteously for their lives. But the fox would listen to nothing, and said, "There is no mercy to be had! ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... bow. Now I was wonderin' if he had that ole quick-firin' gun away back when he was riddlin' things along in the Argonne—wouldn't it be a queer thing if true? He knew how to rattle that cantankerous bus to beat the band an' he did nick me in that silly o' ear o' mine that keeps on gettin' in the way every time I have a little spat with a ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... the book just previous to this one. It is called the "drop back to instep hang," and Joe did it in such a way that it was very thrilling. The act looked as though an accident had happened and that Joe was falling from the trapeze. But he caught himself in the nick ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... ends well," replied Colonel Zane cheerily. "But we must thank Providence that Wetzel and Jonathan came up in the nick of time." ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... who had run upon his knife, lay squirming at his feet; but the odds were too great. In another moment all would have been over with him had it not been for the Captain who chanced upon him in the nick of time. Snatching a club from one of his assailants and accompanying each blow with a volley of Spanish oaths, he rushed through the mob, scattering it in all directions. Whether it was the oaths ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... not wish, then, to talk with Harriet. The things I had with myself were too important. I skulked toward my barn, compelling myself to walk slowly until I reached the corner, where I broke into an eager run as though the old Nick himself were after me. Behind the barn I dropped down on the grass, panting with laughter, and not without some of the shame a man feels at being a boy. Close along the side of the barn, as I sat there in the cool of the shade, I could see ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... creature who was not a man. Lightfoot, wild with love and anxiety, had shot past Old Mok just as he laid down his bundle of arrows, and, when she saw her husband's peril, had leaped forward with arrow upon string and slain his latest assailant in the nick of time. Now, with arrow notched again and a face ablaze with murderous helpfulness, she hovered near, intent only upon sending a second shaft into the breast ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Why, I had my counter-spy, an honest little Irish boy, in the creditor's shop, that I had secured with a little douceur of usquebaugh; and he outwitted, as was natural, the English lying valet, and gave us notice, just in the nick, and I got ready for their reception; and, Miss Nugent, I only wish you'd seen the excellent sport we had, letting them follow the scent they got; and when they were sure of their game, what did they find?—Ha! ha! ha!—dragged ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... good as his master—as that master will tragically soon find out if he tries to make his help eat at second table! At any rate, Percy and potato-lipped Terry developed friction which ended up in every promise of a fight, only Dinky-Dunk arrived in the nick of time and took Terry off his harassed neighbor's hands. I told him he had rather the habit of catching people on the bounce. But I am reserving my opinion of Terry Dillon. We are a happy family here, and I want no trouble-makers in ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... I'm a customer of his." So they give me the letter, and of course I read the direction what was written on it afore I shoved it into the post. And then when I'd sold my barrowful, I was a-goin' 'ome with the chink in my pocket, and I'm blowed if some bloomin' thievin' beggar didn't nick the lot whilst I was just a-wettin' of my whistle, for callin' of oranges is dry work. Nicked the bloomin' lot 'e did—and me with not a farden to take 'ome to my brother ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... those storms; she still shuddered to think of them. Just opposite her room, above the roofs, the lightning conductor of the museum was always on fire. In the sitting-room she had her own window—a deep recess as big as a room itself—where her work-table and personal nick-nacks stood. It was there that her mother had taught her to read; it was there that, later on, she had fallen asleep while listening to her masters, so greatly did the fatigue of learning daze her. And now she made fun of her own ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... wonder, too, the tits that pull This rum concern along, so full, Should never back or bolt, or kick The load and driver to Old Nick. But, never fear, the breed, though British, Is now no longer game or skittish; Except sometimes about their corn, Tamer Houghnhums ne'er were born. ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... Bill could not muster sufficient support to become law, it revived tariff discussion on promising lines, and it brought nullification proceedings to a halt in the very nick of time. Shortly before February 1, 1833, the leading nullifiers came together in Charleston and entered into an extralegal agreement to postpone the enforcement of the nullification ordinance until the outcome of the ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... bars had but just escaped him, when who should he stumble across but an old chum, Nick Walcot, who, hearing that up to seven o'clock—when he was going to pop in upon Nina—Rowley had nothing to do, gave a mysterious wink of his eye saying, "All right, old fellow; I'm going somewhere, and I'll ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... is chiefly reserved for the Dedication to the Public, designed for the reader at leisure; though here Walpole is indicated broadly enough, first in the figure of an ass hung out on a signpost, and again as "Old Nick," for "who but the devil could act such a part." Here the attacks of the Ministerial papers are parried by ironic explanations that "The Register is a ministerial pamphlet calculated to infuse into the minds of the people a great opinion of their ministry," explanations ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... found a Belgian Army Medical officer engaged with a tired and flushed and dirty soldier. He was bandaging his left hand which had made a trail of blood splashes from the street to the counter. The right hand hung straight down from a nick in the dropped wrist where a tendon had been severed. He told them that they had grasped the situation. Seven ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... States. The late Professor Moses Coit Tyler, of the University of Cornell, gave it as his opinion, "That the side of the Loyalists, as they called themselves, of the Tories, as they were scornfully nick-named by their opponents, was even in argument not a weak one, and in motive and sentiment not a base one, and in devotion and self-sacrifice not an unheroic one." The same sentiments were even more emphatically expressed by Dr. Tyler on the occasion of the celebration ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... didn't tell you he wanted to marry you, did he, Aunt Clarissa, swear he would win you by hook or by crook, and vow that Old Nick himself would not prevent him from making you his own?" inquired Myra, beginning to ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... of this check, she proceeded: 'Well, to be sure, you looked and talked so like a real ghost; and then the cock crowed so natural. I wonder how you could teach him to crow so exact, in the very nick of time; but, I suppose, he's game — An't he game, Mr Gwynn?' 'Dunghill, madam.' — 'Well, dunghill, or not dunghill, he has got such a clear counter-tenor, that I wish I had such another at Brambleton-hall, to wake the maids of a morning. Do you know ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... tribes, and, thanks to the impetus given to the investigation of systems of relationship and allied questions by Lewis Morgan, was the pioneer of a series of efforts which have rescued for us at the nick of time a record of the social organisation of many tribes which under European influence are now rapidly losing or have already lost all traces of their primitive customs, if indeed they have not, like the tribes formerly resident at Adelaide and other centres of population, been absolutely ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... have been no longer "solid"; the Southerners saw that the balance of power which they unlawfully held in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College, based on the Negro population, would be wrested from them. So they nick-named the pending elections law the "Force Bill"—probably because it would force them to disgorge their ill-gotten political gains—and defeated it. While it was being discussed, the question was submitted ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... and straight, Left us at Aetna light; He left us to investigate What made the mountain bright; "I mean to ask Old Nick himself, (And here his eye he rolls) If I can't bring Newcastle pelf ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... their quarters like angry bees, each demanding of the other to be told what had happened. They were evidently heading with one accord for the promenade deck, doubtless en route for the boat deck; and Dick only reached the foot of the ladder in the nick of time to meet ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... He didn't mean it. If he hadn't died in the nick of time, that unhung murderous villain, Maurice Frere, would have come in for it. By the way," he added, with a change of tone, "do you ever hear anything ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... I'd screw up my courage to go through the bills just to see where I was. My dear, I was paralysed! I had the most appalling time! Well, Mr. Pilcher's sermon came just in the nick of time. I thought "what an idiot I must be to endure all this misery just for want of a ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... experience, so many people did not behave well; and as it happened, the thing could be put right. If it had been yesterday, how helpless he would have been in the emergency! But old Playford's death had come just in the nick of time. As for himself and his chance—his last chance—well! He looked across at that other door behind which Ted lay. Ted and he had stuck together through ill report and good, had helped each other out of many a scrape, had had ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... have belonged to them, it would have been worth my while to get hold of her. As, however, they have never appeared, I have been saved the trouble and expense she would have been to me, and now this store comes just in the nick of time when I want it