"Nick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nick of time, he made the acquaintance of a Mr William Arbuckle, a friend of his father-in-law, and a South African sheep farmer, home for a holiday; and this man strongly urged him to emigrate to South Africa and take up sheep farming. The idea powerfully appealed ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... in this while the "take" grew fainter and ceased at least near the shore? Out in the middle, where few flies managed to float, the trout were at it till dark. But near shore there was just one trout who never stopped gorging all day. He lived exactly opposite the nick in the distant hills, and exactly a yard farther out than I could throw a fly. He was a big one, and I am inclined to think that he was the Devil. For, if I had stepped in deeper, and the water had come over my ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... poor Nick, an honest creature, Of faithful, gentle, courteous nature; A parlor pet unspoiled by favor, A pattern of good dog behavior, Without a wish, without a dream, Beyond his home and friends at Cheam. Contentedly ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... ever and anon for blessed sight of her where she flitted lightly to and fro, she bidding me take heed lest I cut myself. Cut myself I did forthwith, and she, beholding the blood, must come running to staunch it and it no more than a merest nick. And now, seeing her thus tender of me who had endured so many hurts and none to grieve or soothe, I came very near ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... nedrig, low, rascally. nedsteg, see nedstiga, ned|stiga (-steg, -stigit, -stigen), to step down, descend. nedt, downwards. nej, no. nek|a (-ade, -at), to deny, refuse. nerifrn, from below. ner, see ned. nere, down. nick|a (-ade, -at), to nod. nidingsdd (-et,—), villainous deed. niding (-en, -ar), outlaw, villain. nidingsfunder, no sing., malicious artifices. nidingsstng (-en, -stnger), niding post, pillory. njuta (njt, njutit, njuten), to enjoy. nog, indeed, enough. ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... allusion to his dark skin infuriates Neville to that violent degree, that he flings the dregs of his wine at Edwin Drood, and is in the act of flinging the goblet after it, when his arm is caught in the nick of ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... we felt that they were faltering and that our work was easier and our hope higher; then we cried our cries and pressed on harder, and in that very nick of time there arose close behind us the roar of the Markmen's horn and the cries of the kindreds answering ours. Then such of the Romans as were not in the very act of smiting, or thrusting, or clinging or shielding, turned and fled, and the whoop of victory rang around ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... asked for "Nick Carter" she gave them those classics, "The Rollo Books"; and to the French-Canadians she gave, reasonably enough, the acknowledged masters of their language, Voltaire, Balzac, and Flaubert, till the horrified priest forbade from the pulpit ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... British heads. In the meantime, other engineers had traced out the road from the bay to the battery. Led by their officers the French regulars set to work with such goodwill that the road was ready next day for the siege train of twenty-two cannon, now landed in the nick ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... Mrs. Truslove—who has a nice little income. He hears that her income is to be halved; and we know that if an allowance begins by being halved, as likely as not it will be stopped altogether before long. He saw that clearly enough. Then in the very nick of time this cheque comes along. He sends it to the bank with this letter of instructions, and murders Lord Loudwater so that he cannot disavow them. What more of a case do ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... strenuous press To sow good seed; There was that saving from distress In the nick of need; There were those words in the wilderness: ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... little lady is arrayed in the ordinary garb of the nineteenth century with what is technically termed a 'pannier,' and large open sleeves, each of which, I fear, she must have found considerably in the way, as also the sundry lockets and other nick-nacks suspended from her neck. However, there they were. We put her in a cupboard, which had a single Windsor chair in it, and laid a stoutish new cord on her lap. Then came singing, which may or may not have been intended to drown any noise in the cupboard; but, after some ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... of the Durrnberg, the dry brownish limestone showed its bare front to the morning sun. We entered the offices, partly contained in the rock, and applied for admission into the dominion of the gnomes. Our arrival was quite in the nick of time, for we had not to be kept waiting, as we happened to complete the party of twelve, without which the guides do not start. It was a Tower of London business; and, as at the Tower, the demand upon our purses was not ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... Parliament—peers, namely, and women; and yet it was soon known through the whole length and breadth of the county that the present electioneering fight was being carried on between a peer and a woman. Miss Dunstable had been declared the purchaser of the Chace of Chaldicotes, as it were, just in the very nick of time; which purchase—so men in Barsetshire declared, not knowing anything of the facts—would have gone altogether the other way, had not the giants obtained temporary supremacy over the gods. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... then, to talk with Harriet. The things I had with myself were too important. I skulked toward my barn, compelling myself to walk slowly until I reached the corner, where I broke into an eager run as though the old Nick himself were after me. Behind the barn I dropped down on the grass, panting with laughter, and not without some of the shame a man feels at being a boy. Close along the side of the barn, as I sat there in the cool of the shade, I could see a tangled mat of smartweed and catnip, and the boards of ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... one consolation; the law! the law! She could have no legal proof, and intuition goes for nothing in a court of justice. All the suspicion went against Guy Waring, and Guy Waring—well, Guy Waring had fled the kingdom in the very nick of time, and was skulking now, Heaven alone knew where or why, in the remotest depths ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... When every one else deserts him, she takes a cab into the city, and employs some clever friend, who has always been hopelessly in love with her—and for whom she entertains, unknown to her husband, a Platonic brotherly regard—to intervene in the nick of time, and to ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... up on the south side of the tree left a clean nick across and two inches deep in the middle. The chopper then stepped forward one pace and on the north-northwesterly side, eighteen inches lower down than the first cut, after reversing his hands—which is what few can do—he rapidly chopped a butt-kerf. Not a ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... shell from the sutural angle on the outer lip, consisting of four whorls which rapidly enlarge; the inside expanded out, disk nearly flat exhibiting one distinct whorl; the columella lip narrow, rather long, flattened; the outer lip thin, truncated; the nick of the imperfect perforation placed about one-third the length of the outer lip from the end of the columella lip: length six inches, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... message out of the air one night and by accident had found a code message in it revealing a German plot to dynamite a great dam and destroy a munition city; and later the wireless patrol had run down the dynamiters themselves in the very nick of time, after the state police had failed to find them, and ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... unseen hand was stretching forth in the hour of my need, somebody's deft fingers snatched the tangled web that had gone so far astray in the weaving, and in the nick of time made a hazardous effort to smoothen the silken threads for the busy loom that waits not for the slow ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... at the nick of fortune? Do you know that a sub-lieutenancy is vacant in my company? Sub-lieutenant, with rank of a Colonel ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... was a nick name given to the western peasantry of Scotland, from then using the words frequently in driving strings of horses. Hence, as connected with Calvinistical principles in religion, and republican doctrines in policy, it was given as a term of reproach to the opposition party in the latter years ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... Nick himself when he was a comitaj had twice been caught by the Turks. Once he was shot in thirteen places at once, but was found by some Christian women and eventually recovered; the second time the Turks beat him almost to ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... I was sent to Tregony grammar school, my father being determined to give me a schooling befitting the position he hoped, in spite of his misfortunes, I should some day occupy. Now Nick Tresidder had been attending this same school for some months when I went. For this I was very glad, because I thought it would give me an opportunity for testing him. I had not been in the school a week, ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... the grey old capital of Scotland in the very nick of time. The Old Town, a tangle of narrow alleys and close courtyards, surrounded by tall houses with endless tiers of floors, was just being deserted by the rich and fashionable world for the New Town, which lies beyond a ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... deck, Hozier helped to adjust the remaining rope around the captain's portly person. They were lifted clear of the trembling forecastle almost simultaneously, and in the very nick of time. Already the skeleton of the ship's hull was beginning to slip off into deep water. The deck was several feet lower than at the moment of the vessel's final impact against the rocks. Even before the three reached the ledge from which their ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... his foe stronger; the axe had flown out of his hand also, while the strange man still kept a hold of his short-sword; and presently, though he still struggled all he could, he saw the man draw back his hand to smite with the said sword; and at that nick of time the foeman's knee was on his breast, his left hand was doubled back behind him, and his right wrist was gripped hard in the stranger's left hand. Even therewith his ears, sharpened by the coming death, ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... some far-fetched parallel to her own. But then their experiences were so much wider and more varied in that old charmed, sunny, fairy life; the knot of their difficulties was so readily cut, by a simple reference to some Fortunatus' purse, or the arrival in the very nick of time of some friendly fairy. Madelon did not draw the parallel quite far enough, or it might have occurred to her that benevolence did not become wholly extinct with the disappearance of fairies, and ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... given you one face, and you make yourselves another; you jig, you amble, you nick-name God's creatures, and make ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... sleep and dreams he's paid his fare. And when you squeak he gets the Roosevelt glare, And hoots, "I won't be dickied with - I'll shoot!" Then all the passengers get in and root. Loud cheers of, "Put him off!" and "Make him square!" Till Mr. Holdfast with an injured air Pungles his nick and ends ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... here just in the nick of time," said the captain. "Ten minutes more and we'd have ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... Rend and ravel and tear and pick; What can resist these hooks of steel, Sharp as the claws of the ancient Nick? Cast-off mantle of millionaire, Pestilent vagrant's vesture chill, Rags of miser or beggar bare, All are ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... onto us as a side-line. You listen to me! Batson Reeves was the man that lied to the girl I was engaged to thirty years ago, and broke us up and kept us apart till I came back here and licked him, and saved her just in the nick of time. What do you think of a man of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... History is adamant against any other conclusion. No one can quite escape his age, his civilization, and his peculiar disposition; from which it seems to follow that not even the unanimous censure of generations can utterly discredit anything. The admission comes in the nick of time: history was on the point of calling attention to the attitude of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to Gothic, Romanesque, ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... November 4th, 1812. He passed his boyhood on his father's farm, amid the grand scenery of the valley of the Adige, which deeply impressed itself on his youthful imagination and left its traces in all his verse. He went to school at Verona, where for his dullness he was nick-named the "mole," and afterwards he passed on to the University of Padua to study law, apparently to please his father, for in the charming autobiography prefixed to his collected poems he quotes his father as saying:—"My son, be not enamored of this coquette, Poesy; for with all her airs ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... felt that, among the countless evidences of the ordering of Providence by which the war for the preservation of the Union was signalized, not the least striking was the raising up of this remarkable man, to accomplish alone, and in the very nick of time, a work which at once became ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... his day, and common almost up to our own: a river-god, bearded, crown of reeds, urn, general dampness and uproariousness of temper, all quite correct; and a nymph, whom he pursues, who prays to the Virgin huntress to save her from his love, and who, just in the nick of time, is metamorphosed into a mossy stone, dimly showing her former woman's shape; the style of thing, charming, graceful, insipid, of which every one can remember a dozen instances, and which ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... take part in it: he "wished to look round," he said. So the morning was spent in impressing everyone with his shiny black suit of West-of-England broadcloth and his beautiful neckcloth and bunch of seals. But in the evening he climbed the pulpit; and there Old Nick himself, that lies in wait for preachers, must have tempted the poor fellow to preach on Womanly Perfection, taking his text ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sailed on carelessly amidst a stream of insults and shouts. Its greater power enabled it to disdain collisions which would have run down frailer vessels. Besides, Tahoser's crew were so skilful that their vessel seemed endowed with life, so swiftly did it obey the rudder and avoid in the nick of time serious obstacles. Soon it had left behind the heavily laden boats with their cabins filled with passengers inside, and on the roof three or four rows of men, women, and children crouching in the attitude so dear to the Egyptian people. These individuals, so kneeling, might have ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... should have seen her when they started. She was radiant—shaking hands with everybody— waving her handkerchief from the deck—distributing bows and smiles like an empress. If ever a woman got what she wanted just in the nick of time that woman did. She'll be Lady Trevenna within ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... and a part of a battery!" was the announcement. "They are coming along as though they were followed by the Old Nick himself!" ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... he warn't," he repeated, when the captain laughed when Seth mentioned his sensations at the time and detailed his thoughts, "fur he came just in the nick of time to grip holt o' me; and if he hadn't ben thaar I guess it 'ud a ben all sockdolagar with Seth, I does! He must have got what ye call a call, that he must! Guess you'd a thought him a angel, if you'd been ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... "You let my Nick in," murmured Beezy sleepily, and Creed laughed out in sudden relief. It was the wooden-legged rooster, coming across the little side porch and making his plea ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... nobler than greatness. And then the faces that come about us at such a time, with their tales of old friendships or generous rivalries. I have seen to-day fifty fellows of whom I remember only the nick-names;—they are now degenerated into scheming M.P.'s, or clever lawyers, or portly doctors; -but at Montera they leave the plodding world of reality for one day, and regain the dignities of sixth-form ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... There the slave-raiders, subsidised or led by Arabs of Zanzibar, were specially active. Working from Ujiji and other bases, they attacked some of the expeditions sent by the Congo Free State. Chief among the raiders was a half-caste Arab negro nick-named Tipu Tib ("The gatherer of wealth"), who by his energy and cunning had become practically the master of a great district between the Congo and Lake Tanganyika. At first (1887-1888) the Congo Free State adopted Stanley's suggestion of appointing Tipu Tib to be its governor of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... was that of a slight, strong creature who was not a man. Lightfoot, wild with love and anxiety, had shot past Old Mok just as he laid down his bundle of arrows, and, when she saw her husband's peril, had leaped forward with arrow upon string and slain his latest assailant in the nick of time. Now, with arrow notched again and a face ablaze with murderous helpfulness, she hovered near, intent only upon sending a second shaft ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... time-veiled copper and brass. His flawless frame was covered with tight-banded muscle. There was no appearance of fat. His skin was smooth—without wrinkles. He was young; about forty years, or less. But there was the nick of a tusk-stroke in one ear; and a small red devil in ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... top of the little clearing where the boatman had forced his way in amongst the tangled growth, and gone on hewing his way through bush, thorn, vine, and parasitical growth, to reappear just in the nick of time with the bustard-looking bird hanging from ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... now, and I know it, and dad knows it," Nick assured him. "I'm going home! You'd better be glad you are not mixed up in this thing," he said, turning to the third boy. "You are safe awhile ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... yards long, should not be less then twelve; you are to fasten that line to any bow neer to a hole where a Pike is, or is likely to lye, or to have a haunt, and then wind your line on any forked stick, all your line, except a half yard of it, or rather more, and split that forked stick with such a nick or notch at one end of it, as may keep the line from any more of it ravelling from about the stick, then so much of it as you intended; and chuse your forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep the fish or frog from pulling the forked stick ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... was hardly recognizable. Every ledge, every branch and tiny twig held its feathery burden, or shook it softly upon the white mass covering the ground. Hardly a breath of air stirred, and the fir trees looked as though St. Nick had visited them in the night to dress a tree for every ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... not until the end of the week that Dick Rover came into contact with Tad Sobber, a stocky youth, with a shock of black hair and eyes which were cold and penetrating. Sobber was with a chum named Nick Pell, and both eyed Dick in a calculating ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... gun going off accidentally, ranks high. Servants should carry their guns with the cock down on a piece of rag, that covers the cap: take it all in all, it is the best plan for them. A sportsman will find great convenience in having a third nick cut in the tumbler of his lock, so as to give an additional low half-cock, at which the cock just clears the nipple; it will prevent the cap from falling off or receiving a blow. I have long used this plan, and find no objections to it: many pistols are furnished with this ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... were guilty but Roxana; she suspected that the others were guilty, but she did not know them to be so. She was horrified to think how near she had come to being guilty herself; she had been saved in the nick of time by a revival in the colored Methodist Church, a fortnight before, at which time and place she "got religion." The very next day after that gracious experience, while her change of style was fresh upon her and she was vain of her purified condition, her master left a couple dollars ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sense into the child. There ain't no nonsense in Mandy, an' ye won't find her equal in the land for peddlin' fruit an' sech. I've kep' her rustlin' from morn till night. When a woman idles, the ole Nick gits away with her mighty quick. I've salted that down many a long year. No, sir, Mandy is mine, an' Mandy will do jest as I say. She minds me well, does Mandy. She won't marry till I give the word—an' I ain't agoin' to ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... it some time. Hank, you're on board just in the nick of time. I found out what the trouble was with the carriage of the gun and repaired it while you were amusing yourselves out there. Get in lively, now, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... 77, St. James's Street, nick-named the Two Sevens, kept by Messrs. T. C. C. T. is a well-known House, where things are conducted with great civility and attention, and the best possible treatment may generally be relied upon, though they are rather sparing of refreshments, and apt to grumble ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... forgeries. You will find alterations in my banker's book, too, I expect. We'll look into it all to-morrow. Come along, Dickson, my sly little weasel; I've a gay night's work for you; I'm going to leave all my property to my cousin Nick, my bitterest enemy, and a lawsuit with it that'll break his heart. There's fun for ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... chairs for we have much to talk of, And we have Ullad and Muirthemne, and here Is Conall Muirthemne in the nick of time. ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... in her humiliation, is there anybody mad enough to fancy that she wouldn't snap up Plank in such a fix? ... And make it look like a jilt for Quarrier? ... But Plank must do his part on the minute; Plank must step up in the very nick of time; Plank, with his millions and his ambitions, was bound to be a winner anyway, and Sylvia might as well be his pilot and use his money. ... And Plank would be very, very grateful—very useful, a very good friend to have. ... And Leila would learn at last that he, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... those fascinating and lovely fays whom the ancients termed Naiads; and unless her pride is insulted or her jealousy awakened by an inconstant lover, her temper is generally mild and her actions beneficent. The Old Nick known in England is an equally genuine descendant of the northern sea-god, and possesses a larger portion of his powers and terrors The British sailor, who fears nothing else, confesses his terror for this terrible being, and believes ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... Midsummer or Christmas: but the world I had found out in Cooke's edition of the British Novelists was to me a dance through life, a perpetual gala-day. The six-penny numbers of this work regularly contrived to leave off just in the middle of a sentence, and in the nick of a story, where Tom Jones discovers Square behind the blanket; or where Parson Adams, in the inextricable confusion of events, very undesignedly gets to bed to Mrs. Slip-slop. Let me caution the reader against this impression of Joseph Andrews; for there is a picture of Fanny in ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... here," I said, "and I never even heard about any old creek bed. I never heard about Nick's ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... thus unmolested by the native tribes, but our safety consisted chiefly in the rapidity of our movements, and their terror of strangers wholly unknown, perhaps unheard of, arriving on the backs of huge animals, or centaurs whose tramp they had only heard at nightfall. Like Burns's "Auld Nick," ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... such other like games, cutting at the nick, is a great aduantage, so is cutting by Bumcard, finely vnder or ouer: stealing the stock or ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... "In the nick of time, Ralph!" exclaimed Lord Tamerton, clasping his hand warmly. "We are trying to create a mediaeval atmosphere in keeping with our surroundings, and as host I was about to announce in the approved manner of Chivalry that the Champion of to-morrow's hunt shall be rewarded with the hand of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... five minutes I was considerably astonished on hearing a salvo as of a volley of musketry, and iron pipes flying up and down in all directions. Then a general shout, and off went the Tartars, as if Old Nick was at their heels, halloing most fearfully. They did not run far, but brought up about three hundred yards from where they started, and demanded their pipes back. I asked them what was the matter; when they ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... questions and, even if they don't laugh at you, you have the feeling they may be laughing inside. Her present thoughts were so delectable and engrossing that Missy did not always hear when she was spoken to. Toward the end of the meal, just as she caught herself in the nick of time about to pour vinegar instead of cream ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... little ominous whirlpools not caused by wind. Presently there emerged a long shadow, like a black expanse of rock:—unmistakably a mugger. And in that moment she felt exquisitely grateful to the hand that had seized her in the nick of time. The next—she wrung her own together ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... my bag in at the window, leapt upon the footboard and turned the handle. Although the entrance to the tunnel was perilously near now, I managed to wrench the door open and to swing myself into the carriage. Then, by means of the strap, I reclosed the door in the nick of time, and sank, panting, upon the seat. I had a vague impression that the black chauffeur, having recovered himself, had raced after me to the uttermost point of the platform, but, my end achieved, I was callously indifferent ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... An' why not? Do what you can an' go ahead! That's the way! That whole crowd don't deserve no better. Not Wehrhahn an' not Friderici. An' anyhow, it was a good thing, Mrs. Fielitz. It was done just in the nick o' time! Now he's gone an' broken with them fellers, an' everybody knows it. There ain't no goin' back now. Now he belongs to us, Mrs. Fielitz, an' I never would ha' thought ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... was rather plain than rich, Nor fitted over well; Yet, tho' no macaroni, Nick, He ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... hard, and studying to improve himself in branches of knowledge in which he feels himself deficient. He is practising very temperate habits: for half a year past he has taken to drinking water only, avoiding all sweets, and eating no "nick-nacks." He has "sowens and milk,' (oatmeal flummery) every night for his supper. His friend having asked his opinion of politics, he says he really knows nothing about them; he had been so completely engrossed by his own business ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... rules of honour, or to the established laws of war; for instead of boxing fairly, he would kick, pull hair, bite, and scratch most unmercifully, and never fail to take every advantage of his antagonist after he had brought him to the ground. For these reasons he was soon dignified with the nick name of Dick Bear, even by the vulgar boys in the streets; and most of them afterwards took care never to engage with him unless when there were several other boys present to see fair play. One would think that such ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... entails no small trouble to secure in the nick of time the game demanded by the huntress who has recently fallen a captive to my net. As assistant-purveyors I have a few small schoolboys, who, released from the tedium of their declensions and conjugations, ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... just long enough to give an opportunity for having it towed home. One late afternoon we were hurrying across the mesa to supper, when our magneto flew off into the ditch, scattering screws in all directions. Fortunately, a kind of Knight Errant to our family appeared just in the nick of time to take us home and send help to the wreck. I once kept a garage in San Diego open half an hour after closing time by a Caruso sob in my voice over the telephone, while my brother-in-law's miserable chauffeur hurried over ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... nick-names which had been hers; but one had been given by dear lips long ago, and she was not going to have it profaned by common use; and "Elfie" belonged to Mr. Carleton. She would own ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... thing? That cup has been here for forty years, and hundreds of people have drunk from it, and it has never been broken. Aunt Julia dropped it down the well once, but they fished it up, not hurt a bit except for that little nick in the rim. I think it is bound up with the fortunes of the King family, like the Luck of Edenhall in Longfellow's poem. It is the last cup of Grandmother King's second best set. Her best set is still complete. Aunt Olivia has it. You must ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had abandoned Big Springs and fallen back to Huntersville, the soldiers were permitted to break ranks, while Colonel Marrow and Major Keifer, with a company of cavalry, rode forward to the Springs. Colonel Nick Anderson, Adjutant Mitchell and I followed. We found on the road evidence of the recent presence of a very large force. Quite a number of wagons had been left behind. Many tents had been ripped, cut to pieces, or burned, so as to render ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... villain himself," said Random grimly. "However, Cockatoo arrived unluckily on the scene, and when he found she had parted with the emerald, and had written out the truth, he stabbed her. If we hadn't come just in the nick of time, he would have annexed that confession, and the truth would never have become known. No one," ended Random, rising and stretching himself, "would connect Braddock or Cockatoo with the ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... call came in the nick o' time," O'Malley put in. "We located Sim and trailed him from the mess to his hideout. It was one of our own Nissen huts the boys had been using to store bedding in. The rats had moved the piles of bedding away from the back end ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... not a troll at all, but a fairy-godmother, who had taken the form for good purposes. I would have said fairy-godfather, but I have never come across a fairy-godfather in all my reading, and I must be truthful. Well, the fairy-godmother came along right in the nick of time—and, of course, you know who married and ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... contempt on the material achievements of science and the Liberal party as being mere 'machinery,' means to an end, which men mistakenly worship as though it possessed a real value in itself. He divides English society into three classes: 1. The Aristocracy, whom he nick-names 'The Barbarians,' because, like the Germanic tribes who overthrew the Roman Empire, they vigorously assert their own privileges and live in the external life rather than in the life of the spirit. 2. The Middle Class, which includes the bulk of the nation. For them he borrows ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... shall be harpooned for a certainty!" Obviously the rest of the room thought so too, and they all waited expectantly. It was a tense moment—something had to be done and done quickly. An inspiration came to me. Just in the nick of time I seized an unembroidered bit firmly between the finger and thumb of both hands and held it a safe distance from me for the medal to be fixed; the situation was saved. A sigh of relief (or was it disappointment?) went up as the General returned to finish the citation, and contrary to ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... two, I believe, were going to murder the old man in the hammock, if we had not come in the nick of time. What ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... mate, "the Rock-scorpions are right. They have pounced upon the derelict like wolves. I almost wish I was there to see the effect when they realize they have been fooled, and they find that that craft is loaded with stones. It was just done in the nick of time; they might have compelled us ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... eleven, somewhat after the fashion of the Hawkshaws of "yellow back" fame, who, if our memory serves us right, were so punctual that their appearance anywhere was described as being in the "nick o' time," only in this instance he was expected and did not "drop from the sky," ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... about that saving process, mother. I've pretty often declared in my own mind that Dorette and you came along just in the nick ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... his volatile disposition. For some time indeed he had supported himself comfortably in this way; for through friends of his family he had had good introductions, and, although he wasted a good deal of money in buying nick-nacks that promised to be useful and seldom were, he had no objectionable habits except inordinate smoking. But it happened that a pupil—a girl of imaginative disposition, I presume—fell so much ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... mind. Aw'm capt whativer made Becka ax her, for ther's hardly a woman i'th ginnel but what had leever goa a' mile another rooad nor meet her; but aw declare shoo's comin' sailin' daan like a fifty-gun ship! Talk abaght owd Nick, an' ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... The room was comfortably and solidly furnished with good mahogany and horsehair. It had a snug fireside, and a couple of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the wild country behind the house. What it most developed was, an unexpected taste for little ornaments and nick-nacks, of which it contained a most surprising number. They were not very various, consisting in great part of waxen babies with their limbs more or less mutilated, appealing on one leg to the parental affections from under little cupping glasses; ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... he approached, close-hauled on the wind, he saw her decks crowded by an unusually large crew, and on sailing in closer, made out among others the faces of his missing comrades. And he was just in the nick of time, for they were fighting a losing fight at the pumps. An hour later they, with the crew of the sinking craft, were ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... harbor after our many voyages," he continued. "Shipmates we were, shipmates we'll be; while Nick Gunn is alive you shall never want for company. Lord! Do you remember the Dutch brig, ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... pencil, that one might almost say that he writes with colour. He is also an etcher of great merit, and an original sculptor. He has invented small bas-reliefs in bronze which can be attached to the wall, like sketches or nick-nacks; and he has applied his talent even to renewing the material for painting. He is an ingenious artist and a prolific producer, a roguish, but sympathetic, observer of the life of the small ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... with deliberation, prudence, and intelligence. On the frontiers, or lines, as it is the custom to term the American boundaries, he had become acquainted with a Tuscarora, known by the English sobriquet of "Saucy Nick." This fellow, a sort of half-outcast from his own people, had early attached himself to the whites, had acquired their language, and owing to a singular mixture of good and bad qualities, blended with great native shrewdness, he had wormed himself into ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... was picked up by a party who came in the nick of time. They were going by across journey ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... connection with Mr. Holymead was that after he had left the ladies and was walking in the direction of the cab-rank he spoke to one of the former occupants of the gallery. This was a man known to the police and his associates as "Kincher." His name was Kemp, and how he had obtained his nick-name was not known. He was a criminal by profession and had undergone several heavy sentences for burglary. He was a thick-set man of medium height, about fifty years of age. Apart from a rather heavy lower jaw, he gave no external indication of his professional pursuits, but looked, with his brown ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... 