"Scraping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Cantal, had been brought up amid the wild mountains of Auvergne. His father was a small farmer in the neighborhood of Saint-Flour, scraping a miserable pittance from the ground for the maintenance of his family. From the age of eight years Cayrol had been a shepherd-boy. Alone in the quiet and remote country, the child had given way to ambitious dreams. He was very intelligent, and felt ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... lived a man whom she had previously known in New-Jersey, and whose occupation was that of "teaching young ideas how to shoot"—not grouse and woodcock, but to shoot forth into scions of learning. He had a son whom he desired exceedingly to send to college; but as he was forever compelled to be scraping the bottom of his scanty exchequer to supply the current wants of his family, he was destitute of the means;—and there were fewer education societies, and other facilities for obtaining eleemosynary instruction in those days than in the present age of disinterested benevolence. The ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... shrubs in their proper places. And the plants had repaid her with a riot of blossoms. A breeze set the gray moss to swaying from the branches of the oak. And a green grasshopper crossed the terrace in four great leaps, almost scraping Satan's ear in a fashion which might easily have been fatal to the insect. Val sighed and slipped down lower in his chair. "It's great," ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... commerce. The waters in and about the port were alive with mackerel—the finest, plumpest, fattest, and most willing fish ever seen in any waters. They sported round us, looking clever enough to make all on board the schooner believe they wanted to come on board. The crew felt like scraping acquaintance with them, favoring them with a hook, and the like; but then there interposed that great bugbear—the treaty line. Hard was it to tell where this line was; it might, for aught to the contrary, be on ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... the mandibles and maxillae are here beautifully adapted to catch and force down any small living creature into the muscular oesophagus; the rudimentary outer maxillae, moreover, no doubt have the power of scraping, like a lip, anything towards these prehensile organs. It will hereafter be seen, that the male of Ibla Cumingii, in which the cirri are quite rudimentary, obtains its food in a somewhat analogous manner, though in this case the whole peduncle moves, ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... that the peasant, white as chalk beneath the tangle of black hair that covered his face, had stopped dead in his tracks. His mouth was open, his arms upraised to shield; he was staring fixedly in the same direction as himself. The next instant he was on his knees, bowing and scraping toward Mecca, groaning, hiding his eyes with both hands. The sack he held had toppled over; the cheese and flour rolled upon the ground; and from the horse came that ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... scraping her knuckles and shins, somehow, anyhow, down she slid, reached the end of the swaying rope, hung for one frightful moment kicking in mid-air, then dropped, plunk, like a lead in water. She landed, shaken and stunned, but not injured, upon the damp soft earth of ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... secret—quite a great secret—had been burning a hole in her heart ever since Monday, and to-night she expected this secret to result in something grand. Anne felt that the days of poverty for the family were over; the days for scraping and toiling were at an end. The uncle from Australia would give her missis everything that money could buy; he must be a very rich man indeed, for had he not given her a sovereign? Whoever before had even dreamed of giving little hard-worked Anne a sovereign? ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... hand there. The small rough tongue going over and over the palm of his hand produced the strange sensation he felt. Now that he knew the cause, the marvel ended; but now that he knew the cause, his heart was touched and made more of it. The gentle scraping continued without intermission as on he walked. What did it say to him? Human tongue could not have said so much ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... stay the night here. I passed on through the town to a new building, an inn, into which I peered inquiringly. A well-dressed lad came courteously forward, in his bowing and scraping seeming to say, "Good sir, we most willingly embrace the opportunity of being honored with your noble self and your retinue under our poor roof. Long since have we known your excellent qualities; long have we wished to have you with us. We can have ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... referred to his predicament or to the girl it would be impossible to tell. Already the sound of heavy boots on the stairs announced the coming of men—several of them. Barney heard the rattle of accouterments—the clank of a scabbard—the scraping of gun butts against the walls. The ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and tried to go to sleep, but her nerves were all unstrung, brain and ears were all on the alert, and there seemed to be curious, unaccountable sounds on all sides of her. She had not been alone more than a minute or two before there were strange scraping noises in the kitchen not far from her. "Mice!" ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... with seven of them in full evening-dress and two in dinner-coats, were already dancing on the waxy floor of Melpomene Hall when they arrived. A full orchestra was pounding and scraping itself into an hysteria of merriment on the platform under the red stucco-fronted balcony, and at the bar behind the balcony there was a spirit of ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... over there, scraping his toe nails on a big stone?" asked Batu, for sometimes the toe nails of elephants grow too long and too rough, and have to be worn down. Keedah was doing this ...
— Umboo, the Elephant • Howard R. Garis
... capital seaboat and lay-to now as easily as if she were at anchor in the Mersey, though the wind was whistling through the rigging and the ocean far and wide white with foam, bowing and scraping to the big waves that rolled in after her like an old dowager duchess in a ball room, ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... ever known one of our regular, well-organized Dutch families, whom it hath pleased Heaven to afflict with the neighborhood of a French boarding-house? The honest old burgher cannot take his afternoon's pipe on the bench before his door but he is persecuted with the scraping of fiddles, the chattering of women, and the squalling of children; he cannot sleep at night for the horrible melodies of some amateur, who chooses to serenade the moon, and display his terrible proficiency in execution on the clarionet, hautboy, or some other soft-toned instrument; nor ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... But very little fluid is needed in cooking this mushroom, as it yields a rich juice of its own. It should always be cleaned before cooking, by scraping it smooth and ...
— Mushrooms of America, Edible and Poisonous • Anonymous
... white fingers with tears and kisses. Then she struggled to her feet, the nails in Daddy's boots scraping the polished floor, making long white marks. To Tessibel there were no other persons in the room save Frederick and his beautiful sister. She made a queer upward movement with her head, wiping the tears away with the ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... had tipped back in his chair against the coal shed and was scraping his nails with his pocket knife. He did it with exquisite care, and his half-closed eyes had a look of sleepy contentment; he might have been shaping a peaceful destiny. His glimmer of responsiveness ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... A scraping noise came from the hanging stairway of the dock, and a voice called up from the darkness: "Here we are, sir!" Howard Van Cleft leaned over the edge and looked down, somewhat nervously. A reassuring word came up from the boat, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... directly under our windows there came a series of ear-splitting squeals followed by a horrible gurgle. The neighbors had chosen that particular spot and hour to kill the family pig, and the entire process which followed of sousing it in hot water and scraping off the hair was accompanied by unceasing chatter. Boiling with rage we dressed and went for a walk, vowing not to spend another night in the place but to ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... he, "have we both been scraping all this dross together for? I would give it all to sit one hour by the fire, with her hand in mine, and hear her say, 'Scamp, you made me unhappy when you were young, but I have lived ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... be a short follow-through after impact, varying, of course, according to the length of the putt. In the case of a long one, the club will go through much further, and then the arms would naturally be more extended. In the follow-through the putter should be kept well down, the bottom edge scraping the top of the grass for some inches. It is easy to understand how much more this course of procedure will tend towards the accuracy and delicacy of the stroke than the reverse method, in which the blade of the putter would be cocked up ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... attempt to draw. He did not show surprise nor fear nor any emotion. He appeared plodding in mind. Red Pearce stepped between Kells and Gulden. There was a realization in the crowd, loud breaths, scraping of feet. Gulden turned away. Then Kells resumed his seat and his pipe as if nothing out of the ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... dooty to be equally respictful, as me dad said whin the bull pitched him over the fence and stood scraping one hoof and bowing from ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... struggle, the dull thud of a fall on the floor, maddened the journalist. In the darkness he heard Juve groaning, scraping the floor with his boots, making violent efforts ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... Or, rather, it was more than a log; for it was half a tree. Slowly the huge thing came in, scraping the nicely polished floor, rolling a little from side to side, and threatening all those within a yard of it. And then, when its appearance had spread consternation through the household, the inevitable question came: What was to be done ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... slower and more thorough it would have been better. If only they were on the spot, they would realise that to hurry would write failure. In my very humble opinion, good co-operation and organisation means everything for the future. A great triumph is much better than scraping through and poor results! We are entirely with you and can be relied on to give any assistance in our power. We will not ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... of the Great Enemy. He had lain on the ground like a dead man the day before. Now he was risen to battle again! Instinctively he swung his head and looked at the place where the saddle had rested the day before, the saddle which he had worked off with so much wild rolling and scraping against rocks. ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... ahead! sa-ail!" came suddenly from forward. There was a scraping of boot-heels at the wheel. "What d'y'make of it?—all right, I see her!" In the shadow we saw the skipper pulling the wheel down. Ahead I imagined I saw a dark patch, but to make sure I squirmed up to the fore-rigging. Whoever she was, the light from her cabin skylight ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... his danger, and wheeled his horse like a bullfighter as Blue Eyes dashed past him, its horn scraping his leg. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... violins are tuning up: Scraping of crystal bows, picking of strings!—Hush! Let the footlights now leap into brightness, for at a signal from their little leader the crickets' orchestra ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... time for observation, for the gate opened with difficulty, groaning on its hinges, scraping its way in the segment of a circle upon the ground, and tearing up grass by the roots in its progress. Evidently the front door was not in very frequent use, and the stubborn old gate seemed determined ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... of spades built up one child's hillock, Zelie was on her knees beside another some distance from it, scraping away dead leaves. Her lady had bid her look how this grave fared, and she noticed fondly that fern was beginning to curl above the buried lad's head. The heir of the La Tours lay with his feet toward the outcast of the Charnisays, but this was a chance ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... by the scraping and furious barking of a dog at the door where I stood listening. My heart leaped as if it would burst, my temples throbbed, and my ears rung; yet my presence of mind did not forsake me. Imitating Malcolm, I placed myself in my chair, and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... spend time to determine the extent of the fire, Dave selected his line of defense, a ridge of rocky, higher ground cutting across from one gulch to the other. Here he set teams to work scraping a fire-break, while men assisted with shovels and brush-hooks to clear a ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... treacherous snow. Nevertheless, they sallied out bravely, although they would fain have stopped to skin the bear, but Julian's mandate was peremptory. They spread themselves along the ridge, at times scraping the loose snow away in their search for ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... trustees, partly to indulge their own aversion to her, taking upon them a larger discretionary power than rightly belonged to them, kept her too straitened, which no doubt in the recoil had its share in poor Stephen's misery. It was only after scraping for a whole year that she could escape to Paris or Hamburg, where she was at home. There her sojourn was determined by her good or ill fortune ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... hard breathing and of feet scraping violently upon bare boards followed upon this deliverance, complicated by the sharp snap of a breaking walking stick, the thump of a falling chair, a bang as of a heavy body encountering firm resistance from some inflexible article of furniture—probably a bookcase—and ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... he dashed through the enclosure entrance, she moved her feet suddenly, scraping the sand, and then fled, wrapped in Stanhope's long light overcoat, up towards the desert, away from the river. Krino, blinded, maddened by passion, glanced at the wall whence came the scraping sound, and then, catching ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... commands or made complaints according to her changeful humors. She sat in an elevated position above the stage on a jutting beam of wood painted to resemble the gnarled branch of a tree,—swinging her legs to and fro and clinking the heels of her shoes together in time to the mild scraping of a violin, the player whereof was "trying over" the first few bars of the new "jig" in which she was ere long to distinguish herself. She was a handsome woman, with a fine, fair skin, and large, full, dark eyes—she had ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Maine, states that, on his drained land, in that State, "during the drought of 1854, there was at all times sufficient dampness apparent on scraping the surface of the ground with his foot in passing, and a crop of beans was planted, grown and gathered therefrom, without as much rain as will usually fall in a shower of fifteen minutes' duration, while ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... door to the dumb-waiter shaft," he said. "The lower one is fastened on the inside, in some manner. The noises commenced about eleven o'clock, while Mr. Brown was on guard. There were scraping sounds first, and later the sound of a falling body. He roused Mr. Reed and myself, but when we examined the shaft everything was quiet, and dark. We tried lowering a candle on a string, but—it was ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Vertue be his Vices bawd, And he shall spend mine Honour, with his Shame; As thriftlesse Sonnes, their scraping Fathers Gold. Mine honor liues, when his dishonor dies, Or my sham'd life, in his dishonor lies: Thou kill'st me in his life, giuing him breath, The Traitor liues, the true man's ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... yard of a farm. I know so well what it was like. The great manure heap in the middle; the carts under cover, with perhaps one or two American reapers and binders among them; fowls pecking here and there; a thin predatory dog nosing about; a cart-horse peering from his stable and now and then scraping his hoofs; a very wide woman at the dwelling-house door; the old farmer in blue linen looking on; and there, drawn up, listening to their Captain, row on row of blue-coated men, all hard-bitten, weary, all rather cynical, all weather-stained ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... Tucker had been on picket duty for the cavalry troop, but had failed to note Pawnee Brown's first movement in that direction. Seeing the scout coming, he had instantly thought of the promised reward and taken aim. The bullet had struck Pawnee Brown's shoulder, merely, however, scraping the skin. On the return fire Tucker was hit in the side and nearly broke his neck in a tumble backward into a ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... sixth floor came the noises from the rez-de-chaussee—the rattling of dishes being washed, the scraping of saucepans, and all that sort of thing. On one floor Gervaise saw through an open door on which were the words DESIGNER AND DRAUGHTSMAN in large letters two men seated at a table covered with a varnished ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... Jack fairly shook with internal laughter, he laboriously raised the pole, and began bumping and scraping it up and down the ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... were able even to understand Francis Thompson; his sky-scraping humility, his mountains of mystical detail, his occasional and unashamed weakness, his sudden and sacred blasphemies. Perhaps the shortest definition of the Victorian Age is ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... scraping the hull of the miniature boat with a piece of broken glass, in lieu of sandpaper, but he seemed to be following his young friend's remarks with attention. William had mentioned Shakespeare impulsively, in the ardor of demonstrating his point; however, upon second thought he decided to ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... now he spoke better than anyone; that in the Lords he heard Eldon, and Plunket, and Grey, and then up got the Duke and answered everybody, and spoke better than they all. Arbuthnot says he was bowing and scraping, and all humility and politeness, with none of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... scraping on the tiles above my head that first brought the new danger-point to my notice. There followed the sound of heavy hammering, and with it came a sickening realization of the truth of what Sam ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... After scraping off the brown skin pound the nuts to a paste in a mortar, add the other ingredients, and stir well altogether. Well butter six (or eight) little tin moulds, fill them with the mixture, stand the moulds in a baking tin which contains a little boiling water, and ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... came the memory of that fancied sound from her father's room. She listened now, her head raised, and the two men, their eyes bleared but their noses sniffing as though they were dogs, listened also. There were certain sounds, clocks ticking, the bough scraping on the wall, a cart's echo on the frozen road, the maid singing far in the depths of the ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... will swing round, challengingly, with scraping feet, and cry, "Oooh!" The boys linger at the corner, looking back, and the girls, too, look back. Ethel asks Lucy, "Shall we?" and Lucy says, "Oooh—I d'no," and by that time the boys have drawn level with them. They say, "Isn't ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... received us with extreme civility, and the former assisted the idiot in his eager endeavour to reach the ground—I watched the action, expecting him to start, to speak, to claim acquaintance—and having completed the polite intention, he stood smiling and scraping. I looked at him, then at the idiot, and saw at once that they were strangers. A dozen idlers stood about the door. I waited ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... bones of the sheep's head, it will not make so much difference. But we couldn't get the horns off yet awhile—they'll have to dry out before they will slip from the pith, and the best way is not to take them off at all. If we keep on scraping and salting we'll ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... him inventing for this opera. I fancy (not without evidence) that he made the number out of material found in his sketch-book. These things indicate that the depth which the critics with deep-diving and bottom-scraping proclivities affect to see in the work is rather the product of imagination ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... had perished in the dungeons, she felt very eerie when being taken through them. In the damp darkness she seemed to realise the terror that imprisonment there must have held, and she thought she could almost hear the moans of the victims and the scraping of the rats, who ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... unhappy visitor heard within the shuffling slippers and vexatious scraping cough of the detestable master. Marneffe opened the door, but only to put himself into an attitude and point to the stairs, exactly as Hulot had shown him the door ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... people lived there. Then they came upon a horse's skeleton whitening in solitude in the open fields. And the larks trilled unceasingly, the corncrakes called to one another, and the landrail cried as though someone were really scraping ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... son Charles were there, he would pay her fare, like a dutiful son as he was. Presently the whistle on the locomotive sounded, and we heard the scraping of the brakes, as the train prepared to stop. The conductor promptly appeared, and again demanded her fare or a ticket. The old lady seemed to be greatly troubled, and I expected to have the whole seat to myself from ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... Regent Street, or a crescent or circus like those of Bath or Edinburgh. But to apply it throughout a whole quarter of a city, or even throughout the endless vistas of a great American street, would be simply maddening. Better the most heaven-storming or sky-scraping audacity of individualism than any attempt to transform New York into a Fourierist phalanstery or a model prison. I do not doubt that there will one day be some legal restriction on Towers of Babel, and that the hygienic disadvantages of the microbe-breeding "well" or air-shaft will ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... thirst I forgot all about bags or concealment as we kept scraping out the sand and water, and then brought out more plates, more cups, thin flat sheets, bars of the thickness of a finger and six inches long. Then another great round disc similar to the one I had dragged out with Tom; and ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... Swivels were trundled with all speed back to the decks. For that night a guard watched the fort; but the next night, when the assault was expected, all hands were on board, provisions had been stowed in the hold, and small arms were loaded. The men were still to mid-waist in water, scraping barnacles from the keel, when a whoop sounded from the shore; but the change in the ship's position evidently upset the plans of the savages, for they withdrew. On the morning of the 20th the woods were seen to be alive with ambushed men; and Haswell had ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... heard them laughing, but it was only the laughter of the ripples. And sometimes he thought he saw them at the bottom, but it was only white and pink shells. And once he was sure he had found one, for he saw two bright eyes peeping out of the sand. So he dived down, and began scraping the sand away, and cried, "Don't hide; I do want some one to play with so much!" And out jumped a great turbot with his ugly eyes and mouth all awry, and flopped away along the bottom, knocking poor Tom over. And he sat down at the bottom of the sea, and cried ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of loose texture; vacation now for six days. They stop to pick nuts and berries, and gather apples by the wayside at their leisure. Good religious men, with the love of men in their hearts, and the means to pay their toll in their pockets. We got over this ferry chain without scraping, rowing athwart the tide of travel,—no toll ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... of this kind we have obtained is another of those miracles which recall the wonders of Arabian fiction. On a slip of glass, three inches long by one broad, is a circle of thinner glass, as large as a ten-cent piece. In the centre of this is a speck, as if a fly had stepped there without scraping his foot before setting it down. On putting this under a microscope magnifying fifty diameters there come into view the Declaration of Independence in full, in a clear, bold type, every name signed in fac-simile; the arms of all the States, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... insurance policy for $500. The Sikoras had kept it up, scraping together the $10 premiums when the time came. Mrs. Sikora took the policy to the husband of a woman whose washing she had done. The husband was in ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... rigour of the weather. Upon these rocks we find some shells, blackish without and the inner part whitish by reason of the heat of the sun & of the humidity. They are in a maner glued to the rock; so we must gett another stone to gett them off by scraping them hard. When we thought to have enough [we] went back again to the Cottages, where the rest weare getting the litle fishes ready with trips, [Footnote: Trips,—meaning "tripe des boiled resolves itself into a black glue, roche, a species of lichen, which being nauseous but ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... Negritos is the most primitive imaginable. It consists of scraping the surface of the earth—without clearance of forest—and throwing the seed. They never "take up" a piece of land, but sow in the manner described wherever they ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... him, away from the wine-bags. Wallace had fallen to his knees and was scraping slime from the wet floor—the slime of ages of dust mingled with viscid moisture from the steam that, thinly blurring the dark air, had condensed on the ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... time he heard something moving, scraping, and snorting against the wall outside. It was the old fellow who lay there and ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... the mountains to feed upon the new grass. As evening approached we shot an antelope and made our camp—for we had brought the yak and a tent with us—among some tamarisk scrub, of which the dry stems furnished us with fuel. Nor did we lack for water, since by scraping in the sand soaked with melted snow, we found plenty of fair quality. So that night we supped in luxury upon tea and antelope meat, which indeed we were glad to have, as it spared our little ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... Hopper crept forward, found a gate through which Wilton had entered his neighbor's property, and stole after him. Wilton had been swallowed up by the deep shadow of the house, but The Hopper was aware, from an occasional scraping of feet, that he was still moving forward. He crawled over the snow until he reached a large tree whose boughs, sharply limned against the stars, brushed the eaves of ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... being pointed out and a map of the channel was lying before us. Some mention was made of a buoy that ought to be near the place where we were to mark the location of a rock, but none was found, and suddenly we heard the scraping of the vessel upon the rock. The cutter trembled and careened over. The captain was somewhat alarmed and turned the vessel toward the beach, where it was speedily examined and found to be somewhat injured. We ascertained ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... part; and the cover of the man hole in Bury's engine contains the safety valve seats. In whatever situation this man hole is placed, the surfaces of the ring encircling the hole, and of the internal part of the door or cover, should be accurately fitted together by scraping or grinding, so that they need only the interposition of a little red lead to make them quite tight when screwed together. Lead or canvas joints, if of any considerable thickness, will not long ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... with fir and spruce trees, he stopped in this haven to rest his tired eyes. When his vision had cleared, his heart gave a bound; he thought he could see a moccasin track ahead in the trail. He was off like a deer, and in a moment he was scraping the soft snow away to find—the tracks of a terrible grizzly. Now he knew there was trouble ahead, for he felt sure the bear would follow Aggretta's trail. His suspicions proved correct, and mile after ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... course, they also arrived at the porch, and Uncle Felix set his burden down. As they scraped their muddy boots and rubbed them on the mat, their backs were turned to the outside world; but Maria, whose boots required no scraping, happened to face it still. As usual she faced in all ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... with which to cut through anything. By dint of incessant and hard work, he managed to saw through three thick steel bars, but even so, there were eight others left to do. His friend the official then procured him a file, but he was obliged to use it with great care, lest the scraping sound should be heard by his guards. Perhaps they wilfully closed their ears, for many of them were sorry for Trenck; but, at all events, the eleven bars were at last sawn through, and all that remained was to make a ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... husband was in the second column which mounted. Strange to say, he was very melancholy on that morning, and appeared to have a presentiment of what was to take place. "Coralie," said he to me, as he was scraping the mud off his trousers with his pocket-knife, "if I fall, you will do well. I leave you as a legacy to General Vallee—he will appreciate you. Do not forget to let him know ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... walked away, and Cowperwood heard his steps dying down the cement-paved hall. He stood and listened, his ears being greeted occasionally by a distant cough, a faint scraping of some one's feet, the hum or whir of a machine, or the iron scratch of a key in a lock. None of the noises was loud. Rather they were all faint and far away. He went over and looked at the bed, which was not very clean and without linen, and anything but ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... of crimson had faded from the topmost boughs he began anxiously to watch the tree about which all the villagers had seated themselves in a circle after first scraping the snow from the dead leaves. Darker and darker grew the air, and brighter the stars, while far off in the forest the great cats began to talk to each other, and the owls hooted and flew. Suddenly Peter gave a cry of joy. "See! See! the ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... tallow candles. When he entered, it seemed as if the candles suddenly required snuffing, and we ceased to laugh. All spoke to him with respect, but with an inflection of the voice which denoted that he was not one of us. As he carelessly passed round the table all made a movement as he approached, scraping their chairs on the bare floor, moving their glass of mulled wine, or altering the position of their arms or legs. An indescribable appreciation of the impression which he made upon others filled my heart. His isolation from the sympathy of every person there gave me a pain and a pity, and ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... one end. A wooden piston, which closely fits the bore, bears a rounded knob; it is driven down the cylinder by a sharp blow of the palm upon the knob and is quickly withdrawn. The heat generated by the compression of the air ignites a bit of tinder (made by scraping the fibrous surface of the leaf stem of the Arenga palm) at the bottom of the cylinder. The cylinder is cast by pouring the molten metal into a section of bamboo, while a polished iron rod is held vertically in the centre to form the bore. When the cylinder ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... side of the hedge. Never the same continuously, but always changing, so that the ear never became dulled by knowing what to expect. A sharply whistled tune. Voices. The knock, knock, knock of a tool on a hard substance. A sound of scraping. Then blessed silence for a few seconds. Then knock, knock, knock again. She turned impatiently to Mrs. Bradford, who sat close up to the window reading the paper. "Thank goodness, it is nearly five; the ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... screw driver in one claw and flew up to the top of the pole. David could hear the creak of the lines under the Phoenix's weight and the rattling of the screw driver against the porcelain insulators. For some minutes the Phoenix investigated, clicking and scraping about, and muttering "Quite so" and "There we are." Then it fluttered down again and rubbed ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... avaricious; his army was maintained without any expense to him, his demesne supported his household; neither his necessary nor his voluntary expenses were considerable. Yet the effects of many years' scraping and hoarding left at his death but 60,000l.,—not the sixth part of one year's income, according to this account, of one branch of his revenue; and this was then esteemed a vast treasure. Edgar Atheling, on being reconciled to the king, was allowed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the chair there, like Napoleon bivouacking in the print; and inspecting the cutter as she lay, all that day, in the way of my chapter, O! She was rigged to carry a quantity of canvas, but her hull was so very small that four giants aboard of her (three men and a boy) who were vigilantly scraping at her, all together, inspired me with a terror lest they should scrape her away. A fifth giant, who appeared to consider himself 'below' - as indeed he was, from the waist downwards - meditated, in such close proximity with ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... there was nothing to see—just walls on each side. There was more of the passageway ahead of me, but I began to think of snakes myself, and as I did not have a club or anything to kill them with, I concluded I wouldn't go any farther. It isn't so very dirty in there. Most of this I got on myself scraping down the burnt vines. Here comes the captain. He doesn't generally oversleep himself like this. If he will go with me, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... her dark curls hung away from her softly-rounded face. Her pouting mouth, always slightly open to show a hint of two little front teeth, laughed up at him, her dove's eyes narrowed with her mirth. Of Ishmael she took no more notice than if he had not been there, and he leant against the doorpost, scraping the earth with the toe of his hard little boot, his thumbs stuck ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... and more doubtful. Nan was more curious than she was hungry. Inez sat down promptly and began scraping the crumbs together in a little pile, which pile when completed, she transferred to the oil-cloth covered floor with a ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... onset, ripping up and casting the horses on the ground, and causing the bandarilleros to leap over the railing among the spectators—or when, after a defeated effort or a successful attack, he stands majestically in the middle of the area, scraping up the sand with his hoof, foaming at the mouth, and quivering in every fibre with rage, agony, or indignation, looking towards his adversaries, and meditating a fatal rush—the sight combines every element ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... from his reclining posture, and discovered a man moving stealthily towards the road. He was creeping with the utmost care: and probably the scraping of his boot against the rock had admonished him to be more careful; at any rate he acted as though such ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... academic freedom, as the students style it, exists to a high degree, a general scraping of the feet admonishes the lecturer to repeat his words or be more distinct and clear in his enunciation. This pedal language, though often disregarded, still does not fail in the end ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... spectral about their shadowy forms, which showed in grotesquely baggy and bulgy shapes in the uncertain light. Some of them wore immense and curious white head-dresses, which gave them the appearance of poulticed thumbs; and they all went on scraping and twiddling and caterwauling with a doleful monotony that Horace felt must be getting on his guests' nerves, as it ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... to shoot the animal through the head, our travellers then walked back to the caravan. As they returned by the banks of the river, they perceived Begum very busy, scraping up the baked mud at the ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... enveloping the men's heads. When the fog lifted, the light showed a more curious spectacle than most of you have perhaps ever seen. It was the custom, whenever we halted in a sandy desert, for each man to scoop out for himself a shallow grave. In this he lay, scraping the loose sand over his body for bed-clothes, and leaving his head, wrapped in his poncho, above ground. It was, indeed, a most comfortable and delicious bed, as in those days, or ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... girl appeared, her cheeks many shades deeper than usual, and her cap quillings standing off like the rays on a sign-post picture of the sun. Following her came the boy, feeling awkward in his new clothes, and scraping with his left leg till the process was put a stop to by his master's entering into conversation with him. Hester's beauty was really so striking, as with a blushing bashfulness, she for the first ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... without having been instructed in the arts, and without nails, one could stop up the fissures in such a boat, and put it in a state fit for sea. Yet the means were very simple; our poignards, bamboos, and rattans supplied everything; by scraping a bamboo we obtained from it something like tow, which we put into the chinks, so that the water could not enter. If it was necessary to stop any breach a few inches in width, we took from the bamboo a little plank, somewhat larger than the opening we wished to close, and then ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... clamped tightly between two wooden disks of smaller diameter which left a pliant edge of wool projecting, held firmly in wooden frames and turned by hand. There were trays of tools for carving and graving and scraping, and boxes of fine sand and of glass-parchment. In a corner was a grindstone; and the unclean floor was littered with sawdust and scrapings of bone. Here half a dozen men were working, in oil-stained aprons of leather. The wheels hummed continuously, with a steady droning; at intervals ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... table, their daughter scraping her plate, pondered thus: "I suppose Mr. F. is the Bride's father. I wonder what present his aunt will give her? I wonder what 'F' stands for—Frost? Fuller? Father and mother don't want the Bride ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the sermon, possessed and transported by a bacchanalian fury, they ran up and down the church with their swords drawn, defacing the monuments of the dead, hacking and hewing the seats and stalls, and scraping the painted walls. Sir William Waller and the rest of the commanders standby as spectators and approvers of these ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... he did not beg for anything; Os-Anders always begged, as do all the Lapps. Os-Anders sits scraping at the bowl of his clay pipe, and and lights up. What a pipe! He puffs and draws at it till his wrinkled old face looks like a ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Mrs. Thornton, and my mother were enthusiastic searchers for botanical and geological specimens. They delved into the ground, turning over stones and scraping out the crevices, and zealously penetrated the woods to gather mosses, roots, and flowering plants. Of the rare floral specimens and perishable tints, my mother made pencil and water-color studies, having in view the book she was ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... no escape from us. We have your name, and the true symbol is the thing, as you should know. We also have cuttings from your hair and your beard; we have the parings of your nails, five cubic centimeters of your spinal fluid and a scraping from your liver. We have your body through those, nor can you take it out of our reach. Your name gives us your soul." He looked at Hanson piercingly. "Shall I tell you what it would be like for your soul to live in the muck of a swamp in a ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... graves decked with broken pottery and little banners of rags, then, circling fields of maize, entered a village. The huts stood in a ring inside a rude stockade. The village headman advanced, bending forward from the waist and scraping first one foot and then the other. He made obeisance before the machilla, in which men of his own kind bore up a delicate, pale prodigy, an incredible creature from another ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... few able sea-men, form the crew of the ship. They stand watch, make, reef, and take in sail; do all the dirty work, tarring down, painting, scraping, and slushing. They stand watch and watch, keep at night a look-out on the cat-heads, gangways, quarters, and halliards, where they are required to "sing out" their stations every half hour, to be sure that they are awake. Many are the instances of boys falling ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... cigarette stubs on the ground near his feet before a long drawn out murmur came from within the church, as from a thousand suspended breaths which finally exhaled a sigh of satisfaction. Then a noise of footsteps, scraping of chairs, creaking of benches, dragging of feet, and the doorway was thronged by people, all trying ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... music she drew from them, he only obtained a sort of screeching noise, that seemed to spread a panic amongst the flock, and after hurrying through the glen, the sheep dispersed both right and left. Gilbert ran after first one group and then another, scraping away at his fiddle as hard as he could, but it was all of no use—he could not overtake them. At length he was so tired that he was obliged to sit down and rest. He began to feel hungry, too, not having eaten since ...
— Up! Horsie! - An Original Fairy Tale • Clara de Chatelaine
... out as far and as fast as it pleases, the violin always goes with it. Men march the more intrepidly to the scraping of the skilful bow. There were two fiddles already going in the next room; Pere Marquette had seen to that. And in the same room stood a great, sturdy homemade table, crippled in one leg, yet standing valiantly, like an old soldier home from ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... way up step by step, one hand against the wall and my shoes scraping cautiously for a resting-place, while my men followed in single file with the ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... leaped down into the hole, and began scraping away the sand with his hands as though he had gone crazy. At last, with some difficulty, they tugged and hauled the chest up out of the sand to the surface, where it lay covered all over with the grit that clung ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... keep up much longer; didn't sleep a wink last night. Don't eat enough to keep a chicken alive." His cows appeared always to be dry, and every day he would send his niece, Sallie Pruitt, for a jug of buttermilk. He had but one industry, the tending and scraping of a long nail on the little finger of his left hand. He had a wife, but no children. His niece had recently come from the pine woods of Georgia. Her hair looked like hackled flax and her eyes were large ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... not to know argues one's self unknown.' Your most obedient, ma'am,"—bowing and scraping. "Your son has attracted the attention of the officers, and made himself pop'lar with every body. Mabby ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... reared a mound of huge dimensions, scraping the terrain far and near to obtain the earth. Wellington is said to have remarked that the features of the ground had been so far obliterated by this that he could not recognise his own positions. One wonders ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... windows stood open wide. Delicate, cultivated women had arrayed themselves in overalls and were scraping the mud ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... recognize the face of your best chum as it hid itself beneath a growth of some reddish fungus. Really handsome features were quite blotted out, and it is now evident to me why, in civilized life, we all so gladly go through the conventional daily torture of face-scraping. ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... no less than three fiddlers, two of them blind with the small-pox, and one naturally; and a piper with his drone and chanter, playing as many pibrochs as would have deaved a mill- happer,—all skirling, scraping, and bumming away throughither, the whole afternoon and night, and keeping half the countryside dancing, capering, and cutting, in strathspey step and quick time, as if they were without a weary, or had not a bone in their bodies. In the days of darkness, the whole concern would ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... jaws are so strong that they can bite a walking-stick in half. Land-tortoises are quite harmless; they only attack the insects they feed upon. They go to sleep, like the dormouse, in the winter, but they do not make a burrow; they cover themselves with earth by scraping it up and throwing it over their bodies. In doing this they would find their heads and tails very much in the way if it were not that they are able to draw them in between their shells. No one, of ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... door, around the boulder that backed the place, and was afraid of my lantern. I went down on my hands and knees to feel for a track and found one, down a gully that ran in under a blind rock. I crawled down it, all but flat, as I burrowed like a rabbit, with my back scraping against the living rock between me and the sky, and my head turned to the place where I knew the lean-to stood. I was under it with no warning whatever; in a natural, man-high cellar I could stand up in, with half a dozen bolt holes ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... small pit filled with dry sand and ashes, in which the fowls may roll to free themselves from vermin. No. 2 is another small trench or pit, containing horse-dung and rubbish of various kinds, to be frequently renewed, in which they may amuse themselves in scraping for corn and worms. No. 3 is a square of turf, on which they may pasture and amuse themselves. Two or three trees ought to be planted in the middle of the run, and these might be cherry or mulberry trees, as they are very fond of the ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... night I lay awake, thinking of the affairs of Egypt; and when I arose in the morning I took the bar lachi from my bosom, and scraping it with a knife, swallowed some of the dust in aguardiente, as I am in the habit of doing when I have made up my mind; and I said to myself, I am wanted on the frontiers of Castumba on a certain matter. The strange Caloro is about ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... gingham apron, her sleeves rolled up, her hair somewhat wild, and one lock powdered with white where she had pushed it back with a floury hand. Her cheeks were surprisingly pink, and her eyes were very bright, and she was scraping a baking board and rolling-pin, and trimming the edges of pie tins, and turning with a whirl to open the oven door, stooping to dip up spoonfuls of gravy only to pour the rich brown liquid over the meat ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... bay. The next oldest person is John Bernard, who is about eighty. Few of them were even fairly well clothed; the majority were in rags. A few wore home-made deer-skin boots, but most of them had purchased ready-made boots or shoes. They make deer-skin boots by scraping caribou skin, and tanning it in a decoction of spruce bark. Such boots are, they state, worn through in a few days. The women can spin wool, and knit stockings. Their food consists chiefly of flour, a few potatoes, some cabbage, and perhaps ...
— Report by the Governor on a Visit to the Micmac Indians at Bay d'Espoir - Colonial Reports, Miscellaneous. No. 54. Newfoundland • William MacGregor
... a little more than six years old, Beck began to earn his own livelihood, by running errands, holding horses, scraping together pence and halfpence. Betimes, his passion for saving began; at first with a good and unselfish motive,—that of surprising "mammy" at the week's end. But when "mammy," who then gained enough for herself, patted his ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the eternal question of how to live on his income had left him, relatively speaking, in peace. He had of late adopted the habit of doing his scraping and saving at the outset of each quarter, so as to get the money due to Ocock put by betimes. His illness had naturally made a hole in this; and now the living from hand to mouth ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... stoker emerged. Rolling along, and scraping his bare feet audibly against the deck, he approached the boatswain's cabin, where the said boatswain, a fair-haired, fair-bearded man from Kostroma was standing in the doorway. The senior official contracted his ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... of the same character—deep with its steep sides clothed in forest and the path scrambling over spurs, making wide detours up side valleys, or scraping along the sides of cliffs which stand perpendicularly over the raging river below. Only here and there are clearings in the forest where Lepchas or Nepalese have built themselves a few wooden houses and roughly cultivated the land. Otherwise we are under ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... piloted us from Bergen, and now we were only the thirteen members of the expedition, together with my secretary, Christofersen, who had accompanied us so far, and was to go on with us as far as Yugor Strait. Everything was so calm and still, save for the scraping of the pen that was sending off a farewell ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... forward, stumbling; but it was too late: the bowsprit crumpled against a rock, there was a soft thud, a little shock, a scraping, and the Spot ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... they begin to curl up at the edges turn them on the girdle, keep them there till dry enough to lift, then remove them to a toaster in front of the fire, where they should become a light brown. Be careful to keep the girdle brushed free of loose oatmeal, scraping it occasionally with a knife. The more rapidly the cakes ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... tried it on a baby—only a few months old—that I wanted to paint. He was restless, and anything but a good sitter. It was impossible to start work until he was quiet, so I decided to experiment on the juvenile model the "scraping process" that I had seen have its effect a day or two previously. At first the baby became ten times more lively than before, and looked at me as if it meant to say, "What the devil are you doing?" Then, as I went on scraping his little stomach for the best part of ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... that he had been one of his host's most relentless opponents. A correspondent of the New York Times described him as he appeared at one of these functions. "Here one minute, there the next—now congratulating the President, then complimenting Mrs. Lincoln, bowing and scraping, and shaking hands, and smiling, laughing, yarning and saluting the crowd of people whom he knew." More soberly, this same observer added, "He has already done a great deal of good to the administration."[965] It is impossible ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... through the fog, a field of ice, which arose in an incline to a hundred feet high in her track. The music in the theater ceased, and among the babel of shouts and cries, and the deafening noise of steel, scraping and crashing over ice, Rowland heard the agonized voice of a woman crying from the bridge steps: "Myra—Myra, where are ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... just under the clouds and among the fragrant sandal-woods, lived Hana and her son, Hiku. They made their living by beating bark into cloth, which the woman took to the coast to swap for implements, for sea food, for sharp shells for scraping the bark, and she always went alone, leaving Hiku on the mountain to talk to the animals, to paint pictures on the cloth, and to play on curious instruments he had made from gourds, reeds, and fibre, for he could play music that made the birds stop in their flight to listen. The ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... the ceaseless chip-chipping of the masons' hammers, and saw carriers of stones and mortar ascending and descending the ladders of the scaffolding that covered the face of the great North Hall. Within, that part of the building was alive with the scraping of the carpenters' saws, the clattering of lumber, and the rapping and banging ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... the sense of, to get by any expedient, to stick at nothing to obtain the end; not to be over nice in obtaining your ends—By hucke o'er krooke; e.g. by bending the knees, and by bowing low, or as we now say, by bowing and scraping, by crouching and cringing."—Bellenden Ker's Essay on the Archaeology our Popular Phrases and Nursery Rhymes, vol. i. p. 21. ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various |
