"Clack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hull of the schooner La Reina, waiting to carry us to all sorts of adventure, none of them (as I planned them then) so strange, or so terrible, as those which happened to me. As we drew up alongside her, I heard the clack-clack of the sailors heaving at the windlass. They were getting up the anchor, so that we might sail from this horrible city to all the wonderful romance which awaited me, as I thought, beyond, in the great world. Five minutes after I had stepped upon her deck we were gliding ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... the continent with steel, we are feeding the world on the best and cleanest wheat known to hungry man. And on these clear and opaline mornings when I see the prairie-floor waving with its harvest to be, and hear the clack and stutter of the tractor breaking sod on the outer quarter and leaving behind it the serried furrows of umber, I feel there is something primal and poetic in the picture, something ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the stage when she came in but had finished their act and gone to their room, although the old lady didn't know this. The horse act was on and the old horse galloping around the stage "clickerty clack; clickerty clack; clickerty clack," when suddenly the old lady stops talking, pricks up her ears, listens ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... as a whole, has for base a cast-iron reservoir; A, to the top of which is fixed the pump properly so-called, B, as well as the clack box, A, and safety valve. The pump is placed opposite an upright, D, whose top serves as a guide to the prolongation, E, of the piston rod. This latter is traversed by a pivot, a (Fig 19), on which is mounted a lever, F, whose outer extremity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... better dressed fellows. Let us take a last glance at the map, transfer a pate, a cold chicken, and a dozen of champagne from the supper-room to the pockets of the coach, arm to the teeth in the arsenal, wrap ourselves in warm cloaks, and—clack! postilion!" ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... peck the lice (or green or red) That swarm the bass-wood tree, But wag no more thine addled head Nor clack ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... guide his men when a fierce-looking rebel officer leaped before him with drawn sword. His own blade met that of the enemy, and both flashed fire. But the Tagal was a fine swordsman and kept at his work, feeling certain that he could run the Americano through and through. Clack! clack! went the blades, up and down, side to side, and ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... became perceptible to Miss Kilburn through her own humiliation. "There's some in every community that's bound to complain, I don't care what you do to accommodate 'em; and what I done, I done as much to stop their clack as anything, and give him the right sort of a start off, an' I guess I did. But Mis' Bolton she didn't know but what you'd look at it in the light of a libbutty, and I didn't know but what you would think I no ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... When the grubs, pressed one against the other, with their heads downwards in the fetid soup, make an unbroken shoal, the sight of those breathing cups incessantly opening and closing, with a little clack like a valve, almost makes one forget the horrors of the charnel yard. It suggests a carpet of tiny Sea anemones. The maggot has ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... of Economic Independence is not always a subtle one. There was that about Clara Bloom, even to the rather Hellenic swing of her very tailor-made back and the firm, neat clack of her not too high heels, which proclaimed that a new century had filed her fetter-free from the nine-teen-centuries-long chain of women whose pin-money had too often been blood-money or the filched shekels from trousers pocket or what ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... cordage for more nets or finer thread for the looms that now began to clack—for at last some few women had arrived, and even a couple of the strong, pale children, who had traveled stowed in crates ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... distance, till we reached a narrow path which led us into a thick wood, where we soon became completely bewildered. On a sudden, after wandering about a considerable time, we heard the noise of water, and presently the clack of a wheel. Following the sound, we arrived at a low stone mill, built over a brook; here we stopped and shouted, but no answer was returned. "The place is deserted," said Antonio; "here, however, is a path, which, if we follow it, will doubtless lead us to some human habitation." ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... his own talk at this point by stuffing his mouth so full of meat that no word, not even a word of one syllable, could have forced itself out, had it tried ever so much. A long silence now ensued, during which the clack of seven pairs of active jaws was the only sound that broke upon the ear. It might have been observed, however, that all eyes were fixed more or less wonderingly on the stranger. Big Waller in particular ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... and all.—We are haunted with them, brother Toby, in all our lucubrations and researches; and was a man fool enough to submit tamely to what they obtruded upon him,—what would his book be? Nothing,—he would add, throwing his pen away with a vengeance,—nothing but a farrago of the clack of nurses, and of the nonsense of the old women (of both ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... quarters indeed, sundry people's good opinion of themselves? What, if at times their speech is insipid as water after wine? What, if to ungenial and irascible souls, their very "mug" is an exasperation to behold, their clack an inducement to suicide? Let us not be hard upon them for this; but let them live on for the good ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... deaf, and could not hear her vituperation, and of a parish girl of twelve, to do the indoor work, who had been so used to be scolded all her life, that she minded the noise no more than a miller minds the clack of his mill, or than people who live in a churchyard mind the sound of the church bells, and would probably, from long habit, have felt some miss of the sound had it ceased, of which, by the way, ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... head. It struck the side of the flitter with a sharp clack, and fell. Kieran's nervous relays finally connected. He jumped for the open hatch. Automatically he pushed Paula ahead of him, trying to shield her, and she gave him an odd startled look. Webber was already inside. ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... the place impressed itself on her in a rough way. She did not venture to look around, but above the clack of the machine she could hear an occasional remark. She could also note a thing or two out of the ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... had seen a human being, when I heard the click-clack of loose sabots coming nearer. Presently a couple of young bulls showed their grim visages round a corner, and after them came a very small girl with a very long stick. She looked about six years old, and she had ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... perched beneath the pine-tree, in a crook made by rock and brown root, overhanging the autumn world. Strickland at his own desk dipped quill into ink-well and continued a letter to a friend in England. The minutes went by. From the courtyard came a subdued, cheerful household clack and murmur, voices of men and maids, with once Mrs. Jardine's genial, vigorous tones, and once the laird's deep bell note, calling to his dogs. On the western side fell only the sough of ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... then just after seven o'clock, and the October evening was drawing in with chill airs from the recesses of the forest. The road plunged straight from the railway clearing into its depths, and in a very few minutes the trees engulfed him and the clack of his boots fell dead and echoless against the serried stems of a million firs. It was very black; one trunk was hardly distinguishable from another. He walked smartly, swinging his holly stick. Once or twice he passed a peasant on his way to bed, and the guttural "Gruss Got," unheard for so long, ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... think"—"I doubt"—"I hope," Called God to witness, and damned the Pope; With many more sleights of tongue and hand I couldn't for the soul of me understand. Amazed and posed, I was just about To ask his name, when the screams without, The merciless clack of the imps within, And that conjuror's mutterings, made such a din, That, startled, I woke—leapt up in my bed— Found the Spirit, the imps, and the conjuror fled, And blest my stars, right pleased to see, That I wasn't ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... fast to its cord—as it should always be in trying experiments—and I tossed it into the canoe. The rattle roused Umquenawis from his wonder, as if he had heard the challenging clack of antlers on the alder stems. He floundered out in mighty jumps and came swinging along the shore, chocking and grunting fiercely. He had seen the man again and knew it was no fish—Unh! unh! eeeeeunh-unh! he grunted, ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... with the devil I saw It did my wonder, not my pity draw; For I concluded that without some trick, A saint at any time could match old Nick. Next came a fiercer fiend upon his back, I mean his spouse, stunning him with her clack, But still I could not pity him, as knowing A crab tree cudgel soon would send her going. But when the quack engaged with Job I spy'd, The Lord have mercy on poor Job I cry'd. What spouse and Satan did attempt in vain The quack will compass ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... of three quarters of an hour brought them to their destination, as they learned from a preliminary howl of the conductor through the rear door of the car. The engine bell rang, the whistle screamed, the clack of the wheels gradually ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... all about them was alive with Drilgoes. The three dodged and doubled like hunted hares. High overhead something began to clack with a sound like that made by a woodpecker drilling a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... and in the silence a typewriter began to clack with a fierce, staccato note. It was Mary Fortune, writing her letter ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... green walk in the middle of the ground, upon which he had erected a mill in miniature for the diversion of Edwards's infant grandson, and made shift in its construction to introduce a pliant bit of wood that answered with its fairy clack to the murmuring of the rill that turned it. I have seen him stand, listening to these mingled sounds, with his eye fixed on the boy, and the smile of conscious satisfaction on his cheek, while the old man, with a look ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... charge of the cart with our tools, baiting at an inn a little beyond Contin; but there was no sign of the carter; and we were informed by the innkeeper, to whom he was well known, that we might have to wait for him all day, and perhaps not see him at night. Click-Clack—a name expressive of the carter's fluency as a talker, by which he was oftener designated than by the one in the parish register—might no doubt have purposed in the morning joining us at an early hour, but ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... want to be traipsing about after dark for," said Marilla shortly. "You and Diana walked home from school together and then stood down there in the snow for half an hour more, your tongues going the whole blessed time, clickety-clack. So I don't think you're very badly off ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... took up the rhythm of the rails as the delayed train plunged forward once more into the night. Again the clack of tongues, set free from fear, buzzed eagerly. The glow of the afterclap of danger was on them, and in the warm excitement each forgot the paralyzing fear that had but now padlocked his lips. Courage came flowing back into flabby cheeks and red ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... cries, And bristly hair, the children rise; These must be dressed, and dosed with rue, And fed—and all because of you: We next"—Here Darby scratched his head, And stole off grumbling to his bed; And only said, as on she run, "Zounds! woman's clack is never done." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... grain. These two young women have evidently been very industrious this morning; they have half-buried themselves in the product of their labors, and are still grinding away as though for their very lives, while the constant "click-clack " of the carpet weavers prove them likewise the embodiment of industry. They seem rather disconcerted by the abrupt intrusion and scrutinizing attentions of a Frank and a stranger; however, the fascinating search for bits of interesting experience forbids my retirement on that account, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... had not supped; but, being a philosopher, he reflected that, though hungry, he was warm. He was in a glass coach driven rapidly on a rough road, and outside the weather seemed to be wild, for the snow was crusted on the window. There were riders in attendance; he could hear the click-clack of ridden horses. Sometimes a lantern flashed on the pane, and a face peered dimly through the frost. It seemed a face ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... all over again from the beginning, when they reached some particularly crucial point, where the 'click' or the 'clack' of the ever-echoing 'click-clacking' chorus proved too much for ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... around the street lamps and drew a veil before the shop windows. Far away I heard the rattle of the elevated and the never-ceasing hum of Sixth Avenue and Broadway, but, save for these reminders of the city's life, the silence of the street was broken only by the click-clack ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... recollections of Cynthia's joyful aberrations at such periods caused a breaking up of the maternal conclave. The babies were borne away to simmer between blankets until called for. The women unpacked baskets, brooded over teapots, and kept up an harmonious clack as the table was spread with pyramids of cake, regiments of pies, quagmires of jelly, snow-banks of bread, and gold mines of butter; every possible article of food, from baked beans to wedding cake, finding a ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... not your name Bell?—a family cognomen, I presume, on account of the infernal clack, clack, without any sense in it, that is the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... terrified yelp, Nuwell turned and raced back down the side corridor at top speed. They heard the clack-clack of his heels on the stone ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... the guitars, gradually increasing in volume, and in which the tap of the tomtom mingled like the rolling of distant thunder, opened the dance. Then came the sharp and yet mellow clack of the dancers' castanets, and finally the soft tones of the flute, blending the whole into harmony. The dancers seemed to follow and imitate by their action each change of the music: at first, and with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... have the marks to show. Marks! I ha' marks o' more than burns—deep in my soul an' black, An' times like this, when things go smooth, my wickudness comes back. The sins o' four and forty years, all up an' down the seas, Clack an' repeat like valves half-fed.... Forgie's our trespasses. Nights when I'd come on deck to mark, wi' envy in my gaze, The couples kittlin' in the dark between the funnel stays; Years when I raked the ports wi' pride ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... chores to do," he seized his hat, and hastening out, wandered disconsolately around the barn. "I'm never going to be able to stand her," he groaned. "I know now why my poor wife shook her head whenever this woman was mentioned. The clack of her tongue would drive any man living crazy, and the gimlet eyes of that girl Jane would bore holes through a saint's patience. Well, well! I'll put a stove up in my room, then plowing and planting time will soon be here, ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... pale-lighted trees to the garden's edge, and there stood while he took his way across the barren ground among the carcasses. She watched the tip of his mustache that came beyond the line of his cheek, and when he was farther, his whole strong figure, while the clack of the hoofs on the dead ground grew fainter. When the steeper fall of the canon hid him from her she ran to the house, and from its roof among her peppers she saw him come into sight again below, the wide, foreshortened slant of ground between them, the white horse and dark rider and the mules, ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... understand well. A tune was born in my head last week, Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester; And when, next week, I take it back again. My head will sing to the engine's clack again, While it only makes my neighbor's haunches stir, —Finding no dormant musical sprout In him, as in me, to be jolted out. 'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching; He gets no more from the railway's preaching Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I: Whom therefore the ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... if he does. But it was necessary to frighten the woman, Melody, for fright is the only thing that makes an impression on a fool. Now, I want you to run down there, like a good child; that is, if your aunts can spare you. Run down and comfort the little fellow, who has been badly scared by the clack of tongues and the smarting of the tobacco-juice. Imbeciles! cods' heads! scooped-out pumpkins!" exclaimed the doctor, in a sudden frenzy. "A—I don't mean that. Comfort him up, child, and sing to him and tell him about Jack-and-the-Beanstalk. You'll soon bring him round, I'll warrant. But stop," ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... corridor there was some light—dim phosphorescence from the Martian night-rock lining the walls and tiling the floor. He walked swiftly, cursing the clack-clack his heels made on the ringing stone. When he reached the end of the corridor he tried ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... has given me means and tastes to correspond, and what man can say more. I see visions, and am able to make them realities. I dream of a dovecote with a tiled roof, and straightway build it; I picture a gallery and a chapel and a library away from the clack of tongues, and behold there it is. The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of thee.' To see and dream without the power of performance is heart-breaking. To perform without the gift of imagination is soul-slaying. The man is blessed that hath ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... sand showed the entrance to a rabbit-burrow, or where the white flints of a footpath lay like a thread over the slopes. In almost every one of the isolated and stunted thorns which grew here and there a night-hawk revealed his presence by whirring like the clack of a mill as long as he could hold his breath, then stopping, flapping his wings, wheeling round the bush, alighting, and after a silent interval of listening beginning to whirr again. At each brushing ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... only knew it all! What tradition tells is that long ago there was a Master Chester, who lost a fine estate through the idle, malicious clack of a gossiping, lying woman. "What is good for a bootless bene?" What he did was to endow the church with this admirable piece of head-gear. And when any woman in the parish was unanimously adjudged ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... long and difficult for Julia to undertake. They could not then journey as now, on the rapid railway, winding green valleys, ascending great hills, and gliding through cities and towns, with as gentle a whirl, and as jocund a clack as if spinning skeins of silk. They mounted the tardy wagon, and rattled and jounced along behind a loitering team. But Julia had fortitude and spirit, to meet fatigues and discouragements bravely. Her early experience now furnished the fruits that could most refresh ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... and you, too. If my wits were as thick as your tongue, they'd be guessing at the clack of it, instead of getting a wiggle on the ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... 'You may find us at my Lady Betty Clack's, who will leave Orders with her Porter, that if an elderly Gentleman, with a short Face, enquires for her, he shall be ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... thy silly clack!" ordered her mother. "A runaway bond-servant on his Excellency's staff, quotha! Though he does head the rebels, General Washington is a man of breeding and would ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... walls the golden light of the setting sun was slowly moving—so slow, and yet a motion gives the feeling of rest to the weary yet more than perfect stillness. The old clock on the staircase told its monotonous click-clack, in that soothing way which more marked the quiet of the house than disturbed with any sense of sound. Leonard still slept that renovating slumber, almost in her arms, far from that fatal pursuing sea, with its ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... there came up so great a storm of thunder and lightning, and huge drift of rain, that I was afraid, and being so near to the house, I hastened thither, driving the goats, and when I had tethered them in the shed of the croft, I crept trembling up to the house, and when I was at the door, heard the clack of the loom in the weaving-chamber, and deemed that the woman was weaving there, but when I looked, behold there was no one on the bench, though the shuttle was flying from side to side, and the shed opening and changing, and the sley coming home in due order. ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... appropriated to passengers, wishing him a good night. He put my coat down in the crib beneath, and as he could no longer hold the button, he laid hold of the side of the crib, and continued his incessant clack. At last I turned my back to him, and made no answer, upon which he made a retreat, and when I awoke the next morning, I found that he was too ill to spout politics, although as he progressed, he spouted what was quite ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... rising bell, and instantly the girls arose and a bustle of low converse and the rustle of dresses and clack of shoes on the polished floor made up the usual confusion of sounds as the girls separated for their classrooms. Nearly four hundred girls ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... of Berlin was filled with women and children, hardly an able-bodied man. In one compartment a gray-haired Landsturm soldier sat beside an elderly woman who seemed weak and ill. Above the click-clack of the car wheels passengers could hear her counting: "One, two, three," evidently absorbed in her own thoughts. Sometimes she repeated the words at short intervals. Two girls tittered, thoughtlessly exchanging vapid ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... shaking funnels roar, with the Peter at the fore, And the fenders grind and heave, And the derricks clack and grate, as the tackle hooks the crate, And the fall-rope whines through the sheave; It 's 'Gang-plank up and in,' dear lass, It 's 'Hawsers warp her through!' And it 's 'All clear aft' on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, We're backing down on ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... energy, and thoughtfulness of the women. Practically every article of clothing worn by the entire family, as well as all household supplies, were the work of their busy hands. All day in the frontier cabin could be heard the hum of the spinning wheel, the clack of the loom, or the click of knitting needles. In many localities the added work of teaching the children fell to the mothers, and the home lessons given around the fireplace, heaped with glowing logs, ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... indictment against a raucous timepiece which was wont to lead up to its striking with a long, preliminary clack-and-whirr, alleging that twice, when she had quit her sculping early because the clay was obdurate and wouldn't come right, and had gone for a walk to clear her vision, the clock had accosted her in ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... that the devil and his wicked instruments can do against us, for we daily fight against him in a hundred other ways, and therefore as a valiant captain affrays no more being at the combat, nor stays from his purpose for the rummishing shot of a cannon, nor the small clack of a pistolet; not being certain what may light on him; even so ought we boldly to go forward in fighting against the devil without any greater terror, for these his rarest weapons, than the ordinary, whereof we have daily ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... talking to statesmen, poets, and artists—not sham poets like Bulbul, or quack artists like that Pinkney—but to the best members of all society. It is there I made this sketch, while Miss Chesterforth was singing a deep-toned tragic ballad, and her mother scowling behind her. What a buzz and clack and chatter there was in the room to be sure! When Miss Chesterforth sings, everybody begins to talk. Hicks and old Fogy were on Ireland: Bass was roaring into old Pump's ears (or into his horn rather) about the Navigation Laws; I was engaged talking to the charming Mrs. Short; while ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bosom of the great Mother; she has, it seems, no heart for me when I am sorry, though she smiles with me when I am glad." But he has told me that he is able to enjoy a simple village scene in a way that others can not easily understand: a chestnut crowded with pink spires, the clack of a mill-wheel, the gush of a green sluice out of a mantled pool, a little stream surrounded by flags and water lobelias, gave him all his life a keen satisfaction in his happy moments. "I always gravitate to water," ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Alleyne could see the bearded fellows cleaning their harness, while their wives would come out for a gossip, with their needlework in their hands, and their long black shadows streaming across the yard. The air was full of the clack of their voices and the merry prattling of children, in strange contrast to the flash of arms and constant warlike ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... until, dreadful to say! He came where the railroad was just in his way— And alas! and alack! He tripped on the track And then with a terrible, sudden ker-thwack! Triangular Tommy sprawled flat on his back— And the train came along with a crash, and a crack, A din, and a clatter, a clang, and a clack, A toot, and a boom, and a roar, and a hiss, And chopped him up all into pieces like this— If you cut out papers just like them, why, then, If you try, you can ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... the other, and sometimes all four at a time, till your head spins round like a top. I got quite giddy goin' down to the waterfall with them yesterday, and it wasn't the steps, neither, it was just their tongues going at it, clackerty-clack all the time. What time will ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... colony is very active and thriving and growing fast, many other branches of industry have sprung up, so that the hiss of the saw and the ring of the anvil, the clatter of the water-mill, and the clack of the loom, may be heard in all parts ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... April, 1842, in virtue of the sentence of a court-martial regularly convened under orders from the Secretary of the Navy, which received my approval, John H. Clack, who was a captain in the Navy, was dismissed the service. Since the confirmation of that sentence a letter has been addressed by Mr. Paulding, late Secretary of the Navy, to Captain Clack, which leads to the belief that he had analyzed the charges made ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... preternatural gnarring, growling and screeching, which attended as running bass, there began, in a horrid, semi-articulate, unearthly voice, this song: "Once I was hap-hap-happy, but now I'm meeserable! Clack-clack-clack, gnarr-r-r, whuz-z: Once I was hap-hap-happy, but now I'm meeserable!"—Rest, rest, perturbed spirit;—or indeed, as the good old Doctor said: My dear fellow, it isn't of the slightest consequence! But no; the perturbed spirit could not rest; and to the neighbours, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... dreamily listening to details, now startled, now seeming to be far away—shaking hands, signing papers; and now it was all settled, and I, on a horse, rode toward home to seek a night of rest in the country. The moon was full. I heard the sharp clack of hoofs, and, looking back, I saw a man riding as if it were his aim to overtake me. I jogged along slowly and Etheredge ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... mean?" said the blacksmith to himself as he watched the disappearing rider, while the click-clack of the loosened shoe became fainter and fainter ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... who you are!" Bellowing with fear, Carl ran forward, furiously waving his stick and clamoring: "You better not touch me!" The stick came down with a silly, flat clack upon the watcher—a roadside boulder. "It's just a rock, Gertie! Jiminy, I'm glad! It's just a rock!... Aw, I knew it was a rock all the time! Ben Rusk gets scared every time he sees a stump in the woods, and he always ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... flying high, hard in pursuit. The Austrian began to rise, but the Italian outpaced him and got right above him, and pressed him gradually down towards the ground. We heard the wooden-sounding clack-clack-clack of machine gun fire. And then we saw the Austrian evidently go out of control, diving toward the ground, more and more rapidly, and the Italian circling downwards above him; and then the Austrian ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... and this is just what we Russians lack. Oh, if we could educate our unusual powers and abilities, if we had the will to apply them actively in our chaotic, untidy existence, which is terribly blocked up with all kinds of idle clack and home-spun philosophy, and which gets more and more saturated with silly arrogance and puerile bragging. Somewhere deep in the Russian soul—no matter whether it is the "master's" or the muzhik's—there lives a petty and squalid demon of passive anarchism, who infects us with a careless ...
— The Shield • Various
... was wound; and, slip, slap, click, clack, it went round the pawl belaying every inch ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... travel across a continent, hearing the drumming clack of car wheels and rail joint ninety-six hours on end, acutely conscious that every hour of the ninety-six put its due quota of miles between the known and the unknown, may be either an adventure, a bore, or a calamity, ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... go—clack, clack, clack, clack; Now listen well, I pray, And let me see you both improve From what I've ...
— Marigold Garden • Kate Greenaway
... said, catching his hand in hers as she read, while all around them the sounds of summer—the distant clack of a reaper, the crack of a whip, the locusts droning, the whir of a young partridge, the squeak of a chipmunk—were tuned to the harmony of the ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... morrow his attempt to examine the deserted edifice, and turned his attention to the noise. It was compounded of steam barrel- organs, the clanging of gongs, the ringing of hand-bells, the clack of rattles, and the undistinguishable shouts of men. A lurid light hung in the air in the direction of the tumult. Thitherward he went, passing under the arched gateway, along a straight street, and into ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... Beeson, releasing the old man's hand, which fell passively against his thigh with a quiet clack, "it is an extremely disagreeable night. Pray be seated; I am ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... work no more fer Young," he retorted. "I ain't goin' to have my woman keepin' house fer no professor, an' ye can make up yer mind to it 'out no further clack." In one bound, Sandy rounded the table. "If ye won't do what I tell ye, then, I'll make ye wish ye had. Ye throwed up at me once, ye brat, ye, I never had no kisses from ye! After today ye won't be able ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... when forcing seasons bud With prophet, hero, saint, and quack, When creeds and fashions heat the blood, And transcendental tonguelets clack, Sweet Virtue's lyre we hardly know, And ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... noise of the loud Eastern mourning, and He put them all forth, taking with Him only the father and mother of the damsel, and Peter with James and John. When Peter goes into the upper room, where Tabitha is lying, there are the usual noise of lamentation and the clack of many tongues, extolling the virtues of the dead woman. He remembers how Christ had gone about His miracle, and he, in his turn, 'put them all forth.' Mark, who was Peter's mouthpiece in his Gospel, gives us the very Aramaic words which our ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Madrid, in spite of Court and commerce, in spite of newspaper, Stock Exchange, or Cortes. The cloaked figures moved silently, swiftly, seldom in pairs, without speech, with footfall scarcely audible. Now and again Manvers heard the throb of a guitar, now and again, with sudden clamour, the clack of castanets. But such noises stopped on the instant, and the traffic was resumed—whatever ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... we had not been put on our guard; not but that it would take a d—d smart cannibal to eat Hiram Whitson. But this is what I am coming to: you, my boy, are a darned sight too fond of hearing your own tongue clack. Now, take a warning from me, and don't let a word of what has happened since we left camp for Pietermaritzburg pass your lips. I did all the shooting, and I'm not a bit ashamed of it; but, by the eternal God, if you open ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... was drowned in a sodden swish as Lawler struck. His fist had shot upward with the weight of his body behind it, landing fairly on the point of Singleton's chin, snapping his teeth shut with a clack. ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... through St. James's Park, and under the tall trees the peaceful silence of the night came down on him. The sharp clack of the streets was deadened to a low hum as of the sea afar off. Across the gardens he could see the clock in the tower of Westminster, and hear the great bell strike the quarters. London! How little and selfish all ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... raised above the highest flood level, and secured by massive piles. Ducks were swimming in the clear mill-pond below the currents of water roaring over the wheel. As the poet came nearer he heard the clack of the mill, and saw the good-natured, homely woman of the house knitting on a garden bench, and keeping an eye upon a little one who was chasing ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... ought, and we could not see the pathetic side of them as at another time, the day was so full of cheer and the sky and earth so glorious. The very fields looked busy with their early summer growth, the horses began to think of the clack of the oat-bin cover, and we were hurried along between the silvery willows and the rustling alders, taking time to gather a handful of stray-away conserve roses by the roadside; and where the highway made a long bend eastward among the farms, two of us left the carriage, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... that time I began to hear far off down the windy road, by which that sack had come, faintly at first and slowly louder and louder, the click clack clop of a lame horse coming nearer. Click clack clop and a loose shoe rattling, the sound of a horse too weary to be out upon such a night, too lame ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... replace the empty pot, when he heard the click-clack of a door behind him. He looked round, and saw the Superior, who had unlocked the door, and come to restore the boy to liberty. Oh, unhappy day! When the Abbe found the prisoner stealing his precious ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... it was big and real. Other men crowed or fumbled after petty and pinch-beck ends; impossible 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 ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... one or the other of them, into the inner harbour of it. Now, Minister used to say that Eve in Hebrew meant talk, for providence gave her the power of chattyfication on purpose to take charge of that department. Clack then you see is natural to them; talk therefore to them as they like, and they will soon like to talk to you. If a woman was to put a Bramah lock on her heart, a skilful man would find his way into ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... In each dull, lonely hour; And though misfortunes lie around, Thicker than hailstones on the ground, I'll rest upon thy power. Then while the coxcomb, pert and proud, The politician, learned and loud, Keep one eternal clack, I'll tread where silent Nature smiles, Where Solitude our woe beguiles, ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... difference. In modern rotative land engines, the valves for admitting the steam to the cylinder or condenser, instead of being clack or pot-lid valves moved by tappets on the air pump rod, are usually sluice or sliding valves, moved by an eccentric wheel on the crank shaft. Sometimes the beam is discarded altogether, and malleable iron is more largely used in the construction of engines ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... flapping overhead, and many balconies from which hung the linen swathings of young infants, and love-making maidens furtively lured the velvet-jacketed, leisurely youth below: a place haunted by windy voices of blessing and cursing, with the perpetual clack of wooden-heeled shoes upon the stones, and what perfume from the blossom of vines and almond-trees, mingling with less delicate smells, the travelled reader pleases to imagine. I do not say that I found Ferry Street actually different from this ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Dawn was on the road, Far from my side, so silently he went, Catching his golden helmet as he ran, And hast'ning on along the dun straight way, Where old men's sabots now began to clack And withered women, knitting, led their cows, On, on to call the men of Kitchener Down to their coasts,—I shouting after him: "O Dawn, would you had let the world sleep on Till all its armament were turned to rust, Nor waked it to this day of hideous hate, Of man's red murder ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... home from school are all playing the fool With the house and its fittings from garret to basement. The girls, too, are back, and continual clack Goes on all day long, to home comfort's effacement. The pudding's as sticky, the holly as pricky, The smell of sour oranges awful as ever; Stuffed hamper-unpackers, and pullers of crackers, At making of litter and noise just as clever. The stairs are all rustle, the hall's full of bustle, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... "If it was not for the old glaur! What for does heaven—or hell—send the worst of its temptations to the young and ignorant? If I had met her twenty years ago! Twenty years ago! H'm! 'Clack!' goes the weaver's shuttle! Twenty years ago it was her mother, and Sim MacTaggart without a hair on his face trying to kiss the good lady of Doom, and her, perhaps na' half ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... not the Duke? Yes, your beggar of fifty: and his vse was, to put a ducket in her Clack-dish; the Duke had Crochets in him. Hee would be drunke too, that ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Enriquez's enthusiastic ideas of American progress, and the extravagant designs he had often imparted to me of the improvements he would make when he had a fortune. I was feeling uneasy again, when I suddenly heard the rapid clack of unshod hoofs on a rocky trail that joined my own. At the same instant a horseman dashed past me at full speed. I had barely time to swerve my own horse aside to avoid a collision, yet in that brief moment I recognized the figure of Enriquez. ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... night, for many months, it had been in my mind. Of late some instinct had prompted me to finish it. I had worked at it far into the night, until I marveled that the ancient occupants of the surrounding rooms did not enter a combined protest against the clack-clacking of my typewriter keys. And now that it was gone I wondered, dully, if I could feel Von Gerhard's departure ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... separated from this new-found playfellow. When he produced a battered silver watch from the pocket of his velveteen waistcoat, holding it over her ear, she was charmed into a prolonged silence. The clack of Tippy's spoon against the crock came in from the kitchen, and now and then the fire snapped or the green fore-log ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... with another bow; bowed silently and loftily round the room, and disappeared, and a general buzz and a clack of ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... thrial, 'Bekase,' says the king, says he, 'maybe he didn't do it at all, an' so he'd get aff, so up wid him,' an' so they'd do. He had more than a hunderd wives, ginerally spakin', but he wasn't throubled in the laste be their clack, for whin wan had too much blasthogue in her jaw, or begun gostherin' at him, he cut aff her head an' said, beways av a joke, that 'that's the only cure fur a woman's tongue.' An' all the time, from sun to sun, he was cursin' an' howlin' wid rage, ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals, I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice, I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following, Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night, Talkative young ones to those that ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... sermon like that—a quiet, gentlemanly man, much like you. Lord, yes, 'tis a strain...." He paused, still wiping his face, then went on: "And I swear that when I sees them men sit there in that black pew, an' hev heard the hammers going clack, clack on the scaffolding outside, and knew that they hadn't no more chance than you have to get out of there..." He pointed his short thumb towards the handkerchief of an opening, where the little blurr of blue light wavered through ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... I pray; If I without more haggling or vain clack Select to go, and carry you on my back, If so you chose, 'tis not that death I fear, But just to ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... tradesmen, having taken down their shutters, stand in the roadway, admire the effect of their shop-windows and admonish the apprentices cleaning the panes; when the children loiter and play at hop-scotch on their way to school, and the housewives, having packed them off, find time for neighbourly clack over the scouring ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... early morning on, tied up in a voluminous apron, she was cooking in the kitchen, very hot and floury and preoccupied, drawing grating shelves out of the oven, greasing tins and patty-pans, dredging flour. The click-clack of egg-beating resounded continuously; and mountains of sponge-cakes of all shapes and sizes rose under her hands. This would be the largest, most ambitious party she had ever given—the guests expected numbered between twenty and ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... called the electrical atmosphere of the city. The newcomer from the country is very conscious of it; to the old resident it becomes second nature. City life is noisy. The whole industrial system is athrob with energy. The purring of machinery, the rattle and roar of traffic, the clack and toot of the automobile, the clanging of bells, and the chatter of human tongues create a babel that confuses and tires the unsophisticated ear and brain. They become accustomed to the sounds after a time, but the noise registers itself continually on the ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... of it anyhow, if they keep up their infernal clack," said he fiercely. "I'd like to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... by man and maid, She felt her heart grow prouder: But, ah! the more the white goose laid It clack'd and cackled louder. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... rumble of voices belonging to the unseen sailors; and the click-clack of oars working in the rowlocks also ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... a little to one side; Kim chewing his stick of sugarcane, and making way for no one under the status of a priest. They could hear the old lady's tongue clack as steadily as a rice-husker. She bade the escort tell her what was going on on the road; and so soon as they were clear of the parao she flung back the curtains and peered out, her veil a third across her face. Her men did not eye her directly when she addressed them, and thus the proprieties ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... and the clack and snarl of the banjo carried hardly further than the adjoining room; but there was no one to hear, and, as he went along, even Travis began to hum the words, but at that, Condy stopped abruptly, laid the instrument across his knees ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... turned the conversation into a less disagreeable channel — But, lest you should think my scribble as tedious as Mrs Tabby's clack, I shall not add another word, but ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... try the pet-cock to see whether the pump is acting freely: the water thrown from it should be in forcible intermittent jets; warm water with a little steam will frequently escape from it at first; if this should continue, it may be concluded that the upper clack does not act; and if the water is in a continuous stream without pulsations, the lower clack is out of order. In either case it will not be prudent to trust too much to the faulty pump, but the evil may frequently be remedied by working the pump a short time with the pet-cock open, or alternately ...
— Practical Rules for the Management of a Locomotive Engine - in the Station, on the Road, and in cases of Accident • Charles Hutton Gregory
... never stirred from thence, for there is an embargo in all the seaports, and a strict search for the adherents of the Pretender; and the tongue of that confounded woman will wag in her head like the clack of a mill, till somehow or other she will detect Captain Butler to be ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... but Sunday came, and with it the whole city world, swarming about Canonbury Castle. I could not open my window but I was stunned with shouts and noises from the cricket ground. The late quiet road beneath my window was alive with the tread of feet and clack of tongues; and to complete my misery, I found that my quiet retreat was absolutely a "show house!" the tower and its contents being shown to ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... ever existed; the birds hushed and hiding; the bee, so nimble once, fallen asleep over his own cider-press in the shadow of the golden apple. From the depths of the woods may come the notes of the cuckoo; but they strike the air more and more slowly, like the clack, clack of a distant wheel that is being stopped at the close of harvest. The whirring wings of the locust let themselves go in one long wave of sound, passing into silence. All nature is a vast sacred goblet, filling drop by drop ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... watched them," proceeded Mistress Clo. "They cannot keep their mouths shut. If they have a secret they must tell it, whether 'tis their own or another's. They clack, they tell lies, they cry and scream out if they are hurt; but they will hurt anything which cannot hurt them back. They run and weep to each other when they are in love and a man slights them. They have no spirit ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... The monotonous click-clack of the horses' feet lulled the tired child into blissful drowsiness. He had had too many ups and downs in his eleven years of life to be alarmed at this unexpected turn of fortune, and he was still too young to grasp how great a change had been wrought in that life since the hot hour he had spent ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... within narrow space, was always to be heard; it ceased only when the village slept. There was an incessant clicking accompaniment to this noisy street life; a music played from early dawn to dusk over the pavement's rough cobbles—the click clack, click clack of the countless ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... of eating, and hearing the clack of the capstan-pawls, we hurried out on deck, and put our hands upon the bars, intending to join in that last heave which should bring the ship free out of her long captivity, and so for a time we moved round about ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... — [sitting down beside her and beginning to shred rushes she gives him.] — If I didn't talk I'd be destroyed in a short while listening to the clack you do be making, for you've a queer cracked voice, the Lord have mercy on you, if it's fine to look ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge
... kep' thinkin' of the clack. Now," sez he, "I'm goin' to build a house by rote and not by note. I will git me away from wimmen, and when I'm on the lot with the timber before me, my mind will ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... woman." Morose is so delighted with the phenomenon that he consents to marry the prodigy; but the moment the ceremony is over, the boy-wife assumes the character of a virago, whose tongue is a ceaseless clack. Morose is in despair, and signs away a third of his property to his nephew, on condition of being rid of this intolerable pest. The trick is now revealed, Morose retires into private life, and Sir Dauphine ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... in my time I have had enough of satin shoes and of silver gilt heels; they click-clack as loud as yours, and cost much more to those who walk with them, not to mention that they will seldom deign to walk at all. Your wooden shoes are picturesque. Paganini made a violin out of a wooden shoe. Who knows what music may lurk in yours, only you have never heard it. Perhaps ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... lifted at last? The welter of sullen anger subsided within him. The wrapped mystery of the mountain twilight hushed speech. What folly it all was—that far off clamor of greed in the Outer World, that wolfish war of self-interest down in the Valley, that clack of the wordsters darkening wisdom without knowledge! As if one man, as if one generation of men, could stay the workings of the laws of eternal righteousness by refusing to heed, any more than one man's will could stop an avalanche by refusing ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... her drunkenness: "no, in this world, here, on what we call earth. What words the fools make use of! There is no next world, you silly ninnyhammer! he who does not skim off the fat from the broth while he is here, is a wretched gull. This however is what they clack to their simple brood, that they may behave prettily, and keep within bounds, and go the way one would lead them: but whosoever believes none of their fabling, he is free on the strength of this, and can do ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Duke? yes, your beggar of fifty; and his use was to put a ducat in her clack-dish: the Duke had crotchets in him. He would be drunk too; that ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... at the suggestion of Mr. Champ Clack but not offered. A bill adding fourteen years to the copyright period was ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... I mind for Mr. Archer?' he cried shrilly, with a clack of laughter; and then he came close up to her, stooped down with his two palms upon his knees, and looked her in the eyes, with a strange hard expression, something like a smile. 'Do I mind for God, my girl?' he said; ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Leechie caught hold of him, and kept knocking him about, against the trunks of the trees and over the fallen branches and roots, till he had scarcely a whole bone left in his body. The Leechie did not say a word, but only went clack, clack, clack, and chuckled with pleasure. Poor Koulik was almost dead with terror and pain, but still he never thought of his cross. Had the Leechie once got him well inside the forest, I do not know what would have become of him. He would probably never have been seen again by mortal man. ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... is a wonderful, yet most simple application of natural force. The inlet leg of the syphon is larger in diameter than the outlet leg, and is provided at the bottom with a valve or "clack." The outlet leg has a tap at its base. At the apex are two chambers, with an intermediary valve, regulated by a counterpoise weighted lever. The first chamber has also ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... no sound of any kind to emphasize the dead stillness, except the occasional hollow barking of a dog in the distance and the fainter answer of a further dog. Presently up the street I heard a bony clack-clacking, and guessed it was the castanets of a serenading party. In a minute more a tall skeleton, hooded, and half clad in a tattered and moldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby latticework ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Downing Street: Are hills, and dales, and valleys half so gay As bright St. James's on a levee day? What fierce ecstatic transports fire my soul, To hear the drivers swear, the coaches roll; The Courtier's compliment, the Ladies' clack, The satins rustle, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... extremity by means of a cavity sunk in the limestone, a second tube was lowered, having an outer diameter from two to four inches less than the interior diameter of the first tube. The latter served for pumping the brine. The pump used was of the ordinary bucket and clack type, but, in addition, at the surface, there was a plunger, which served to force the brine into an air vessel for the purposes of distribution. The bucket and clack were placed some feet below the point to which the brine was raised by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... up his fiddle in anger). Will you hold your tongue? Shall I throw my fiddle at your head? What can you know? What can he have said? Take no notice of her clack, kinsman! Away with you to your kitchen! You'll not think me first cousin of a fool, and that I'm looking out so high for the girl? You'll not think ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... up and stared across the harbor at the new schooner which Hat was to command. The Minnie Williams sat on the ways resplendent, her masts of yellow Oregon pine tapering into a blue sky. A mellow clack of calking ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... with him. Well, when the boom began to come he hated it awfully, and he fought it. He used to write communications to the weekly newspaper in Moffitt—they've got three dailies there now—and throw cold water on the boom. He couldn't catch on no way. It made him sick to hear the clack that went on about the gas the whole while, and that stirred up the neighborhood and got into his family. Whenever he'd hear of a man that had been offered a big price for his land and was going to sell out and move ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... during the weeks that followed, for he was not even allowed to come into the kitchen for a comforting cup of tea as of old. "And if anybody can't have a bit of a clack sometimes," groaned poor Jabez, "nor a cup of tea neither, why he might so well be dumb to once. I've ackshally got to talk to the 'orses and the cat to keep my powers of ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... rattle and clack of the returning coffeepot, boiling up the hill at an unwonted speed. And she waved her hand to Wes as he came past; but he was bent over the wheel and did not even look round for her, only banged the little car round to the back furiously. Something ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... less than any of the rest, and her first amusement was keeping silence to punish him for complaining of clack; but he explained that he did not mean quiet, sensible conversation—he only referred to those foolish women's raptures over the gabble they had been hearing at ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... on a crowd of women and girls who were assembled before the door of a still unclosed shop. Some protected themselves with umbrellas; some sought shelter beneath a row of old elms that grew alongside the canal that fronted the house. Notwithstanding the weather, the clack ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... with my skin creeping with apprehension. I had never particularly observed before what sort of sound the tapping of a crutch was, but my quivering nerves told me that I heard it now in the sharp wooden clack which alternated with the muffled thud of the foot fall. Another instant and my servant had ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the unbroken silences of nature so long, that the clack, and crash, and clamor of what we call ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... 'twa'n't no use. I was'nt used to the life, and I couldn't stand it. For ten years I haven't heard the sound of a human voice, and now they was buzz, buzzin' all the time; it seemed as if there was a swarm of wasps round my ears the everlastin' day. Buzz! buzz! and then clack! clack! like an everlasting mill-clapper; and folks starin' at my brown face and white hair, and askin' me foolish questions. I couldn't stand it, that was all. I heard that a light-keeper was wanted here, and I asked for the place, and got it. And that's all ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... summer of 1834, and in the city of New York. They were ushered in by the breaking up of an anti-slavery celebration on the Fourth of July by the clack and roar of several hundred young rowdies, gathered for the purpose. Their success but whetted the appetite of the spirit of mischief for other ventures against the Abolitionists. As a consequence New York was in a more or less disturbed state ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... scarce deserved such wrath, For warming fingers—cooling broth. No statutes old or new forbid it, Although with the same mouth he did it: Yet this beware of old and young, What Esop meant—a double tongue; Which flatters now with civil clack, And slanders ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... joy of her doing it. That scene in the Chinese restaurant is one of the prettiest bits of color you'll find to rest your eyes upon, and mighty good writing it is. I wonder, though if when Mr. Norris adroitly mentioned the "clack and snarl" of the banjo "Landy" played, he remembered the "silver snarling trumpets" of Keats? After that, things went on as such things will, and "Blix" quit the society racket and went to queer places with "Landy," and got interested in his work, and she broke him of wearing ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... installed. A manageress was advertised for, and work-girls were hired. So a new phase of life started. At half-past six in the morning there was a clatter of feet and of girls' excited tongues along the back-yard and up the wooden stair-way outside the back wall. The poor invalid heard every clack and every vibration. She could never get over her nervous apprehension of an invasion. Every morning alike, she felt an invasion of some enemy was breaking in on her. And all day long the low, steady rumble of sewing-machines overhead seemed like the low drumming of a bombardment ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... well. I've been staying at their house till I was driven out of it by the perpetual clack about that Thornton girl's marriage. It was too much for Thornton himself, though she was his sister. He used to go and sit in his own room perpetually. He's getting past the age for caring for such things, either as principal or accessory. I was surprised to find ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... made him uneasy of eye and trembling of limb. It amused her to experiment with him—to command him, to demand speech of him when he was most angry and disgusted with the life he was living. That he despised her father and mother she did not know, but that he was sick of the cowboys and their "clack" she did know, and she understood quite as well as if he had already told her that she alone kept him from returning at once to Denver to try some other manner of earning a living. This realization gave ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... vibratory shimmer and shadow. By contrast the patches of darkness were jet black; the overhanging portico of the house was as yawning as a cavern. She listened, stood, her head bent slightly forward, listening. Not a sound could be heard. The sharp, crisp clack of Joe's footsteps had been swallowed up by the distance. She could hear the sound of her own breathing. An uneasiness came gradually upon her, a vague sort of dread of being left alone, entirely alone. How aloof he had seemed; how aloof everything seemed, ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... the widow's daily paper which, by the way, he largely depended on for the news. Silence reigned for a while, save for the rustle of the sheet. The click-clack of the widow's knitting needles, and the rapid plying of Cicely's brush, were varied at last by the girl surreptitiously pulling a note out of her ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts |
