"Crack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... town appears, in the shape of some straggling cottages: and the carriage begins to rattle and roll over a horribly uneven pavement. As if the equipage were a great firework, and the mere sight of a smoking cottage chimney had lighted it, instantly it begins to crack and splutter, as if the very devil were in it. Crack, crack, crack, crack. Crack-crack- crack. Crick-crack. Crick-crack. Helo! Hola! Vite! Voleur! Brigand! Hi hi hi! En r-r-r-r-r-route! Whip, wheels, driver, stones, beggars, children, crack, crack, crack; helo! ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... must now know that Juan Lanas, the blind man, with the change of district and dwelling did not change his judgment and if he was crack-brained at San Garcia, he remained crack-brained at Toledo, consuming in this resort his money upon worthless drugs and quacks which did not cure his blindness and impoverished him more and more every day, ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... recommend a fortnight's heavy gale in the South Atlantic as a cure for a blase state of mind. It cannot be described; the sound, the sense of being hurled along without the smallest regard to 'this side uppermost'; the beauty of the whole scene, and the occasional crack and bear-away of sails and spars; the officer trying to 'sing out', quite in vain, and the boatswain's whistle scarcely audible. I remained near the wheel every day for as long as I could bear it, ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... Quaaludes is the North American slang term for methaqualone, a pharmaceutical depressant. Stimulants are drugs that relieve mild depression, increase energy and activity, and include cocaine (coke, snow, crack), amphetamines (Desoxyn, Dexedrine), phenmetrazine (Preludin), methylphenidate (Ritalin), ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... come laden with my sin; Nor could aught ease the grief that I was in Till I came hither: What a place is this! Must here be the beginning of my bliss? Must here the burden fall from off my back Must here the strings that bound it to me crack? Blest cross! blest sepulchre! blest rather be The man that there was ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was clear and cloudless, the sun unusually warm. So warm, indeed, that long clefts, caused by the unequal expansion of the ice, appeared here and there. The man from the plane had not gone more than fifty yards when he halted sharply. With a crack like thunder, a cleft had opened at his very feet—a rift ten feet deep in places, apparently bottomless in others, and very long. Not wanting to go around it, he slid down one side and, with an ice pick, started to hack a foothold in the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... at its ends to two short pieces of platinum wire, which pass through the glass of the bulb and around which the glass is fused. As platinum has almost exactly the same coefficient of heat-expansion as glass, the wires do not cause the glass to crack. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... first uncertain whether to advance or retreat, now resolved to enter for the moment into the whim of the scene, though internally fretting at Mac-Morlan for sending him to consult with a crack-brained humourist. He therefore advanced with three profound congees, and craved permission to lay his credentials at the feet of the Scottish monarch, in order to be perused at his best leisure. The gravity with which he accommodated himself to the humour of the moment, and the deep and ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... manuscript must have been written at the time when Mr. Brummel was the leader of the London fashion.] a nobody's son: a low creature, who can no more dance a minuet than I can talk Cherokee; who cannot even crack a bottle like a gentleman; who never showed himself to be a man with his sword in his hand: as we used to approve ourselves in the good old times, before that vulgar Corsican upset the gentry of the ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fact that his mother would not permit him to buy them. Mrs. Dobbs used some artificial dyes which stained the eggshells a horrible purple or a less horrible red, and John had a feeling of sickness when he looked at them. Mrs. MacDermott said that if the eggs were to crack during the process of boiling, the dye would penetrate the meat and might poison anyone who ate it; and even if the shells remained uncracked, the dye would soil the fingers and perhaps soil the clothes. She ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... sweeping river—all the landscape of his bliss, the prison of his intolerable shame. A fierce peremptory longing seized him to kill his bliss and his shame at one stroke. Four words would do it. He had but to stand up and cry aloud, "I am an Englishman!" and the whole beautiful hideous dream would crack, shiver, dissolve. Only four words! Almost he heard his voice shouting them and saw through the trembling heat her body droop under the stab, her love take the mortal hurt and die with a face of scorn. ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... May-day, And shouted and tippled the tumblers galore. A print of their masther Is often in plasther O' Paris, put over the door of a tap; A fine chubby fellow, Ripe, rosy, and mellow, Like a peach that is ready to drop in your lap. Hurrah! for brave Bacchus, A bottle to crack us, He's a friend of the people, like bowld ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... the sharp crack of the drivers' whips followed by the squealing cry of quivering flesh (a cry wherein was none of the human) the which, dying to a whine, was lost in the stir and bustle of the great galleass. But ever and always, beneath the hoarse voices of the mariners, beneath the clash of armour ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... his plan into his brother's by determining to get on the scene early enough to have first crack at the treasure. He meant to get away with that, leave his brother to deal with Alwa's men, circle round, and then attack his brother from ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... black, With rain and hail, so much could not be spanned; Fell thunderbolts often on every hand, And verily the earth quaked in answer back From Saint Michael of Peril unto Sanz, From Besencun to the harbour of Guitsand; No house stood there but straight its walls must crack: In full mid-day the darkness was so grand, Save the sky split, no light was in the land. Beheld these things with terror every man, And many said: "We in the Judgement stand; The end of time is presently at hand." ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... that he cracks his whip? Does he pitend to be angry? If he pitends to be angry, why do all the others pitend that they think he doesn't pitend, but only,—Why does the gentleman crack ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... as many men came out from behind the shoulder of the mountain in sharp pursuit. The pursued were bent low over the necks of their horses; from the crowd of pursuers there came each instant a puff of smoke followed by the sharp crack of the report; and each instant a horse fell, or ran wildly with empty saddle, as the balls ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... seeds exposed to sea water. Why has nobody thought of trying the experiment before, instead of taking it for granted that salt water kills seeds? I shall have it nearly all reprinted in "Silliman's Journal" as a nut for Agassiz to crack. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... and started; I didn't go over a quarter of a mile till I saw four Bison cows, and they all had calves with them. I crawled up in shooting distance and killed one of the calves. At the crack of my gun the cows ran away. I commenced dressing the calf and here came four of my Sighewash Indians running to me, and when they saw what I had killed, I believe they were the happiest mortals that ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... rather dear; but they are the only kind worth while. Those little yellow things would soak and crack, and never look comfortable in the kitchen-closet. I give you very fair warning, I shall always want the best of things but then I shall take very fierce and jealous care of ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... him and saw her lover to the door; when the sound of his steps had died away on the stairs she ran out on to the balcony to see him get into the tilbury, to see him gather up the reins, to catch a parting look, hear the crack of his whip and the sound of his wheels on the stones, watch the handsome horse, the master's hat, the tiger's gold lace, and at last to stand gazing long after the dark corner of the street had eclipsed ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... eagerly—for a decent interval to elapse. Thanks to aunt Mary's coaching, Annie did not knock again, but stood in pretty decision with her eyes straight before her. A leisurely footstep sounded within; the latch lifted with dignity, the door opened a crack at first, then more widely; and, outlined against a blacker background, stood the tall, stern, forbidding figure ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... a roar, and made him the most fascinating of debauchees, was now mellowed into a cloudy enthusiasm, the sable of which was still copiously blended with rainbow colours. His brain had received a slight though incurable crack; there was a certain exasperation mixed with his unsettled fervour; but he was not wretched, often even not uncomfortable. His religion was not real; but it had reality enough for present purposes; he was at once a sceptic and a mystic, a true disciple of Boehm ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... applause with a 'Good boy. She's a homer.' Then he led the gallery to the first green. He was puffing when he pulled up at the eighteenth hole, but he felt better than if he had stolen second base. 'I'd like to take a crack at that golf ball,' he said. 'You can put me down for a trial the first chance I get. Wouldn't mind togging up in kilts just to give the Prince of Wales a run for his money.'" For the sake of giving prominence to it, this ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... sailing her, sir," said the captain, a little nettled, "and sailing her on the edge of a hurricane. You had better take the lady below, sir: when it comes it will come with a crack." But Reyburn laughed at him again, and passed over to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... expect such foresight on Maurice's part. But for herself, whenever she got an apple or a nut, she put it carefully aside. It was not that her little teeth did not long to close in the juicy fruit, or to crack the hard shell and secure the kernel. But far greater than these physical longings was her earnest desire to keep true to her solemn promise to the dead—to find, and give her mother's message and her mother's gift to the beautiful, wayward English girl who yet ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... eyebrows in a suggestive manner, as if to say, "You see, my spy has been warned." It seemed as if it would be impossible to hold any conversation at all, but, fortunately, they were put into adjoining cubicles, and Barbara found a crack, which she ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... opposition to the government, owing to the wars with France, meant social ostracism; and he had refused a peerage. The son had enjoyed the usual advantages of the young Englishman in his position. He had been educated at Eton and at the university of Cambridge. Three years in a crack cavalry regiment at a time when all England was under arms could have done little to lessen his feeling for his caste. A Gretna Green marriage with an heiress, while he was yet a minor, is characteristic of his impetuous temperament, as ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... they must all manage to break the bonds that held them there and escape from the death-trap before the fatal swinging menace reached them. The stroke of nine, booming out in that house, would be like the Crack o' Doom to ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... cannot Believe this crack to be in my dread mistress, So sovereignly being honourable. Leo. I have lov'd thee—Make that thy question, ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... destined to failure, for the men were of a type different from that of English Eddie, who was lying dead as the meet reward for treachery to his fellows.... When, at last, his question issued from the close-shut lips, it came like the crack of ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... them what food they would have eaten themselves that day. It served only to excite their restlessness, to hold them there at the crack of the door, snuffling and slobbering. The outer circle slept, the inner watched. Then they would shift, like sentries. They had a horrible sort of system. Most of that dreadful afternoon Miss Blake paced the floor, trying to strengthen ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... Austrian Division against Lagow, and the Fourth Austrian Landwehr Division, supported by the Forty-first Honved Division, against Ivaniska; they moved along roads converging on Opatow. The Twenty-fifth Austrian Division, commanded by the Archduke Peter Ferdinand, was composed of crack regiments, the Fourth Hoch and Deutschmeisters of Vienna, and the Twenty-fifth, Seventeenth, and Tenth Jaeger battalions. The Russians were outnumbered about 40 per cent. The supposedly demoralized Russians were not expected to give any battle short of their ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... solitary specimens, being such a novelty, and standing out so plainly on the flat scene, had been picked up by farmer or cowboy and taken home. Thus each of the several stones in those parts was engaged in holding open the barn door or the ranch gate, or was established in the back yard to crack pecan nuts on, much to the improvement of flatirons. If a man had stolen one and used it openly, he would sooner or later have been found out. But why do we speak ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... mathematics and architectural drawing at the Lakeview Hall school that the girls were attending. "You can be sure that neither Dr. Prescott nor I would take any chances on that score. A heavy logging team went over it yesterday, and the ice didn't even creak, let alone crack. And every day that passes of this kind of weather makes it ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... their admiration. He rode a large white horse, and although rendered a prominent mark for the rifles of the sailors, he always escaped unhurt. He would ride boldly out in full view of the vessel, patiently wait for someone to expose himself, when the sharp crack of his rifle would be followed by the report made to the captain, "A man ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... we reluctantly kept away on our course, having the gratification of hearing a clear well blown bugle on board the schooner play up "Yankee Doodle." As the brig fell off, our long gun was run out to have a parting crack at her, when the third and last shot from the schooner struck the sill of the midship port, and made the white splinters fly from the solid oak like bright silver sparks in the moonlight. A sharp, piercing cry rose in the air—my soul identified that death-shriek with the voice that I had ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... and after a tiresome march reached the battle-field about dark. Our forces had suffered a bloody repulse, and had just finished burying our dead under a flag of truce. The burial parties with their bloody stretchers were returning, and the sharp crack of the rifle began again to be heard, and so continued with more or less fierceness ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... jobs on hand to-night," said the leader of the gang. "There's a crib to be cracked an' a guy to be croaked. Red, you an' Gypsie an' the Gunney will crack the crib. It's dead easy. Only an old man an' his wife. The servants are out except one an' he's fixed. I'll give you the layout presently. The other job's harder. Kid, I'll put you in charge, an' as it's got to ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... stupidity extended to an utter ignorance of music, which he only prized as the means of gaining the large sums which his extravagance craved. His wife once complained of the piano, saying, "I can not possibly sing to that piano; I shall crack my voice: the piano is absurdly high." "Do not fret, my dear," interposed the husband, soothingly; "it shall be lowered before evening: I will attend to it myself." Evening came, and the house was crowded; but, ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... crack and slide of rocks as had attended our descent, Jones bore down on us. For an old man it was a marvelous performance. He walked on the avalanches as though he wore seven-league boots, and presently, as we began to dodge whizzing bowlders, he stepped down to us, whirling his ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... but their eyes blazing with such immensity and intensity of purpose it has been said the Germans fled, as before spirits, when they saw these men) had not only blocked the roundabout road to Paris; they had broken the morale of Von Buelow's crack troops. Without this brilliant maneuver and superb execution the successes of all the other armies ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... feller made a stake out'n a silver prospect, and he takes it into his head to go back to Nebrasky and hunt up his wife, that he'd run off and left some time prev'ous. As the date gits clost for him to leave, he got glummer and glummer. He'd skerce crack a smile. The night before the stage was comin' to git him, he was settin' in a 'dobe with a dirt roof, rared back on the hind legs of his chair, with ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... engaged in this propaganda. I could easily, to quote De Quincey's words, 'bray their fungous heads to powder with a lady's fan, and throttle them between heaven and earth with my finger and thumb.' But we want to know just how far their doctrines, or whatever they call their crack-brained fantasies, have taken root in the minds of the people, and what the minds are like, and what the outcome of it all is to be. If we go to the East End, and I don't see why we shouldn't, as soon as we find ourselves settled there I shall begin to go about ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... versatility from the lapse of ages as any; yet still, to say that it has experienced some change, would not be hazarding a very improbable opinion. Who knows but the "clamorous smack" wherewith the Jehu of an eight-horse wagon salutes the lips of his rosy inamorata, (scarcely less audible than the crack of his heavy thong on Smiler's dull sides,) may have been perfectly consistent with the acme of politesse some centuries bygone. We speak here somewhat confidently. Hear what an amorous votary of the Muses in the olden time, Robert Herrick, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... ended at the brink of a deep crevice in the ground. Seems to be an earthquake-type split in solid rock, with the sand sifting over this and the far edge like pink silk cataracts. The bottom is in the shade and can't be seen. The crack seems to extend to our left and right as far as we ...
— The Dope on Mars • John Michael Sharkey
... straw, 'twas warm and soft, His chair, a three-legged stool; His broken jug was emptied oft, Yet, somehow, always full. His mistress' portrait decked the wall, His mirror had a crack; Yet, gay and glad, though this was all His ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... crack-jawed idea you talk of was true," answered he, "those gay lads might as well make their wills, for I'd step up the scaffolding at night and just saw the planks that they are in the habit of clapping their toes on, half through, and when one of the mates stepped on it, why, there would be a bit ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... of the clear, cold water from a cup made of a basswood leaf, they washed faces and hands, and went to the flat rock for breakfast. The butternuts were not quite ripe; they stained fingers, and they were hard to crack—with just a stone for a hammer—but there were "lots of them," as ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... every step: "Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward! Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak! Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can! Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason To draw and kill you. Take your billy out. I'll crack your boar's head with a piece of brick!" But never a word the hog-eyed one returned But trod about the court-house, followed both By troops of boys and watched by all the men. All day, they walked the square. ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... courage. He calmed down at once, and soon began to make apologies. Mr. B. then told him kindly, but firmly, that, if he wished to walk in the same path with him, he must walk as straight as the crack on the floor before them; adding that he would not walk with anybody who would jostle him by walking so crooked as he had done. He was perfectly tamed, and Mr. B. said he never had any more trouble ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... the beginning; and God has surely not been so cruel to the world as to leave it till now in the dark. Our hopes are not set on any new, untried remedy. This bridge across the Infinite for us is not a frail plank on which no one has yet walked, and which may crack and break when the timid foot of the first passenger is on the centre, but it is a tried structure upon which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... step towards the door, and I slipped away from where I had been standing. I saw the door of another room near me, and I opened it and went in quickly. I closed the door behind me, but I did not shut it. I looked through the crack and saw Mr. Holymead making his way downstairs. He walked as if he didn't see anything, and I watched him till he went through the curtains on the stairs at the bend of the staircase and I could ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... arrange our stateroom before we are ill," she says presently, in a state of hopeful anticipation, and we retire to No. 49 in the Steamship San Miguel, which all who have taken this journey know to be the best double room on the "crack" steamer of the line. We put up hangers, divide pockets and racks, and prepare for a three weeks' occupancy. Having finished our work, we go to the stern to get a whiff of the stiff breeze blowing from ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... be the performers in this ingenious theatre, it is the unaccustomed stranger who is forced into the position of actor. As he toils up the steep and slovenly streets, faced with shabby buildings that crack and blacken behind their ill-adjusted fronts of stucco and distemper, he cheapens rapidly in his own view: he feels painfully like the hapless supernumerary whom he has seen mounting an obvious step-ladder behind a screen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... "I'll crack thy numskull for thee, you mandy chap!" said Mrs. Nunsuch, as she helplessly danced round with him, her feet playing like drumsticks among the sparks. "My ankles were all in a fever before, from walking through that prickly furze, and now you ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... railways. He settled down to the slow process of entrenching his own lines securely and extending the entrenchment further and further round the south side of Petersburg. Lee was thus being forced to extend the position held by his own small army further and further. In time the lines would crack and the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... by even the little conversation ceased, and they sat quite silent, waiting and waiting, perhaps awed by their own silence. Sometimes one would bravely try to crack a joke, and they laughed, but it sounded strained. They were plainly nervous, these brave men that fought like lions in the open when led to an attack, heedless of danger and destruction. They felt under a cloud in the security of the trenches, and they were conscious ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... challenge, shots, curses, but it was in his dreams, as if in another world, where insults and attacks do not arouse one's sensibilities. Then—nothing! A dense shadow, a night of profound sleep. He was awakened by a ray of sunshine which filtered through a crack in the window and shone upon his eyes. The morning light again brought into relief the whiteness of the walls which during the night seemed to sweat the shadows and barbaric mysteries of ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... brings back a blinding flash of light, or the over-powering blow of an explosion with the intensity of the image in proper relation to the impression. I believe that it is not necessary to go so far, for example, and hold that not even the sparkling of a star, the crack of a pistol, etc., are kept in memory with more than partial implication of the event. Maudsley points out correctly that we can have no memory of pain—"because the disturbance of nervous elements disappears just as soon as their integrity is again established.'' Perhaps, also, because ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... The young man had waited composedly for his coming, but as his assailant advanced, had shot out his left hand. There was a sharp crack and the yellow-faced man, reeling, dropped face downwards on the carpet without a sound. In his fall his foot caught a small table on which a vase of chrysanthemums stood, and the whole thing went over with a loud ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... by bursting the dry and contracted shell, in what is known as quarter or toe crack, and the miserable victim becomes practically useless at an age when his powers should be in ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... the muddy brown eggs crack open one by one, and out come the young Dabchicks, pretty, little, fuzzy brown balls. They shake themselves, and look at each other, and say how-d'-ye-do to their mother and father; and then, without any more ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... nut to crack," Cuthbert said, laughing. "With such arms as you have in the forest the enterprise would be something akin ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... Bandy-legs, whose quick eyesight had discovered the approach of the other chum, "and chances are he's bringing some news, because he carries the map on his face. 'Touch-and-Go Steve' we call him, because he's ready to fly off his base at the first crack of the gun; but he's sure got plenty now to excite him. Hello! Steve, how's things ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... dome must be renewed eight or ten times in a century. Winckelmann attributes their rapid decay to the corrosive action of the sirocco wind; Fea to the variations in temperature, which cause the lead to melt in summer, and crack ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... shrilleth high, The hard brands shiver on the steel, The splinter'd spear-shafts crack and fly, The horse and ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... we pin our faith on! Thus it is that criticism,—literary criticism, at any rate,—is a lost art,—YOU know that. A man must either be dead (or considered dead) or in a 'clique' to receive any open encouragement at all from the so-called 'crack' critics. And the cliquey men are generally such stupendous bigots for their own particular and restricted form of 'style.' Anything new they hate,—anything daring they treat with ridicule. Some of them have no hesitation in saying they prefer Matthew Arnold (remember ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... gathering strength to throw, Discharged the ponderous ruin at the foe. Where to the hip the inserted thigh unites, Full on the bone the pointed marble lights; Through both the tendons broke the rugged stone, And stripp'd the skin, and crack'd the solid bone. Sunk on his knees, and staggering with his pains, His falling bulk his bended arm sustains; Lost in a dizzy mist the warrior lies; A sudden cloud comes swimming o'er his eyes. There the brave chief, who mighty numbers sway'd, Oppress'd had sunk to death's eternal shade, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... not 'spin his brains' but something much better." He "has got hold of another clue—that of Nature and history—and long may he spin it, 'even to the crack of doom!'" Scott's success lies in not thinking of himself. "And then again the catch that blind Willie and his wife and the boy sing in the hollow of the heath—there is more mirth and heart's ease in it than in all Lord Byron's Don Juan or Mr. Moore's ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... At the crack of the gun one of the largest mountain lions we have ever seen (you can imagine how large he appeared to the bold hunter) sprang from a cliff of rocks, and landed not over thirty feet from Curnutt, in an attitude looking anything but friendly, and ready to contest ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... applications of the black-snake in a public sort of way. The black-snake, I may explain, could be wielded by a strong but unskilled arm. It was different, however, with the cattle-adder. That had to be handled by an expert, one who could stand off twenty paces, more or less, and crack the long lash with such astonishing precision that the tip end of it barely touched the back of the culprit, the result being a nobby assortment of splotches that looked for all the world like hives after ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... chair as a cold ring was pressed against the back of his neck through the crack of the window. At the same instant Carp had tilted back and raised one knee. The gun that rested on his leg was peeping over the table ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... the window; Will followed her, seizing her hand with a spasmodic movement; and so they stood, with their hands clasped, like two children, looking out on the storm, while the thunder gave a tremendous crack and roll above them, and the rain began to pour down. Then they turned their faces towards each other, with the memory of his last words in them, and they did ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... you out of your mind, my dear Sylvie?" he cried. "Can those who have no teeth crack nuts? Thank God I've got some common-sense ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... importance. The scouts reported only a regiment of cavalry ahead, but a powerful detachment of French artillery on the road from Jouchery. The German leader detached 2,000 of the Death's Head Hussars, his crack cavalry, to cut off, or at all events to delay, the French guns. He was aware that the artillery would have no anticipation of this and, in the surprise, the guns might be captured. Meantime, he hurried his advance ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... or pin drill. Where the cutters are secured, as usual, by a key, all mechanics know that it is very difficult to set a cutter twice alike; and the notch, which is filed in the cutter, to prevent it from moving endways, is a great source of weakness, often causing the cutters to crack in hardening, as well as after they are put to work. The inclosed sketch will ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... COLEMAN is a handsome, finely built man of about thirty-two. He is a West Pointer, is a good oarsman, a crack shot, and a good fellow all around. No finicking about him, no nerves. Just a sane, ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... flying thick. The British guns are at present quiet, but the French 75's are barking furiously. It is a delight to hear their sharp, clean bark. The enemy's machine-guns have also been very active this afternoon, the crack, crack, crack, of the Turkish one being easily distinguishable from the noise made by ours. The day of our ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... disgustedly and was soon back with a gloriously messy batch of clay which he dashed painstakingly into the crack and into sundry other cracks that ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... midwinter snowfall! Yes! where whole trains of wagons are stopped and whole camps snowed up, until all hands perish of cold and hunger. Don't tell me! You don't know nothin' about snow here." And she stopped talking to put another nut between her teeth and crack it. ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... and bridegroom were to have four weeks' motoring in the north of England. When the honeymoon was officially over they were to make country-house visits in Scotland for the shooting season. Sidney Vandyke boasted of being a crack shot, and Diana hoped to be proud of her American ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... barked for the hundreth time when he heard a twig crack just back of him. It had a different sound from the noisy crack of Jack Frost, and Reddy stopped a yap right in the middle and whirled about to see what it might be. There was Bowser the Hound almost upon him, his eyes flashing fire, his great, red jaws wide open, and ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... I'll teach you: think yourself a baby; That you have taken these tenders for true pay Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, Wronging it thus) you'll ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Major Hunt-Goring, his eyes boldly passing her to rest upon Violet. "Managed to crack my thumb tinkering at my old motor. Dr. Wyndham tells me that you have been kind enough to ask me to lunch. How do you do, Miss Campion? Charmed to meet you! Someone told me you were yachting ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... whisperings seemed to come forth from space. Sometimes they sounded so low that she could scarcely hear them; at others they were so loud that she could almost distinguish the words uttered by the unseen. Was it merely a phenomenon caused by the wind blowing through some crack in the ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... Herminius darted back; And as they passed, beneath their feet They felt the timbers crack; But when they turn'd their faces, And on the farther shore Saw brave Horatius stand alone, They would ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of different kinds of rocks, and very sparingly scattered through the soil. We had scarcely reached the summit of this hill, when it was enveloped in thick clouds, from which the lightning flashed, and the thunder pealed close to us, and crack after crack reverberated along the valleys. It soon passed away, however, and left us well drenched, but the western horizon was still black with clouds. From this hill we proceeded to another, which at first sight I had thought was of volcanic origin, but proved ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... little wooden cubicle partitioned off from the sculpture-lined gallery. Kim laid himself down, his ear against a crack in the heat-split cedar door, and, following his instinct, stretched out ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... speaking, Colonel Conger, slipping around to the rear, drew some loose straws through a crack, and lit a match upon them. They were dry and blazed up in an instant, carrying a sheet of smoke and flame through the parted planks, and heaving in a twinkling a world of light and heat upon the magazine within. ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... on the platform outside and a lank, good-looking countryman glanced cautiously in through the crack in the door. Observing Molly, he spat a wad of tobacco over the hitching rail by the steps, and stopped to smooth his straw-coloured hair with the palm of his ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... but let me tell you a story. In a sea fight in the reign of Charles the Second, there was a very bloody engagement between the English and Dutch fleets, in the heat of which a Scotch sea-man was very severely bit by a louse on his neck, which he caught; and stooping down to crack it between his nails, many of the sailors near him had their heads taken off by a chain-shot from the enemy, which dashed their blood and brains about him; on which he had compassion upon the poor louse, returned him to his place and ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... the Justice, "or by St. Christopher, you shall crack the cocoa-nut full of salt-and-water, according to the statute for such ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... just as well pleased, Jack," he remarked, "though I had it made up to give the brute all that was coming to him. Once let me get a fair crack at him with this stick, and he'll go daffy, I warrant you. I'll put all the vim into the blow that stands for a home-run hit on the diamond. But remember, I don't like dog, and I'm not aching for a ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... tells the enraged listeners at last, without circumlocution, that he is the Apostle of the Gentiles, that Jesus has made him so against his will, and that therefore he must do the work appointed him, though his heart-strings crack with seeming ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... To the dullest old cit, And makes him of politics crack—O! The lawyers i' th' hall Were not able to bawl, Were it not for a ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... everything that the world considers most desirable. Mark, we have seen, had been educated at Harrow and Oxford, and it may be said, therefore, that he had received his patrimony early in life. For Gerald Robarts, the second brother, a commission had been bought in a crack regiment. He also had been lucky, having lived and become a captain in the Crimea; and the purchase-money was lodged for his majority. And John Robarts, the youngest, was a clerk in the Petty Bag Office, and was already assistant private secretary ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... to parish, one of the churchwardens of X complained to the churchwardens of Y that his late importation from the Y pulpit was not very satisfactory. 'And yet,' he said, 'you all cracked him up enormously.' 'Yes,' replied the churchwarden of Y, 'and you will have to crack him up too before ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... rumbled through the streets, and jolted over the stones, and at length reach the wide and open country. The wheels skim over the hard and frosty ground; and the horses, bursting into a canter at a smart crack of the whip, step along the road as if the load behind them—coach, passengers, cod-fish, oyster-barrels, and all—were but a feather at their heels. They have descended a gentle slope, and enter upon a level, as compact and dry as a solid block of marble, two miles long. Another crack ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... arose, folded our camp-stools, and started. We wished to move without sound; but the woods were dry, and every dead stick snapped with a crack; every fallen leaf rustled with a startling sound; every squirrel under whose tree we chanced to pass first shrieked, and then subsided into a sobbing cry or a scolding bark, according as his fur was gray or red. ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... spirit that on this life's rough sea Loves t'have his sails fill'd with a lusty wind, Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack, And his rapt ship run on her side so low That she drinks water and her keel plows ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... sharp crack of Fred's rifle close by my side, and following the direction of his aim, I saw Darnley loosen his hold of the dog, stagger back, press one hand upon his side as though he felt a sudden pain; but still he kept his feet, and waved to his gang ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes |
