"Chink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Unity's movements narrowly through a chink in his fingers, though he kept his face closely hidden, and when she sat down beside him he was so surprised that he stopped crying. He wondered what she was going to say. She would scold him, of course, everyone scolded him now, and he set his ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... me, and had lent me a chisel many a time to make boats, so I stepped in and held the lantern watching him chink out the bits of Portland stone with a graver, and blinking the while when they came too near my eyes. The inscription stood complete, but he was putting the finishing touches to a little sea-piece carved at the top of the stone, which showed a schooner boarding a cutter. I thought it fine work ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... Ghost of Time, Where fearful ravage makes decay sublime, And destitution wears the face of power? Yet is the fabric deck'd with many a flower Of fragrance wild, and many-dappled hues, Gold streak'd with iron-brown and nodding blue, Making each ruinous chink a fairy bower. E'en such a thing methinks I fain would be, Should Heaven appoint me to a lengthen'd age; So old in look, that Young and Old may see The record of my closing pilgrimage: Yet, to the last, a rugged wrinkled thing To which young ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... cells of all these specimens. The large swollen cells are granular, and very frequently there is a granular mass in the lumen of the tubule. In some cases the cells are so much swollen that the lumen of the tubule is represented merely by a 'star-shaped' radiating chink. The nucleus is usually somewhat obscured, that this alcoholic cloudy swelling (similar to that met with as the result of the administration of certain poisons) is the first change observed in the parenchymatous cells of the ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... infant's cradle, and calling on Nizza to bring the torch, passed with his burden through the secret door. Directing her to close it after them, he took his way alone a narrow stone passage, until he came to a chink in the wall commanding a small chamber, and desired her to look through it. She obeyed, and beheld, stretched upon a couch, the ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in the window agreeably warm, and a chink in the curtains gave her a view of the Major's lighted window. Even as she looked, the illumination was extinguished. She had expected this, as he had been at his diaries late—quite naughtily late—the evening before, so this would be a night of infant slumber for ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... the bridal-chamber. There was no doubt of the boy's perfect willingness to go, nor was the girl at all alarmed at the name of marriage. When they were finally in bed, and the door shut, we seated ourselves outside the door of the bridal-chamber, and Quartilla applied a curious eye to a chink, purposely made, watching their childish dalliance with lascivious attention. She then drew me gently over to her side that I might share the spectacle with her, and when we both attempted to peep our faces were pressed against each other; whenever ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... at night but glasses' clink, boys, Fall of greasy cards and counters' chink, boys; If he won't "declare," Nordahl he will swear Bentzen is stupid as an owl, boys. Bentzen cool, boys, Is not a fool, boys; "You're another!" ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... produced a fat bag and flung it on the ground, where it fell with a mellow chink. "There is my sponsor," he made answer, grinning in the very best of humours, savouring to the full his enemy's rage and discomfiture, and savouring it at no cost to himself. "Shall I count out one thousand and one ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... meant: A public or a private robber, A statesman, or a South-Sea jobber; A prelate who no God believes; A parliament, or den of thieves; A pick-purse at the bar or bench; A duchess, or a suburb wench: Or oft, when epithets you link In gaping lines to fill a chink; Like stepping-stones to save a stride, In streets where kennels are too wide; Or like a heel-piece, to support A cripple with one foot too short; Or like a bridge, that joins a marish To moorland of a different parish; So have I seen ill-coupled hounds Drag different ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... hour afterward she heard the echo of laughter and voices in the front veranda—sometimes the chink of glasses. Later, Mrs. van Cannan sang and played waltz-music to them in the drawing-room. At last the men departed, one by one. Mrs. van Cannan was heard calling sharply for her night lemonade and someone to unlace her frock. ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... saw gun barrels glittering in the moonlight. As the speakers seemed to be rapidly approaching me, I kept close in the shadow of the houses till I reached my own door, which I laid softly to behind me, leaving myself a chink by which I could peep out and watch the movements of the group which was drawing near. Suddenly I felt something touch my hand; it was a great Corsican dog, which was turned loose at night, and was so fierce that it was a great protection to our house. I felt glad to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... passage! so I was; but, father, They say that you are wise in winged things, And know the ways of Nature. Bar the bird From following the fled summer—a chink—he's out, Gone! And there stole into the city a breath Full of the meadows, and it minded me Of the sweet woods of Clifford, and the walks Where I could move at pleasure, and I thought Lo! I must out ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... land of chasm and rent, a land Of rugged blackness on either hand: If water trickled, its track was tanned With an edge of rust to the chink; If one stamped on stone or on ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... was ended there remained nothing for David to do but chink and daub the walls with mud, cover the rude rafters of the roof with his shakes, build the chimneys out of short sticks, cob-house fashion, and cement them on the inside with clay to protect them from ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... the sunset a color on lily leaves throws, The words and the glances of Roger Montrose O'er the listener's cheeks sent a pink tinted wave; While Maurice seemed disturbed, and his sister grew grave. The false chink of flattery's coin smites the ear With an unpleasant ring when the heart is sincere. Yet the man whose mind pockets are filled with this ore, Though empty his brain cells, is never a bore To the ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of light through a chink in the door: it grew more strong, till at length it came in the room in a full blaze. Ruth gave a quick glance, and saw that it was not Mrs. ...
— The Book of One Syllable • Esther Bakewell
... melodious thunder, the deacons passed up and down the aisles, and along the galleries, presenting their mahogany boxes, in which each person deposited whatever sum he deemed it safe to lend to the Lord, in aid of human wretchedness. Charity became audible,—chink, chink, chink,—as it fell, drop by drop, into the common receptacle. There was a hum,—a stir,—the subdued bustle of people putting their hands into their pockets; while, ever and anon, a vagrant coin fell upon the floor, and rolled away, with long ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Through a chink between the door halves he watched breathlessly while Switzer, who moved with a pronounced limp and rubbed his knees as he limped, hobbled halfway up the block, slowed down, halted, glared about him for sight or sign of the vanished fugitive, and then misled by a false trail departed, padding ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... a little pained, not noticing the noisy opening and shutting of several ill-fitting drawers in the room. Yet Milly always put away his things for him and should have known where to find them. The door opened a chink and the shoes and stockings came flying through on to the passage floor. He had a natural impulse to use his masculine strength, to push the door open before she could lock it again, but fortunately he restrained it. He went ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... crowning the Kentucky ascents, or nestled on their wooded shoulders, are many beautiful villas, evidently the homes of the ultra-wealthy. Close at hand we have the pleasant chink-chink of caulking hammers, for barges are built and repaired in this snug harbor. Now and then a river tug comes, with noisy bluster of smoke and steam, and amid much tightening and slackening of rope, and wild profanity, takes captive a laden barge,—as ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... of light, Caleb Balderstone again resorted to the door of Ravenswood's sleeping apartment, through a chink of which he observed him engaged in measuring the length of two or three swords which lay in a closet adjoining to the apartment. He muttered to himself, as he selected one of these weapons: "It is shorter: let him have this advantage, as ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... and the ensuing silence was broken by the pleasant chink of money as John Ringo's left hand raked the winnings into his pocket. There was no pursuit as he rode away down Galeyville's main street; but he spurred his pony hard, for self-righteousness was boiling within him and he had ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... skipper; what he does is all right and above board, and a better man nor officer never stepped a deck, but, mark my words, that 'ere 'Chatham's' people now will be filling their pockets with gold dollars, while we shan't have a penny piece to chink in ours; as for our ship, I knows what I knows, and ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... out working on the land, I can safely give a little more time to my household. But meals are still more or less a scramble. Peter has ventured the opinion that he might get a Chinaman for me, if he could have a week off to root out the right sort of Chink. But I prefer that Peter sticks to his tractor, much as I need help in ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the old lady was, versed in the habits of the people, and long trained to suspect a certain air of dulness, by which, when asking the explanation of a point, they watch, with a native casuistry, to see what flaw or chink may open an equivocal meaning or intention, she was thoroughly convinced by the simple and unreasoning concurrence this humble man gave to every proviso, and the hearty assurance he always gave 'that her honour knew what was best. God reward ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... the way in which he held his sword. His golden epaulets were a miracle of splendor, but it was the plume, the great white plume, that held the boy enthralled. A ray of light from the morning sun, reflected by the window of the stable, found its way through a chink in the blind and fell just upon this plume. The effect was electric. Sam was fascinated, and he continued to hold the lead soldier so that the dazzling light should fall on it, gazing upon ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... sir! I ain't of those that turn. You may call me hard names, if you like, but you know very well that I ain't a croaker." Ricardo changed his tone. "If I said nothing for a while, it was because I was meditating over the Chink, sir." ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... said Frank. "Oh, by the way—" He moved a little closer to this appalling pair, and Jack stood off, to hear the sound of a sentence or two, and then the chink of money. ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... his opportunity till Irene was handing the architect his first cup of tea. A chink of sunshine through the lace of the blinds warmed her cheek, shone in the gold of her hair, and in her soft eyes. Possibly the same gleam deepened Bosinney's colour, gave the rather ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... perfection. The standard's strong point is contempt of the Chinese, who are hosts in Pell Street. Maggie Lynch came to be known as homeless, without a man, though with the prospects of motherhood approaching, yet she "had never lived with a Chink." To Pell Street that was heroic. It would have forgiven all the rest, had there been anything to forgive. But there was not. Whatever else may be, cant is not among the vices ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... the town in which the maniac declared the knife to have been purchased, brought back word that a cutler in the place remembered perfectly to have sold such a knife to a seafaring man, and identified the instrument when it was shown to him. From the chink of a door ajar, in the wall opposite my sash-window, a maid-servant, watching for her sweetheart (a journeyman carpenter, who habitually passed that way on going home to dine), had, though unobserved by the murderer, seen ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... infano. Childhood infaneco. Childish infana. Childishness infanajxo. Chill malvarmigi. Chill malvarmo. Chime sonorilado. Chimera hximero. Chimney kamentubo. Chimney-sweep kamentubisto. Chin mentono. China Hxinujo, Hxinlando. China porcelano. Chinese (man) Hxino. Chink tinti. Chink (crack) fendajxo. Chirp pepi. Chisel cxizi. Chisel cxizilo. Chivalrous kavalira. Chivalry kavalireco. Chocolate cxokolado. Choice elekto. Choir hxoro. Choke sufoki. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Drummond has feared that however effective might be these defences against the open attack of white men, they are ill adapted to protect the defenders against the fire of Indians who can climb like squirrels or crawl or squirm through any chink or crevice like ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... time Athos struck a violent blow upon the plaster, which split, presenting a chink for the point of the lever. Athos introduced the bar into this crack, and soon large pieces of plaster yielded, rising up like rounded slabs. Then the Comte de la Fere seized the stones and threw them away with a force that hands so delicate as his might not have been supposed capable ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... defiant air, as if it had desperately and successfully barricaded itself against the approach of morning; yet if one were standing in the room that leads from the bedchamber on the ground floor—the room with the latticed window—one would see a ray of light thrust through a chink of the shutters, and pointing like a human finger at an object ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... only Guy had not failed her, she knew that no power on earth would have sufficed to move her, no clamour of battle could ever have made her quail. That had been the chink in her armour, and through that she had been pierced again and again, till she ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... taken off your hat, they've all vanished. How can I ever get rid of them?" The owner of the hat returned, "I will soon rid you of these little guests, if you will ask the invited guests to step out for a short time, closing the doors and windows carefully, and taking care that no chink or crack in the wall remains unstopped." Although the founder of the feast did not quite understand what he meant, he consented to the stranger's offer, and asked him to get rid of the ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... was I studied people instead of cases. Richardson held that all men are equal before the detective, and must be regarded only as queer shaped pieces to be fitted together so as to make out a case. Richardson would have gone as coolly about easing the salt of the earth into the chink labeled "murder" or "embezzlement," as though neither had been human. With me the personal equation always looms big, and of course he was quite right in saying that it's likely to get ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... whole prospect is in this lovely state, when we come upon the platform on the mountain-top—the region of fire—an exhausted crater formed of great masses of gigantic cinders, like blocks of stone from some tremendous waterfall, burned up; from every chink and crevice of which, hot, sulfurous smoke is pouring out; while, from another conical-shaped hill, the present crater, rising abruptly from this platform at the end, great sheets of fire are streaming forth; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... intangible, unseen, the dark and damp of the earth are translated into warmth and colour and shade. Ay, these dear little children, unfolding their soft green scrolls and reading aloud such odes on Modesty and Beauty, are as inspiring as the star-crowned night. And every chink in my terrace walls seems to breathe a message of sweetness and light ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... spiders as interesting to hear as fairy tales," said Wee. "This is Mrs. Epeira Diadema; and she is a respectable, industrious little neighbor. She spreads her tent, but sits under a leaf near by, waiting for her breakfast. She wraps her eggs in a soft silken bag, and hides them in some safe chink, where they lie till spring. The eggs are prettily carved and ornamented, and so hard that the baby spiders have to force their way out by biting the shell open and poking their little heads through. The mother dies as soon as her eggs are safely placed, and the spiderlings have ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... one of the sashes of the corsairs, tore it into strips, and bandaged the wound; then with another he made a sling for the arm. As he took off the sashes a leather bag dropped from each, and there was a chink of metal. He placed them in his girdle, saying, "I shall have time to count them when ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... July, When you got a little high, You went back to Wilson's counter when you thought he wasn't nigh? How he heard some specie chink, And was on you in a wink, And you promised if he'd hush it that you never ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... down they went. It was very dark, but now and then a little chink beside the chimney let in a ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... house, as the stair clock sounded the smallest hour of the night, Miranda, seeing the chink under Anna's door to be still luminous, stole to the spot, gently rapped, and winning no response warily ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... welcoming tenderness, its look of friendship and of wise counsel, wind themselves around you; and the beauty of its grassy shades, of its leafy brakes and color-changing hills, delights and wins you. Its babbling, laughing streams fill the whole air with life and melody; every chink of the old dry walls is choked with maiden-hair; from the damp rocks amid the dripping streams hang strange, fantastic mosses,—orange, grey and russet,—and with them grow wild flowers, white and purple, and emerald ferns with brilliant deep-notched leaves that glisten in the wet; ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... with the mouth of the shell upward, in a chink of a rock. The animal protruded its foot to the utmost extent, and, attaching it above, tried to pull the shell vertically in a straight line. Then it stretched its body to the right side, pulled, and failed to move the shell. ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... high in the eating league, do you?" said the man. "Or maybe you ain't crazy about the Chink brand ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... resolved I would give my Lord Sandwich notice of. So I on board my Lord Bruncker; and there he and Sir Edmund Pooly carried me down into the hold of the India shipp, and there did show me the greatest wealth lie in confusion that a man can see in the world. Pepper scattered through every chink, you trod upon it; and in cloves and nutmegs, I walked above the knees; whole rooms full. And silk in bales, and boxes of copper-plate, one of which I saw opened. Having seen this, which was as noble a sight as ever I saw in my life, I ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... to replace them. And though Philip Sheldon still devoted himself to the sublime art of money-making, and still took delight in successful time-bargains and all the scientific combinations of the money-market, the salt of life had lost something of its savour, and the chink of gold had lost somewhat ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... was shining through the chink by the curtain when Mrs. Macgregor awoke. Gently she slipped out of the bed and before dressing lighted the kitchen fire, put on the kettle for the tea and the pot for the porridge. Then she dressed herself and stepping about ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... speaking: crunch (28) where the frosts crunch the grass: whereas they only make it crunchable. maligns (54) used as a neuter verb without precedent, chinked (58) of light passing through a chink: and note the homophone chink, used of sound. And ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... better than the Chink himself realizes the commercial value of the taboo, the bizarre and the unclean. Nightly the rubber-neck car swinging gayly with lanterns stops before the imitation joss house, the spurious opium joint and tortuous passage to the fake fan-tan and ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... shutters while the Princess, his daughter, went to and from the bath. Aladdin was seized by a desire to see her face, which was very difficult, as she always went veiled. He hid himself behind the door of the bath, and peeped through a chink. The Princess lifted her veil as she went in, and looked so beautiful that Aladdin fell in love with her at first sight. He went home so changed that his mother was frightened. He told her he loved the Princess ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... beast (fox or skunk) rushed in at the open end of the cabin, and fled through the window, almost brushing my face, and on another, the head and three or four inches of the body of a snake were protruded through a chink of the floor close to me, to my extreme disgust. My mirror is the polished inside of my watchcase. At sunrise Mrs. Chalmers comes in—if coming into a nearly open shed can be called IN—and makes a fire, because she thinks me too stupid to do it, and mine is the family room; and by seven ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... I ham, Mrs. Thomas, I'm a man of haction. I strike wen the hiron's 'ot. By good luck, I went back to Peskiwanchow last night, though it is a beastly 'ole, and got letters hat the post hoffice this mornin'. My hagent, at Toronto says, Mrs. Do Please-us is pretty badly hout for want of chink, hand that the girl's ready to jump hat hany reasonable hoffer. Now, hall I say his, give a man a chance. If she's the stunner they say she his, I'll marry her hinside of a week and make a lady of 'er, and hallow the hold 'ooman a pound a week, yes, I'll ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the base, and a few steps cut out from one projecting rock to another, up to a narrow shelf, whence the cascade was to be looked down on. The more adventurous spirits went on to a rock overhanging the fall, and with a curious chink or cranny, forming a window with a seat, and called King O'Toole's chair. Each girl perched herself there, and was complimented on her strong head and active limbs, and all their powers were needed in the long breathless pull up craggy ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... limbs bow'd as with a heavy weight And all the senses weaken'd in all save that Which, long ago, they had glean'd and garner'd up Into the granaries of memory— The clear brow, bulwark of the precious brain, Now seam'd and chink'd with years—and all the while The light soul twines and mingles with the growths Of vigorous early days, attracted, won, Married, made one with, molten into all The beautiful in Past of act or place. Even as the all-enduring camel, driven Far from the diamond ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... trachea, ether-laden air from an insufflation apparatus is piped down to the lungs continuously, and the strong return-flow prevents blood and secretions from entering the lower air-passages. The catheter should be of a size, relative to that of the glottic chink, to permit a free return-flow. A number 24 French is readily accommodated by the adult larynx and lies well out of the way along the posterior wall of the larynx. Because of the little room occupied by the insufflation catheter this method affords ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... he started in teaching me the business, and he taught me the way he learned it himself—in the cannery and among fishermen. If I do say it, I know the salmon business from gill net and purse seine to the Iron Chink and bank advances on the season's pack. But Abbott, senior, it seems, wasn't a profiteer. He took the war to heart. His patriotism didn't consist of buying war bonds in fifty-thousand dollar lots and calling it square. He got in wrong by trying to keep the price of fresh fish down locally, ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of a bullet in the ceiling. Aroused to a sense of his danger, he closed the windows. Being about to put his Montagnana into its case, his astonishment may be imagined when he discovered a hole through the upper side, and a corresponding chink in the belly, both as sharply cut as though a centre-bit had done the work. His Violin bore witness to his miraculous escape; the bullet lodged in the ceiling had taken his Montagnana in its course. The instrument referred to in this anecdote ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... to you how it all developed, but my heart had melted somehow—thawed like a lump of ice. I saw that there was no specific ill-will to me in the world. I saw that everything was there, if I only chose to take it. That was my second awakening—a glimmer of light through a chink—and suddenly, it was day! I had been growling over bones and straw in a filthy kennel, and I was not really tied up at all. Life was running past me, a crystal river. I was dying of thirst: and all because it was not given me in a clean glass ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... yellow ray of light, evidently issuing from some dwelling. He made his way towards it, and soon discerned a small cottage, apparently a peasant's home. The light he had seen still streamed from it, through a chink in the closed storm-doors. He hastened forward, and knocked ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... executing a short dance creep back into them again; a little shiny white weasel is visible for a moment, lifting its clever little head and forepaws in the air, peering and sniffing; and the single sunbeam that enters through some hidden chink is so perfectly like a gold thread that one would like to wind it ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... and crept very slowly, and with infinite precautions against noise, towards the folding doors. He stood listening with his ear near the yellow chink. ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... wood, it is called a wedge, and is almost equally useful with the lever. The whole force of it consists in its being gradually narrower and narrower, till at last it ends in a thin edge, capable of penetrating the smallest chink. By this we are enabled to overthrow the largest oaks, to cleave their roots, almost as hard as iron itself, and even to split the solid rocks." "All this," said Tommy, "is wonderful indeed; and I need not ask the use of them, because I see it plainly ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... sentence, as I was ready to go, he gravely escorted me to the door and bowed me out. I dropped my ear to the keyhole and heard the chink of the guineas. William clearly had a very pretty appreciation of the best means of keeping himself agoing. A suaver, defter rascal I ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... from the cloak, and slid down from her seat in the saddle. Putting her face close to the door she whistled a low note. The candle was re-lit, many bolts were withdrawn; finally the door opened a little way, and an old man put his head through the chink, staring ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... have the grit in them, yes. (Still seeing with a strange clearness through the chink the hammer has made.) And they are not the dismal chappies; they are the ones with the thin bright faces. (He sits lugubriously by his wife and is sorry for the first time that she has not married ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... at that moment, the old man, as if there were a secret magnetism between himself and the guineas, woke from his trance. His blindness saved him the pain that might have been fatal, of seeing the unhallowed profanation; but he heard the chink of the metal. The very sound restored his strength. But the infirm are always cunning—he breathed not a suspicion. "Mrs. Boxer," said he, faintly, "I think I could take some broth." Mrs. Boxer rose in great dismay, gently re-closed the bureau, and ran ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that they would rather think of some other expedient. Gifford found a brewer, who supplied the family with ale; and bribed him to convey letters to the captive queen. The letters, by Paulet's connivance, were thrust through a chink in the wall; and answers were returned by the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... shallows, it went whispering and rippling over a pebbly bottom on its way to the humming thunder of the mill. And in a fir-tree not far off a nightingale was singing, now a string of pearls dropping bead by bead from his throat, now rich turns and grace-notes, and now again a reiterated metallic chink which melted into ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... so blind but I can see through a wall when there's a chink in it. An' when I gets my 'Daily' down from Lunnun, an' sees harf a page given up to a kind o' poster about Pills, an' another harf a page praisin' up somethin' about Tonics, I often sez to myself: 'Look 'ere, Twitt! What are ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... for his release found him "a prisoner in the common gaol for our county of Bedford." But though far different from the pictures which writers, desirous of exhibiting the sufferings of the Puritan confessor in the most telling form, have drawn—if not "a damp and dreary cell" into which "a narrow chink admits a few scanty rays of light to render visible the prisoner, pale and emaciated, seated on the humid earth, pursuing his daily task to earn the morsel which prolongs his existence and his confinement ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... lest the soul of a babe should escape and be lost as soon as it is born, the Alfoors of Celebes, when a birth is about to take place, are careful to close every opening in the house, even the keyhole; and they stop up every chink and cranny in the walls. Also they tie up the mouths of all animals inside and outside the house, for fear one of them might swallow the child's soul. For a similar reason all persons present in the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... for a Neat-herd, and perhaps for none of the best on the Admetus establishment, this new Norse Thor had to put up with what was going; to gauge ale, and be thankful; pouring his celestial sunlight through Scottish Song-writing,—the narrowest chink ever offered to a Thunder-god before! And the meagre Pitt, and his Dundasses and red-tape Phantasms (growing very ghastly now to think of), did not in the least know or understand, the impious, god-forgetting mortals, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink while thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field-that, of course, they are many ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... Margery," went on Latimer. "Stamps found them in a chink in the logs. She had hidden them there that she might take them out and sob over and kiss them. I used to hear her in the middle ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and sauntered in through the stone passage into the west parlour. In a moment I had risen and followed him, and, walking carefully on the carpet which covered it, then, reached the door of the sitting-room without being heard, and through the chink of the half-open door I saw my brother stoop down and whisper something confidentially in ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... Chink?" he demanded of Kwaque. "He no like 'm you fella boy stop 'm along same fella side along him. What for? My word! What name? That fella Chink make 'm me cross along ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... think, it would be a reason for writing to her! His heart gave a bound in his bosom. Who could tell but she might please to send him the fan-wind of a letter now and then, keeping the door, just a chink of it, open between them, that the voice of her slave might reach her on the throne of her loveliness! He walked the rest of the way with a gladder heart; he was no longer without a future; there was something to do, and something to ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... the fact is, when I had had my suspicions aroused, I crept out into the yard, and found that I could see into the lounge through the chink between the blind and the window. They were all seated round the table, the head of which had been taken by the gentleman who had arrived from London with the lady. He seemed to be chairman, and he talked in a low, deliberate, and very earnest tone, being listened to with greatest ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... mind sound, my reputation clear. These wishes they can speak, and we can hear. Thus far their wants are audibly exprest; Then sinks the voice, and muttering groans the rest: 'Hear, hear at length, good Hercules, my vow! O chink some pot of gold beneath my plough! Could I, O could I, to my ravish'd eyes, See my rich uncle's pompous funeral rise; Or could I once my ward's cold corpse attend, Then all were ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... had perished in a street. They had remained within the shelter of their homes until the thick black mud began to creep through every cranny and chink. Driven from their retreat they began to flee when it was too late. The streets were already buried deep in the loose pumice stones which had been falling for many hours in unremitting showers, and which reached almost to the windows of the first floor. These victims of the eruption were not ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... uses besides the conveyance of clay and pollen. The female of the handsome golden and black Euglossa Surinamensis has this palette of very large size. This species builds its solitary nest also in crevices of walls or trees— but it closes up the chink with fragments of dried leaves and sticks cemented together, instead of clay. It visits the caju trees, and gathers with its hind legs a small quantity of the gum which exudes from their trunks. To this it adds the other materials required from the neighbouring bushes, and when laden flies ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... margin of the circle, they formed a dome-shaped structure like a bee-hive, which was six feet high inside, and remarkably solid. The slabs were cemented together with loose snow, and every accidental chink or crevice filled up with the same material. The natives sometimes insert a block of clear ice in the roof for a window, but this was dispensed with on the present occasion—first, because there was no light to let in; and, secondly, because if there had ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the walls till they came to a deep and gloomy cell, where the golden armour of the Wanderer shone like a lamp at eve. The cell was built against the city wall, and scarcely a thread of light came into the chink between roof and wall. All about the chamber were baths fashioned of bronze, and in the baths lay dusky shapes of dark-skinned men of Egypt. There they lay, and in the faint light their limbs were being anointed by some sad-faced attendants, as folk were anointed by merry girls ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... coyotes, though the wagon might have baffled the buzzards. The two set to work digging a shallow trench down to bedrock, rolling up loose boulders for a cairn. The whirring chorus of the cicadas drummed an elfin requiem. Now and then there came the chink of bit, or hoof on rock, from the waiting horses in the broken road. The sun was low, horizontal rays piercing the flood of violet haze in the canyon. Across the gorge the cliff, above the wash of shadow, glowed saffron; a light wind wailed down ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... marbles have their whiles To last, but not their ever; virtue's hand It is which builds 'gainst fate to stand. Such is thy house, whose firm foundation's trust Is more in thee than in her dust Or depth; these last may yield and yearly shrink When what is strongly built, no chink Or yawning rupture can the same devour, But fix'd it stands, by her own power And well-laid bottom, on the iron and rock Which tries and counter-stands the shock And ram of time, and by vexation grows The stronger; virtue dies when foes Are wanting to her exercise, but great And large ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... spirit brooding over mountain and sky was unspeakably sad, and with a sharp pain at his heart Clayton turned from it and hurried on. Mountain, sky, and valley were soon lost in the night. When he reached the cabin rays of bright light were flashing from chink and crevice into the darkness, and from the kitchen came the sounds of busy preparation. Already many guests had arrived. A group of men who stood lazily talking in the porch became silent as he approached, but, recognizing none of them, he entered the cabin. A dozen women were seated about the ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... writers. They were something amazingly new to him, and Marcella used to watch him sitting in the fireless book-room with a candle flickering while the wind soughed round the house and in through every chink in the worn walls. His fine grey eyes were deep sunken; when he looked up suddenly there was sometimes a little light of madness in them that made her recoil instinctively; his thick hair was greyish, whitening over the temples; ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... a Historical Figure on these conditions; Historical Figure's very self, in his work-day attitude; eating his victuals; writing, receiving letters, talking to his fellow-creatures; unaware that Posterity, miraculously through some chink of the Travelling Tutor's producing, has got its ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... had dealt death to his hopes and told him that the love he lived for no longer lived for him. For Eve had been very emphatic in enforcing this resolve, and had so strongly worded her decision that, try as he would, Reuben could find no chink by which a ray of hope might gain admittance: all was dark with the gloom of despair, and this notwithstanding that Adam had not been mentioned, and Reuben had no more certain knowledge of a rival to guide him than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... a fellow what knows how to get on the wrong side of the law; and seeing how I've studied Mr. Justice a little bit better than he's studied his books, I knows just what can be done with him when a feller's got chink in his pocket. You can't buy 'em, sir, they're so modest; but you can coax 'em at a mighty cheaper rate-you can do that!" "And ye can make him feel as if law and his business warn't two and two," rejoined Anthony Romescos, a lean, wiry man, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... ration of meat or coffee, then stalked off in an embarrassed, self-conscious sort of way, transferring the contents of the kepi to his trousers' pockets so as not to display his wealth to the world at large. And not a word was spoken; there was not a sound to be heard but the crystalline chink and rattle of the coin as it was received by those poor devils, dumfounded to see the responsibility of such riches thrust on them when there was not a place in the city where they could purchase a loaf of bread or ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... and forthwith entered the chamber. It was empty of its occupant; but they were by no means satisfied with that, and made great search everywhere, tossing everything about in the greatest confusion, ransacking his chest and flinging his clothes about hither and thither, examining every chink and cranny, and well-nigh pulling the bed to pieces in hopes of making some discovery. And here they did find somewhat, for out tumbled a small bundle that had been hid in the bedclothes. There was the book which I had lent him—Lambert on St. Luke—and a gown and hood, which might have ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... never-to-be- effaced impression of the miseries of modern coercive marriage was produced upon me. The impression was not merely powerful, but it waked, like a cry of distress, both my thinking powers and my energy. As through a chink in the smooth surface of society, I looked down into the depths of horror. Behind the unhappiness of one, I suspected that of a hundred thousand, knew that of a hundred thousand. And I felt myself vehemently called upon, not ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... too, seemingly not of earth, glimmered at the windows, while groans—such was the dark fancy of the author—issued from a windy tower. But there was one supreme chapter in which the hero was locked in a haunted room and saw a candle at a chink of the wall. It belonged to the villain, who nightly played there a ghostly antic to frighten honest ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... a sort of mortar is formed. Large wisps of hay are filled with this thick substance, and fashioned with the hands into what are technically called "clay cats," and these are filled in among the frame-work of the chimney until not a chink is left. The whole is then covered with a smooth coating of the wet clay, which ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... account of their constant use, your hands are brought in contact with dusty or dirty substances in your work and in your play; and it is very easy for some of this dirt, and such germs as it may contain, to lodge in the little chink under the free edge of the nail, between it and the rounded end of the finger. It is of great importance that this nail chink should be kept clean, not only because it looks both ugly and untidy to have the ends of your fingers "in mourning," with black bands across them, but also because the germs ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... as he could be conveyed. The chief creditor was destined to be Michael's chief misery. He was an obdurate, unyielding man, and, after days of negotiation, would finally listen to nothing but the chink of the gold that was due to him. And how much that was, Michael dared not trust himself to think. Now, what was to be done? To draw again upon the bank—to become himself, to his partners, an example of recklessness and extravagance, was out of the question. He had but one course before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... which he is the founder, is Mr. Abbot Lawrence, of Boston, a rich manufacturer, money-making and munificent, and more fortunate in building cities and endowing schools, than in foretelling political events. He is the modern Amphion, to the sound of whose music, the pleasant chink of dollars gathered in many a goodly dividend, all the stones which form the foundation of this Thebes dance into ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... who had just entered the village fresh from the destruction of a neighbouring castle. The nun and Victoire listened; but in the midst of the horrid yells of joy, no human voice, no intelligible word, could be distinguished: they looked through a chink in the window-shutter, and they saw the street below filled with a crowd of men, whose countenances were by turns illuminated by the glare of the torches which ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... putwarries and head men are all there with their voluminous accounts. Your rent-collector, called a tehseeldar, has been busy in the villages with the tenants and putwarries, collecting rent for the great Pooneah day. There is a constant chink of money, a busy hum, a scratching of innumerable pens. Under every tree, 'neath the shade of every hut, busy groups are squatted round some acute accountant. Totals are being totted up on all hands. From greasy recesses ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... way through a gap in the thin and rotten line of pickets, and through some tall weeds with big coarse pink flowers;—then she crouched down on hands and knees before the black hole, and peered in. It was not so black inside as she had thought; for a sunbeam slanted down through a chink in the roof; and she ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... open a single one of the little buckskin bags, but Murray threw down one that would not "chink" and picked ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... oath," said Otter, "but here we should have sworn it otherwise, and there would have been a ringing of steel about that kraal, not the chink ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... and the wet, duly turned to bless the luck that had brought about an accident right at the doorstep of a section of the Motor Transport. There were about ten massive lorries drawn up close to the side of the road under the poplars, and Courtenay made a direct line for one from which a chink of light showed under the tarpaulin and sounds of revelry issued from a melodeon and a rasping file. Courtenay pulled aside the flap, poked his head in and found himself blinking in the bright glare of an acetylene lamp suspended in the middle of a Mechanical Transport traveling ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... the first egg, does not emerge from the nest till the young are ready to fly. During the whole of this period she is kept a close prisoner, the aperture to the nest cavity having been closed by her mate and herself with their own droppings, a small chink alone being left through which she is able to insert her beak in order to receive the food brought to ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... path between the stranger's home and ours should be left unclosed, or the sorrow and evil of his home may descend to ours. Take with thee the children of thy band, smite the sides of the cavern with your vril staves till the fall of their fragments fills up every chink through which a gleam of our lamps could ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... gone—she at the threshold placed; Inside clink glasses, cries resound As if it were some funeral feast. But deeming all this nonsense pure, She peeped through a chink of the door. What doth she see? Around the board Sit many monstrous shapes abhorred. A canine face with horns thereon, Another with cock's head appeared, Here an old witch with hirsute beard, There an imperious skeleton; A dwarf adorned ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... and hot. The windows are open, indeed, but only the infinitesimally small chink that church-windows ever do open. The pew-opener sedulously closes the great door after every fresh entrance. I kneel simmering through the Litany. Never before did it seem so long! Never did the chanted, "We beseech Thee to hear us, good ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... caught sight of the Titian and the play of light on its shining armour; of the Van Dyck opposite. He gave way helplessly; gripped at the same moment by his parvenu's ambition, and by the genuine passion for beautiful things lodged oddly in some chink of his common and ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Chink back," said Scott, persuasively, "and we'll stay all night with Herrick. We'll make him play for you," he added, as Polly smiled in spite ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... here, but how—ah, how can I pass it to you? the chink is so narrow, the wall is so thick! Yet there is a remedy—I have it. Quick, Louise; cut me a willow bough, the tallest ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... whipped out a canvas bag which gave forth the chink of gold. Another came after it. And across each bag was stamped "Packard ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... scrambled up. Roldan followed, and pulled the ladder after him. The garret was very low, and half full of skins. They could not stand upright. It was also bitterly cold. Each hastily wrapped a skin about his body, and lay full length, Roldan on his face, his eyes applied to a chink in ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... the room, past the first tables, and, as she walked, the muffled, characteristic sounds she began to hear seemed but to punctuate and emphasize the silence, like echoes in a cave: a faint rattle of rakes, like the rustle of leaves, and a delicate chink-chink of gold, like the chirping of young birds ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... she heard the chink of another five shillings, and her mouth opened so wide that a chaffinch could have built therein. "Is he to look for a bottle in the pond?" she ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... 'There's another chink in his armour,' I went on. 'There's one person in the world he can never practise his transformations on, and that's me. I shall always know him again, though he appeared as Sir Douglas Haig. I can't explain why, but I've got a feel in my ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... affix her illuminated card to the wall. Hilda ran in. "The Miss Pockets. Where's father? Come out," and Rosalie was hurriedly run out and shut into the dining-room, leaving the vindication of Isaiah in the matter of the report on the table. Opening the door to a chink, Rosalie saw the Miss Pockets, shivering, the permanent decoration on the nose of the elder Miss Pocket very conspicuous and agitatedly swinging, ushered into the study, and presently her father follow his jutty nose into the study after them, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... late summer-time, and the perfume of flowers stole into the darkened room through the half-opened window. The sunlight forced its way through a chink in the blind, and stretched across the floor in strange zigzag fashion. From without came the pleasant murmur of bees and many lazier insects floating over the gorgeous flower beds, resting for a while on the clematis which ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it did not involve the least movement of his facial muscles, managed to pass quite unperceived by the lady; but, striving to compensate by the intensity of his feelings for the somewhat restricted field in which they had to find expression, he made that blue chink, which was set apart for us, sparkle with all the animation of cordiality, which went far beyond mere playfulness, and almost touched the border-line of roguery; he subtilised the refinements of good-fellowship into a wink of connivance, a hint, a hidden meaning, a secret understanding, all ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the maxillary sinus, the frontal sinus, and the anterior ethmoidal cells. A considerable area of the anterior part of the nasal septum is also visible by anterior rhinoscopy, and between it and the middle turbinal is a narrow chink—the olfactory sulcus. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... some one is after the money," and quite soon, on Tom Thumb setting to work again, they heard very clearly the coins ringing, chink, chank, as they ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... narrow, shutterless casement (athwart which, instead of a curtain, a checked apron had been loosely hung, and now waved fitfully to and fro in the gusts of wind that made easy ingress through many a chink and cranny), were a looking-glass, sundry appliances of the toilet, a box of coarse rouge, a few ornaments of more show than value, and a watch, the regular and calm click of which produced that indescribably ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the operation, a slip of bistoury or scalpel, a tremor of the wrist, a single instant's clumsiness of the fingers, and the Enemy—watching for every chance, intent for every momentarily opened chink or cranny wherein he could thrust his lean fingers—entered the frail tenement with a leap, a rushing, headlong spring that jarred the house of life to its foundations. Lowering close over her head Lloyd felt the shadow of his approach. He had arrived ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... of God's transforming grace and power. We are tempted to look for God's activity chiefly, if not altogether, inside the organization that avows him. But that cannot be true. He comes in like the sun through every chink and crevice where he can find a way of entrance. He does not wait to be welcomed. He does not insist on being consciously recognized before he enters a man's life. Rather, through any door or window left ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... pacing round their dwelling, they saw no fierce eyes peering into the interior of the farm-house through a chink in the shutters, they marked no dusky figure passing through the softly and quickly opened door, and gliding into the darkest corner of the room. Yet, now as they sat together, communing in silence with their young, sad hearts, the threatening figure of Goisvintha stood, shrouded ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... in along of me. I was sitting in a little game of faro at a joint in the Commercial Road about a week ago, when this tough pulls me out and puts it up to me. I didn't much like it, but the chink who runs the show told me he was straight, and ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... nerves are all on the stretch, in consequence. I give you warning, Isabella, if you drop your knife or chink your teacup and saucer I ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... at its height; the sun had set, black and monstrous billows chased each other, and the dismasted vessel was hurried on towards the land. The wind howled, and whistled sharply at each chink in the bulwarks of the vessel. For three days had they fought the gale, but in vain. Now, if it continued, all chance was over; for the shore was on their lee, distant not many miles. Nothing could save them, but gaining the mouth of the Firth of Tay, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... rhetorical republicanisms; vain senatorial prestiges; —or pleasure pure and simple—say rather, very complex and impure. Let them clack, let them fumble! Caesar would do things and get things done. He wore the whole armor of his greatness, and could see no chink or joint in it through which a hostile dagger might pierce. Even his military victories were won by some greater than mere military greatness.—Karma, perhaps, remembering the Mysteries at Gaulish Bibracte, and the world left now quite lightless, might ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... came Aunt Annie's voice through the chink. 'And there's the portrait! Oh! and what a smudge across the nose! Henry, it doesn't make you look at all nice. You're too black. Oh, Henry! what do you think it's called? "Lions in their Lairs. No. 19. Interview with the brilliant author of Love in Babylon." ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... did not talk much, but kept quiet and listened. It was an inky-black night, and occasionally rainy. We were among woods and rocks, hills and gorges—so shut in, in fact, that when we peeped through a chink in a curtain, we could discern nothing. The driver and conductor on top were still, too, or only spoke at long intervals, in low tones, as is the way of men in the midst of invisible dangers. We listened to rain-drops pattering on the roof; and the grinding ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... for native guests; as a foreigner I was treated with more ceremony. Left alone till my meal should be ready, I examined the surroundings. The floor was of worn stone, which looked to me like the natural foundation of the house; the walls were rudely plastered, cracked, grimed, and with many a deep chink; as for the window, it admitted light, but, owing to the aged dirt which had gathered upon it, refused any view of things without save in two or three places where the glass was broken; by these apertures, and at every point ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... midnight, the noisy guests are gone, the people of the house are in bed, and we may now venture forth from our hiding-place to look through the chink in the door. It is a clear frosty night. The moon, just rising, is brightly reflected in the water. The stars are looking silently down on the sleeping town. Castle Cornet rises gloomily out of the sea. The moonlit sky, which ...
— Adventures of a Sixpence in Guernsey by A Native • Anonymous
... aperture in the roof, I noticed that there was water at the bottom; out of the water projected a stone; on the stone, a prisoner for life, sat the most disconsolate lizard imaginable. It must have tumbled through the chink, during some scuffle with a companion, into this humid cell, swum for refuge to that islet and there remained, feeding on the gnats which live in such places. I observed that its tail had grown to an inordinate length—from disuse, very likely; from ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... of the inn, already terrified by the frightful roaring, fled from the spot and ran to inform the host. The soldier's anguish may be conceived, as pale, breathless, with his ear close to the chink of the door, he stood listening. By degrees the roaring had ceased, and nothing was heard but low growls, accompanied by the stern voice of the Prophet, repeating in harsh, abrupt ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of the fight, Hugh wakened from a troubled sleep into which he had fallen, wearied with fruitless efforts to break the lock of the door. One thought was ever in his mind, even in his dream: to escape. For this purpose he had clawed away a wide chink in the log walls, he had even dug ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... and attempted to whistle the Boyne Water, but having only one tusk in front, the sound produced resembled the wild whistle of the wind through the chink of a door—shrill and monotonous; after which he burst out into a chuckling laugh, tickled, probably, at the notion of that celebrated melody proving disloyal in spite of him, as refusing, as ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the mutinous scamp replied, moving towards the door; "ven you get ready to give me the chink, I'll be ready to vork for you, and not ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... not the heart to give away; and then he jingled a money-box, which was heavy enough to tell there were many, many coins inside, and yet he drew from his pocket a shilling, which he slipped through the narrow chink, thus adding to ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... the garden. On a round hillock I discovered a little temple, but I found its door locked. However, there is a chink in the door and when I glue my eye to it, I see the goddess of love on ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... next day, and I advanced the funds, $649. I sent Joe out to tell the people to come and get their money, but they didn't come with the usual promptness; bye and bye two men came to sound the way, the rest held back. I laughed at them and sent them off with the chink in their pockets, after which the rest came fast enough. They were evidently afraid of some trap to press them into United States service as General Hunter did. I didn't have the slightest difficulty in collecting what I had advanced last September. ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... at Coolgardie that a mining speculator, Who was going down the township just to make a bit o' chink, Went off to hire a camel from a camel propagator, And the Afghan said he'd lend it if he'd stand the beast a drink. Yes, the only price he asked him was to stand the beast a drink. He was cheap, very cheap, ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... me and Beany saw old Nat today. we aint got enny chink. if i hadent paid that money to those hampton falls men for pluging roten eggs at there cows i should have sum. all i can rase is thirty five cents and Beany can rase fifteen cents. Fatty Gilman most always has ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... and a pair of papers pinned on the boarding, headed respectively "Funnel No. 1," and "Funnel No. 2," but with the tails torn away. The window, sashless of course, was choked with the green and sweetly smelling foliage of a bay; and through a chink in the floor, a spray of poison oak had shot up and was handsomely prospering in the interior. It was my first care to cut away that poison oak, Fanny standing by at a respectful distance. That was our first improvement ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... chink into the singer's extended hat show how fully his efforts are appreciated; but at this moment P——, with the free-and-easy command of a true John Bull, elbows his way through the throng, and calls out: "Holloa, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... Chink'll be over in the mornin'?" he asked anxiously, after a little; and Wade nodded abstractedly. "Cookin' ain't no job for a white man in this weather. Breakin' rock in Hell would be plumb cool alongside of it." He wiped the sweat ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... such thoughts, I advanced on the central gate, and peered through a chink near which an infantryman was standing alert, rifle in hand. There were the marble courtyards, the beautiful yellow decorated roofs. I could see them clearly, and then ... a rifle from the other side was ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... at Yancey's, on the Yellowstone, in 1897, I had a good example of the latter, and had it daily for a time. The dog attached to the camp on the inner circle was a conceited, irrepressible little puppy named Chink. He was so full of energy, enthusiasm, and courage that there was no room left in him for dog-sense. But it came after a vast number ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... chink of coin and the low-spoken urgings for haste at the receiving clerk's window; but he forbore to move until the cab had rattled away. Then he gathered up the spoiled blanks left behind by Hawk and smoothed them out. Two of them bore nothing but the date line, made illegible, it would ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... same outward effect was produced here, however, by her rising when the clock struck ten and hanging up a thick cloth curtain. The door it was necessary to keep ajar in hers, as in most cottages, because of the smoke; but she obviated the effect of the ribbon of light through the chink by hanging a cloth over that also. She was one of those people who, if they have to work harder than their neighbors, prefer to keep the necessity a secret as far as possible; and but for the slight sounds of wood-splintering which came from within, no wayfarer would have perceived that here the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... certain men, while they chanced to be running over the level of ice, rolled into the abyss before them, and into the depths of the yawning crevasses, and were a little later picked up dead without the smallest chink of ice above them. Hence it is common for many to imagine that the urn of the sling of ice first swallows them, and then a little after turns upside down and restores them. Here also, is reported to bubble up the water of a pestilent flood, which if a man taste, he falls struck as though by ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... this, man!" and, as he slapped his breeches pocket, there was the chink as of a mine of money shaken to its foundations: "hark to this, man! and more than hark, have! Here, good wife, hold your apron!" And he flung into her lap a ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of the mystical materialism, of a child who picks out yellow flowers. Gold is but one kind of coloured clay, but coloured clay can be very beautiful. The modern idolater of riches is content with far less genuine things. The glitter of guineas is like the glitter of buttercups, the chink of pelf is like the chime of bells, compared with the dreary papers and dead calculations which make the ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... his marriage close at hand, how could I entertain the possibility of his voluntarily leaving this place, in a manner that would be so unaccountable, capricious, and cruel? But now that I know what you have told me, is there no little chink through which day pierces? Supposing him to have disappeared of his own act, is not his disappearance more accountable and less cruel? The fact of his having just parted from your ward, is in itself a sort of reason for his ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... to the shadow of one of the rocks in case he happened to be prowling around the house. In the silence of the night he listened for the sound of footsteps on the rocks, but could hear nothing except the moan of the sea and the whimper of a rising wind. His eye, glancing upwards, fell upon a chink of shuttered light in the back of the house which looked down on the sea. The light came from the dead man's study, and had not been ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... to whom I called. And, what is strange, these sights and sounds were all about the natural and not the supernatural. For instance, I did not see the visage of a grinning goblin just within a little chink of The Rock, as I ought to have seen. I did not see "faëry elves" dancing in the moonlit beams, as I ought to have seen. Then boldly I took a direct course from the mountain over the plain, believing I should intercept our encampment. I continued ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... one of those primitive sluices that are to be found in every Indian bungalow, and returned, still absently holding it between his finger and thumb. A confession of weakness: there is no denying it. But let him who has not yet found the devil's chink in his own defences cast the stone. Head, heart, or heel—there is a weak spot in the strongest. Not even Achilles' self was plunged wholesale into the waters ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... blade of the axe in the chink of the secretary's door and wrenched it free. It opened down to form a sort of desk, and disclosed an array of cubby-holes and two small doors, both locked. These latter Kitchell smashed in with the axe-head. Then he seated himself in the swivel chair and ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... heard someone moving in the inner room. I was very glad; of course it was Jean, and Jean, I told myself with luxurious self-congratulation, would bring the bed for me, and put something on my wound, and maybe give me a chink of some fine hot cognac that would spread life through my veins. Thus I should be comfortable and able to sleep, and forget all the shadowy people—they seemed but shadows half-real—that I had been troubling my brain about: the duke, and Marie, whose face ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... who was there, and let in the man who had promised to come to her at nine o'clock. They came into the chamber, where they were not long on their feet, but laid down and cuddled and kissed in the same manner as he in the garret had done, whilst he, through a chink, kept his eye on the couple, and was not best pleased. He could not make up his mind whether he should speak or hold his tongue. At last he determined to keep silence, and not say a word till the opportunity came,—and you may guess that ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... all notion even of her power of movement. Only in the dead of night when, as she believed, every human eye that could watch her was sealed in sleep, and then in those dark habiliments which (even as might sometimes happen, if the victim herself were awake) a chance ray of light struggling through chink or shutter could scarcely distinguish from the general gloom, did she steal to the chamber and infuse the colourless and tasteless liquid [The celebrated acqua di Tufania (Tufania water) was wholly without ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... annoyance deepened. He felt that a chink had been found in his armour. Not even the most paternal hotel-proprietor can keep an eye on ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... not speaking of those far-away days. I'm talking of a month or two back, when I was there with a Chinese Salvage Company trying to clear up the mess you made. Beastly quiet it was, too. The only excitement was a playful habit the Chink had contracted of picking up a rusty rifle and a salvaged clip of cartridges, pointing the gun anywhere and pulling the trigger to make it say Bang! I often found myself doin' the old B.E.F. tummy-wriggle when the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various |