most. The only difficulty will be to dispose of all these things without raising suspicion as to how I came by them. Still, at the worst, I can but tell the truth should questions be asked, and prove that I got them from a wreck. At all events, ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... woman, this portrait of a male struggle with sorrow was far more touching than any description of feminine and unresisted grief could be: and, when the doctor said he loved his patient, she stole her little hand into his in a way to melt Old Nick, if he is a male. Ladies, forgive the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... seeing him like that I thought I'd just go down and fetch myself a cup o' tea; but no sooner was I out o' the room than he must have slipped out and dressed hisself—shamming, you know—and if I hadn't come back in the nick o' time he'd ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... excited voices, I tossed my bag in at the window, leapt upon the footboard and turned the handle. Although the entrance to the tunnel was perilously near now, I managed to wrench the door open and to swing myself into the carriage. Then, by means of the strap, I reclosed the door in the nick of time, and sank, panting, upon the seat. I had a vague impression that the black chauffeur, having recovered himself, had raced after me to the uttermost point of the platform, but, my end achieved, ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... is one of those fascinating and lovely fays whom the ancients termed Naiads; and unless her pride is insulted or her jealousy awakened by an inconstant lover, her temper is generally mild and her actions beneficent. The Old Nick known in England is an equally genuine descendant of the northern sea-god, and possesses a larger portion of his powers and terrors The British sailor, who fears nothing else, confesses his terror for this terrible being, and believes him the author of almost all the various calamities ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... library in this fashion, a sense of spaciousness of joy in it, which one is almost always sure to miss in libraries—most libraries—by staying in them. The only way one can get any real good out of a modern library seems to be by going away in the nick of time. If one stays there is no help for it. One is soon standing before the card catalogue, sorting one's wits out in it, filing them away, and the sense of boundlessness both in one's self and everybody else—the thing a library is ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... bed and strode dazedly to his tent door. At the mine below him his fellaheen were as busy as so many dirty and gaudy bees. Even the lordly lazy Turkish soldiers were lending a hand at windlass and crane. Over the nick of the pass, leading toward Jerusalem, the last animal of a mule train was vanishing. Najib, who had as usual escorted the departing shipment of ore to the opening in the pass, was trotting back ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... at the same time that he is working very hard, and studying to improve himself in branches of knowledge in which he feels himself deficient. He is practising very temperate habits: for half a year past he has taken to drinking water only, avoiding all sweets, and eating no "nick-nacks." He has "sowens and milk,' (oatmeal flummery) every night for his supper. His friend having asked his opinion of politics, he says he really knows nothing about them; he had been so completely engrossed by his own business that he has not had time to read even ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... had conned it often enough from the other side; had looked right across it on the day when she stood beside me on the bastion and pointed out the smoke of Swanston Cottage. Only on this side the fish-tail (so to speak) had a nick in it; and through that nick ran the path to the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... recovering from the shock of surprise, ordered Edward from the house. He would sooner see his child dead than the wife of Nick Crown's son,—Nick Crown, a drunken rascal who had been known to beat his wife,—Nick Crown who was not even fit to lick the feet ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... say, that isn't the worst. The Old Nick himself is shot up, and hitting the high spots with fever. We're afraid ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... So some would-be wit Dubbed the fair dame. The title may not fit With accurate completeness; It soars some shades too high, this modish mot, As 'Mrs. LYON-HUNTER' sinks too low; Both nick-names fail in neatness. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... sandwiches of chick, And go off on a merry pick-a-nick; Sometimes we in hammocks idly swing, At other times ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... punctuality, promptness, immediateness. V. be prompt, be on time, be in time; arrive on time; be in the nick of time. Adj. timely, seasonable, in time, punctual, prompt. Adv. on time, punctually, at the deadline, precisely, exactly; right on time, to the minute; in time; in good time, in military time, in pudding time^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... now occupied by Marlborough House. I accompanied my mother, who wore, I remember, yellow brocade, and a wreath of red roses, without feathers. Round the throne were grouped—the Duke of MARLBOROUGH (who kept in the background because he had just been defeated at Fontenoy), Lord PALMERSTON, nick-named "Cupid" by Mistress NELL GWYNNE (a well-known Court beauty), Mr. GARRICK, and Signor GRIMALDI, two Actors of repute, and Cardinal WISEMAN, the Papal Nuncio. Her Majesty was most gracious to me, and introduced me to one of her predecessors, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... Robin Good-fellow, true man and honest man, do acknowledge to have received of Nick and Froth, the cheating tapster, the sum of twenty pounds, which money I have bestowed (to the tapster's content) among the poor of the parish, out of whose pockets this aforesaid tapster had picked the aforesaid sum, not after the manner of foisting, but after ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... How much did we have when we were married? Why, little girl, you just got through saying that the happiest days we ever spent were up there in the woods when money was so scarce that we knew the date on every dollar we owned—and every scratch and nick on them—and the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... to a conviction before he passed by me, apologizing almost humbly to those whom he displaced, and courteously to all; and this, and perhaps also the fact that the mass of those present belonged to my patron's party—who in the streets had the nick-name of "The Importants"—so that they were not quick to make room for him, rendered his progress so slow that, my name being called and everybody hustling me forward, I came face to face with the Queen almost at ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... bloodthirsty mob of lazzaroni, yelling at and insulting the "Jacobins," and kept back with no little difficulty by the royal troops from mutilating the corpses of women, bishops and princes. Monsignore Natale himself was hanged, and in his case the public executioner—"Masto Donato" as he was nick-named by the populace—gave vent to many pleasantries concerning the episcopal rank of his victim. Blindfolded and with the cord of infamy depending from his neck, the Bishop was led up to the fatal ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... gathered herself together and jumped to her feet. He put forth a hand as if to catch her, and she leaped back. Her skirts swept the lamp on the floor and overturned it with a splintering crash. Instinctively she sprang away—in the nick of time. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... for turning up unexpectedly in the nick of time," he added, with a peculiar smile, as he turned and walked off towards the huts, around which the men who had sided with Antonio were by that time assembling. Among them Lawrence, to his ineffable joy, found Manuela and Mariquita. ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... or other of the two longboats that lay below. Into the nearer of these his company swept him, and poured in at his heels until the gunwale was nearly level with the water. The rowers pushed off in the nick of time, and pulled their freight slowly across the sullen tide, while ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... whose elbow the Devil during prayer Sate familiarly, side by side, Declared that, if the Tempter were there, 35 His presence he would not abide. Ah! ah! thought Old Nick, that's a very stale trick, For without the Devil, O favourite of Evil, In your carriage ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... turn ever and anon for blessed sight of her where she flitted lightly to and fro, she bidding me take heed lest I cut myself. Cut myself I did forthwith, and she, beholding the blood, must come running to staunch it and it no more than a merest nick. And now, seeing her thus tender of me who had endured so many hurts and none to grieve or soothe, I came very ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... one should be able to mix spices so well "as one who has been where they grow;"—his little ragamuffin who indignantly denies that he has broken his promise not to gamble away his sixpences at pitch-and-toss because he has gambled them away at "neevie-neevie-nick-nack,"—and similar figures abound in his tales,—are all creations which make one laugh inwardly as we read. But he has a much higher humour still, that inimitable power of shading off ignorance into knowledge and ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... terms with himself and with everybody else. Generally he shoots fairly well, but there is a rollicking air about him, which disarms criticism, even when he shoots badly. He knows everybody, and talks of most people by nick-names. His sporting anecdotes may be counted upon for, at any rate, a succes d'estime. "I never laughed so much in my life," he begins, "as I did last Tuesday. There were four of us—Old SANDY, BUTCHER BILL, DICK WHORTLEBURY, and myself. SANDY was driving us back from Dillwater Hall—you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... would have been drowned, had it not been for Lilian Rosenberg, who, being quite by chance, in front of the house, perceived he was drunk, the moment he came on the stage. She flew to the wings, and, just in the nick of time, got two of the supers to haul him out of the tank. Of course, it was announced—with a pretty apology—by Mr. Hamar, that Mr. Curtis had been taken ill. Kelson immediately came on with ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
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