630 Tsin induced Ts'in to join in an attack upon Cheng, the object being, of course, to revenge similar personal rudenesses; however, Cheng diplomacy was successful in inducing Ts'in to abandon Tsin in the nick of time: this was one of the very few cases in which Ts'in interfered, or was about to interfere, in "orthodox" affairs. In 592 Tsin sent a hunchback envoy to Ts'i; it so happened that at the same time Lu sent one who was lame, and ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... had five grown-up sons that looked just alike. The eldest could gulp up the ocean at a mouthful; the second was hard enough to nick steel; the third had extensible legs; the fourth was unaffected by fire; the fifth lived without breathing. They all concealed their peculiar traits, and their neighbors did ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... I could from the file, filling in the blanks by talking to people who had been at ATIC during the early UFO era. Many of these people were still around, "Red" Honnacker, George Towles, Al Deyarmond, Nick Post, and many others. Most of them were civilians, the military had been transferred ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... to surprise you," said Betty gleefully, noting with pride how splendid he looked in his uniform. "You don't seem at all glad to see us. Mrs. Watson," remembering her manners in the nick of time, "this is a friend of ours from Deepdale—Allen Washburn. He didn't know ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... just nick it, Give card—get wine ticket; Walk round through the Babel, From table to table, To find—a hard matter— Your name in a platter; Your wish was to sit by Your friend Mr. Whitby, But stewards' assistance ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... a man who was called Hall of the Side. He was the son of Thorstein Baudvar's son (1). Hall had to wife Joreida, daughter of Thidrandi (2) the Wise. Thorstein was the name of Hall's brother, and he was nick-named Broad-paunch. His son was Kol, whom Kari slays in Wales. The sons of Hall of the Side were Thorstein and Egil, Thorwald and Ljot, and Thidrandi, whom, it is said, the ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... hard stick held upright between the palms of the hands, a spark will before long be generated in the hole in the other stick, which is kept in place on the ground by the feet. By blowing on the spark, a little piece of dried grass, stuck in a nick in the edge of the hollow, will be set alight and ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... reach down to Lady Boyd's corrupt heart; had there been, she would have first cleansed her own heart with it, and would then have shown her son how to cleanse his. But, as Rutherford says, she also had come now to that 'nick' in religion to cut off a right hand and a right foot so as to keep Christ and the life everlasting, and so had her eldest son, Lord Boyd. As Bishop Martensen also says, 'Many a time we cannot avoid feeling a deep sorrow for ourselves because of the ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... before he had quite finished his complaint. "Oh, we would love to give you a pet name, Gilly, because you do mean as much to us as our best friends anywhere. By taking a few letters away from your proper name and adding a little 'nick' to the syllable, ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... that war had passed that way. It had; there were traces everywhere of its grim visitation. But here its heavy hand had been laid lightly upon town and village. It was as if a wave of poison gas of the sort the Germans brought into war had been turned aside by a friendly breeze, arising in the very nick of time. Little harm had been done along the road we traveled. But the thunder of the guns was always in our ears; we could hear the steady, throbbing rhythm of the cannon, muttering away to ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... down Nick Ammons because his wife bought milk down the canyon. They had a sick baby, and it's not much you get in this thin stuff at the store. They put chalk in it, I think; any way, you can see somethin' ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... happen as often in real life, at least one cannot count upon it with the certainty of the theater. But when Miss Primrose Cash knocked upon the door of the Phipps' sitting room and delivered her call to the seance, she was as opportune and nick-of-timey as was ever a dramatic Governor's messenger. Certainly that summons of hers was to Galusha Bangs a reprieve which ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... too hasty. It was mescal—an explosive in liquid form that is brewed or stilled or steeped, or something, from the juices of a certain variety of cactus, according to a favorite family prescription used by Old Nick several centuries ago when he was residing in this section. For its size and complexion I know of nothing that is worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with mescal, unless it is the bald-faced hornet of the Sunny South. It goes down easily enough—that is ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... she came floundering once again over the partition, and guarding my loins, I leapt into the next compartment, seeing the affair had become a sauve qui peut, and devil take the hindmost: and at the nick of time, when she was about to descend like a wolf on a fold, I most fortunately perceived a bell-handle provided for such pressing emergencies and rung it with such unparalleled energy, that ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... it allus was, I guess," with a chuckle at his own wit, "but Ol' Swaller-tail sold it, long ago. Ol' Nick Cragg, his father afore him, sold a lot of it, they say, and when he died he left half his ready money an' all his land to Hezekiah—thet's Ol' Swallertail—an' the other half o' his money to his second ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... sure, two saddles; but little by little the Indians were working around their position, and would have crawled upon them within an hour or two but for Jake's daring ride for help and the blessed coming of the blue-coats in the nick of time. Folsom swore he'd never forget their services ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... you shall hear tell of on the Main from Panama to St. Catherine's, aye, by the horns of Nick there be none of all the coastwise Brotherhood quicker or readier when there's aught i' the wind than Abnegation, and you can lay ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... Nick Razorblade a barber was, A strapping lad was he; And he could shave with such a grace, It was a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... were very serious. A yell followed, and a young chief rushed towards the strait, with frantic cries, as if bent on leaping across the chasm. He was followed by a hundred warriors. Mark now made the signal to Juno. Not a moment was lost by the undaunted girl, who touched off her gun in the very nick of time. Down came the grape, hissing along the Reef; and, rebounding from its surface, away it leaped across the strait, flying through the thickest of the assailants. A dozen more suffered by that discharge. Waally now saw that a crisis was reached, and ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... lamp. As she beholds him under the door-lintel, the lamp falls from her hands, the kerosene blazes on the floor, and the straw mat takes fire. They do not heed this—they do not see it—they are on the wings of an ecstatic embrace. And the father, chancing to arrive in the nick of time, with a curse and a cuff, saves them and ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... got back just in the nick of time," said Titania admiringly. "You see I was all alone most of the afternoon. Weintraub left the suitcase about two o'clock. Metzger came for it about six. I refused to let him have it. He was very persistent, and I had to threaten to set Bock at him. It was all I could do to hold ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... the idea of setting here in the road all night," explained Persis, still with an air of relief. "Seems fairly providential your coming along in the nick o' time." ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... tenterhooks of expectation was one of my aristocrats or one of my marine beauties: for they knew I had a footing in both these—shall we say circles? As to themselves they were the bohemian circle, not very wide—half a dozen of us led by a sculptor whom we called Prax for short. My own nick-name was ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... concert, filling with their melody, nature's own, the woods and groves wherein these feathered songsters "sport, live, and have their being." Whilst millions of men are sunk in the arms of "the drowsy god." What is the angler about, has he slept soundly, and then awoke in the very nick of time? Or have his slumbers been somewhat broken and disturbed by dreams of crafty old Trout? No matter, he is astir, he has pocketed his tackle, and not neglected something for the inner man; rod ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... Shortcake; "his brother neer brought me ony wild-deukes, and this is a douce honest man; we serve the family wi' bread, and he settles wi' huz ilka weekonly he was in an unco kippage when we sent him a book instead o' the nick-sticks,* whilk, he said, were the true ancient way o' counting between tradesmen and customers; and sae they are, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... It's all a snarl to me. Sometimes I think the world goes on the toss-up-a-penny plan, and again it seems almost as if Old Nick himself was ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... turned; and after it The whole flock followed safe—four, five, six, seven, Yes, they were all there safe. He hoped they'd win Back to their lines in safety. They deserved, Even if they were Germans.... 'T was no sin To wish them luck. Think how that beggar swerved Just in the nick of time! He, too, must try To win back to the lines, though, likely as not, He'd take the wrong turn: but he couldn't lie Forever in that hungry hole and rot, He'd got to take his luck, to take his chance Of being sniped by foes or friends. He'd be With any luck in Germany ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... and the old man soon got his opportunity, not to lift it out in the ordinary way, but to clap the net upon it as it struggled on the shallow, and pin it most cleverly to the shingle, hauling it out without accident. It was only done in the nick of time; two yards farther down would have been ruin. Everybody said it was a perfectly shaped specimen of the bright ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... astonished the whole Corporation of London; and then taking out a large old watch, with an enamelled back—doubtless more German than its master—he said, as he lifted up his carpet-bag, "I must be off—tempos fugit, and I must arrive just in time to nick the vessels. Shall get to Ostend, or Rotterdam, safe and snug; thence to Paris. How my pretty Fan will have grown! Ah, you don't know Fan—make you a nice little wife one of these days! Cheer up, man, we shall meet again. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the rescue!" shouted Mr. Blades as he dashed across the street; "come on, Pet! here we are in the thick of it, just in the nick of time!" and, closely followed by Charles Larkyns, Mr. Fosbrooke, Mr. Smalls, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... do him good," Captain Doolan said disdainfully. "I have no patience with a man who is forever working himself to death, riding about the country as if Old Nick were behind him, and never giving himself a minute for diversion of any kind. Faith, I would rather throw myself down a well and have done with it, than work ten times as hard as ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... thought," said Peter. "And seeing him like that I thought I'd just go down and fetch myself a cup o' tea; but no sooner was I out o' the room than he must have slipped out and dressed hisself—shamming, you know—and if I hadn't come back in the nick o' ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... nick of time," the man replied. "But had we not better be moving again? We must be in ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... fairly shows himself as an original and delightful author. His boys are always masterly. Nothing could be truer to Nature, more nicely distinguished as to idiosyncrasy, while alike in expression and in limited range of ideas, or more truly comic, than the two that figure in this story. Nick Whickson, too, the good-natured ne'er-do-well, who is in his own and everybody's way till he finds his natural vocation as an aid to a dealer in horses, is a capital sketch. The hypochondriac Squire ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... at once fall in love with this new "Chicken Little" of the far western prairies—the same being an affectionate nick-name given to a dear little girl and always used when she was very, very good—but when she misbehaved ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... 'ain't: this here's the pike to Taneytown, where Sykes's boys come sweatin', after an all-night march, jest in the nick to save our second day. The Emmetsburg road's thar.—Whar was ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... though small, came just in the nick of time, because of the Saratoga-trunk scheme not proving a success. In less than one hour after I had made the deal, the landlord asked me to pay in advance. I immediately flew into a rage and demanded him to make out my bill for what we had had and receipt ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... such blooming bad luck as we have," Ed observed, "they're probably in jail somewhere! I don't think I ever saw anything in a worse mess! The very Old Nick seems ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... Budge Street, before a conscience-stricken factory; and he wept on his sack bed in the scullery because the prince and the princess, his august parents, would never know that he had died. A whit less gloomy were his imaginings of the said prince and princess rushing into the house, in the nick of time, just before life was extinct, and cutting him down. How they were to find him he did not know. This side-track exploration of possibilities was a ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... days more of opposition would have compelled him to give up the strife. Nothing saved him but the belief, on the part of his antagonists, that Gibbons was backing him. It was not the case; he had no backer. But this error, in the very nick of time, induced his opponents to treat for a compromise, and he ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... greenish eyes marked sleepily the distant dust, where Mr. Sanford's Nick Stoner was leading a brilliant field, steadily overhauling the ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... profit—the pretended speculation involved in the third receivership which was operated by Nucingen in 1826. [The Firm of Nucingen.] In 1833 M. du Tillet advised Nathan, then financially stranded, to apply to Gigonnet, the object being to involve Nathan. [A Daughter of Eve.] The nick-name of Gigonnet was applied to Bidault on account of a feverish, involuntary contraction of a leg ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... reptile can be, he canted, to remedy the error, but the impetus of his ten-foot bulk was still upon him; it carried him by. You cannot stop ten feet of bulk and five-feet-seven of girth of flesh and bone and muscle and armor-plates, going at Old Nick may know how many knots, in half-a-yard, you know; and it was the half-a-yard that ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... I looked at Skinny and he was chopping away at one sapling for dear life. He had it all full of nicks and every nick had a place ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... both slain near Amphipolis, Nicias was aware that the Spartans had long been desirous of a peace, and that the Athenians had no longer the same confidence in the war. Both being alike tired, and, as it were by consent, letting fall their hands, he, therefore, in this nick of time, employed his efforts to make a friendship betwixt the two cities, and to deliver the other States of Greece from the evils and calamities they labored under, and so establish his own good name for success as a statesman for all future time. He found the men of substance, the elder men, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... you Man that you change Colour so? 'Tis all a Lie Boy I warrant thee: And hadst thou not come just in the Nick of Time, I think o' my Conscience I ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... "This is Mr. Nick Ogilvie," said Jack's father after introducing the boys. "He will take charge of any operations we may commence in this territory. He is an old oil man, and knows ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... comfort, and the discipline of his men. Notwithstanding that he was a very strict disciplinarian—and Kentucky troops have little love of discipline—he was very popular with his men. They retaliated by nick-naming him "Bench-leg," or "Old flint-lock," and admired him all the more intensely, the more frequently that he showed them that they could never deceive him nor attempt it with impunity. Once, thinking that the health of his regiment ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... man and honest man, do acknowledge to have received of Nick and Froth, the cheating tapster, the sum of twenty pounds, which money I have bestowed (to the tapster's content) among the poor of the parish, out of whose pockets this aforesaid tapster had picked the aforesaid sum, not after the ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... from the puissant army of Beelzebub been approaching, their terror could not have been greater. Yet fear kept many from escaping, while they knew not which way to run for safety. Rigby in the nick of time galloped up to this awful and hostile appearance, crying out to his troops that he would soon demolish the bugbear. This saying encouraged some of the runaways, who followed him to the combat. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... nigger," (we are pursuing the train of reflections that passed through the mind of the Arab sheik,) "old Nick burn him!—thinks I've got more than my share of this lucky windfall. He wants these boys bad,—I know that. The Sultan of Timbuctoo has given him a commission to procure white slaves,—that's clear; and ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... the music-loving bishop, "here comes a harper in the nick of time, and now I care not how long they tarry. Ho! honest friend, are you come to play ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... and pompous Visitor, and next to the dishevelled Prioress, adding: "And now, Sir Commissioner, for all that I have done in the cause of justice I ask pardon of you who wear the King's grace and majesty as I wore old Nick's horns and hoofs, since otherwise the Abbot and his hired butchers, who hold themselves masters of King and people, will murder me for this as they have done by better men. Therefore pardon, your Mightiness, pardon," and he kneeled down ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... on these branches was therefore far from wasted. Rather it was one of the series of fortunate measures, somewhat blindly entered upon, which served the University well; but it is equally true that the abandonment of the policy came only in the nick of time, for the Regents were already ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... a kirn that would not kirn, or a batch of bread that would not rise; a flock of sheep to be gathered together on a stormy night, or a bundle to be carried home by some weary labourer; Aiken-Drum, as we learned to call him, always got to know of it, and appeared in the nick of time. It looked as if we had all got wishing-caps, for we had just to wish, and the work ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... come just in the nick of time. I had almost forgotten you while I was looking after my horses, and I wanted to hand you over to an acquaintance. I was thinking of asking you, good friend," he continued, turning towards the dealer, "if you would not take this little chap along with you, as ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... graphite or metal dust on slip-rings so that the current will leak or short circuits will occur. When a motor is idle, nick the ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... slightest connection with him, in places of public resort. He, however, has no scruple about claiming my acquaintance, even when his common-sense, if he had any, might teach him that I would as willingly exchange a nod with the Old Nick. It was but the other day that he got into a large brass kettle at the entrance of a hardware-store, and thrust his head, the moment afterwards, into a bright, new warming-pan, whence he gave me a most merciless look of recognition. He smiled, and so did I; but these childish tricks ...
— Monsieur du Miroir (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bull, draws its attention to him by means of violent gestures. As the bull charges, the banderillero steps towards him, dexterously plants both darts in the beast's neck, and draws aside in the nick of time to avoid its horns. Four pairs of banderillas are planted in this way, rendering the bull mad with rage and pain. Should the animal prove of a cowardly nature and refuse to attack repeatedly, banderillas de fuego (fire) are used. These are furnished with fulminating crackers, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... between the ranges is a bed of soft white sandstone, through which the different creeks have cut deep courses; the stones on the surface (igneous principally), are composed of iron, quartz, dark black and blue stone, also a bright red one, all run together and twisted into every sort of nick, as also with the limestone, and many other sorts which I do not know. This plain is covered with a most hard spinifex, very difficult to get the horses to face. In another creek, about one mile south-west from the camp, is a large water hole which ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... north and west, was scrupulously swept and dusted; furniture rubbed; little white knitted mats laid on the dressing-table; the chintz curtains taken down and put up again; a new nice chamber set of white china was bought, for the pitcher of the old set had an ugly nick in it and looked shabby; the towel rack was filled with white napery; the handsomest Marseilles quilt was spread on the bed; the stove was blackened and polished. It looked "very respectable," Anne said, when ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... the famishing fulness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation, Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast? Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror, Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death: Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... been constant scenes of mutual but unpretending kindnesses; and this under circumstances that naturally awakened all the most generous and manly sentiments of their natures. When young men, their laughing messmates had nick-named them Pylades and Orestes; and later in life, on account of their cruising so much in company, they were generally known in the navy as the "twin captains." On several occasions had they fought enemies' frigates, and captured them; on these occasions, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to-morrow, he ain't going to pull up stakes in such a hell of a hurry. He'll pack what furs he's got, and he'll pick up what traps he's got out. That would take him several days, anyway. My son, we're in the nick of time!" ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... to be heir of Avenel at last, Master Roland, after my lord and lady have gone to their place," said Adam; "and as I have but one boon to ask, I trust you will not nick me ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... creature whose mysterious habit of living upon the surface of the pond as well as underneath made the children's nick-name a necessity. And now it was attempting a raid on land as well. But land was not its natural place. Something certainly had happened, or was ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... thinkin' on, Pazon Arbroath!" said "Feathery" Joltram, suddenly rising from his chair and showing himself in all his great height and burly build. "Zummat for a zermon on owd Nick, when tha're wantin' to ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli |
