"Snap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was not to stop to consider that Sambo Ebony could snap those cords!" groaned Tom, staring disconcertedly about him. "Yet, if Nicolas were safe I wouldn't so much mind the escape of the black. I shall see him again, and I shall know him wherever I ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... into the ground. "Naughty, naughty, naughty little grasshopper," she began to chant, addressing an unconscious insect near the heel. "Don't you go and crawl up on the Bishop. No, just don't you. 'Cause if you do, oh, naughty grasshopper, I'll scrunch you!" with a vicious snap on ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... used all her wiles, but Danilo remembering the past was firm. And presently he had the reward that a man always has when he's firm, for as soon as it was evident that she could no longer befool him, the evil enchantment that bound her broke with a snap and Peerless Beauty became a human maiden as gentle and sweet and loving ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... struggled on— The stars above me danced in swarms like yellow bees, The shaken moonlight writhed upon the rocks;— But at the last I felt his breathing weaker grow, The tense limbs grow less tense, And with a bursting cry I bent his head right back, Back, back, until I heard his neck bones snap; His spine crunched in my grip; I flung him to the earth and knelt ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... snap them!" exclaimed Marjorie. "But I'll have Eric in the photo too. I can just get them ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... it. Then we'll go round to the Embassy. We can slip out by the back way, perhaps. Remember I have spent my life in the service, and I tell you that there's no other place in the city where your life is worth a snap of the fingers but at your Embassy or mine. Open ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... missed; for the branch yielded and went under with his weight. But in a moment, just as the boat with a swoop plunged over the fall, he rose, clutching securely and hauling himself inch by inch out of the torrent. To Fisher, who watched breathlessly, it seemed as if every moment the branch would snap and send the senior back to his fate. But it held out bravely and supported him as he gradually drew himself up and finally perched high and dry ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... ink-bottle every twenty seconds, places the third finger and thumb of his left hand on his paper, and scratches away at his worm fence like one possessed. He writes marvellously fast. Frequently the point of his pen pricks through his sheet, for he writes a heavy hand, and a snap follows, spreading inky spots over the paper, resembling a woodcut portraying the sparks from a blacksmith's hammer. Blots like mashed spiders, or crushed huckleberries, occasionally intervene, but the old veteran dashes them with sand, leaving a swearing ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Annette's, Van Diemen burst into a short snap of savage laughter. "But that's far away in the background, Mr. Mart Tinman!" he said. "You stick to your game, I know that; but you'll find me flown, though I leave a name to stink like your common behind me. And," he added, as a chill reminder, "that name the name of my benefactor. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fellers are all so d—-d peart on mathematics, and such things, that you want to snap me up on every opportunity, but I guess I've got something this time that'll settle you. Its something that a fellow gave out yesterday, and Colonel Iverson, and all the officers out there have been figuring on it ever since, and none have got the right answer, and I'm powerful sure that none of ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... right, Newell," she called gleefully. "He hasn't been there for two weeks. He's comin' to-night to take me to ride, an' I'll make him go the turnpike road, an' she'll be down by Pine Hollow, an' you can snap her up under her mother's nose—an' ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... hours and minutes of men with a scythe, and consulted it with a slight knitting of her pretty eyebrows. Then she fell into a vague abstraction, standing before the open book on the centre-table. Then she closed it with a snap, and methodically putting it exactly in the middle of the top of a black cabinet in the corner, lifted the shaded lamp in her hand and passed slowly with it up the stairs to her bedroom, where her light steps were heard moving ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... ruin and the forest together. But first promise not to interrupt me. If you snap the golden threads of thought, they will float away on the air like the film of the gossamer, and I shall never ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... that it was an Indian, and that he was watching us. I noticed his tracks some distance back, and also noticed that just before we reached this point they turned abruptly into the underbrush. As we stood looking down that hole, I heard a twig snap, and knew he was close at hand. I thought I might surprise him, but, as I said, he was too quick for me, and I only caught a flying glimpse of him as ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... treacherous roots yielded to my grasp, and fell into the torrent, my heart sunk within me. The branches on which I was suspended over the yawning chasm swang to and fro in the air, and I expected them every moment to snap in twain. Appalled at the dreadful fate that menaced me, I clutched frantically at the only large root which remained near me, but in vain; I could not reach it, though my fingers were within a few inches of it. Again and again I tried to reach it, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... the beginning of October, a bright clear morning. The red and yellow leaves come swiftly to the ground with a sudden snap from the twigs that held them: the rabbits move about briskly, and a couple of field-mice in search of winter stores run across the road nearly under Marie's feet. Marie's cheeks are rosy with the fresh, crisp air, but she does not look gay or happy. Life seems to have got into a hard ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... was axed which side was farthest from the mark in this Province, I vow I should be puzzled to say. As I don't belong to the country, and don't care a snap of my finger for either of 'em, I suppose I can judge better than any man in it, but I snore I don't think there's much difference. The popular side—I won't say patriotic, for we find in our steamboats a ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the corridor outside, which made him snap off his sentence hurriedly and turn listening and apprehensive. Again the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... debt of honor," he went on. "You can repudiate it if you want to, and snap your fingers in my face, but I trusted you, I got you out of your mess, and now I ask you ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... admitted the trend of his speech. His words droned heavily and monotonously to her as through dull banks of fog. She made up her mind that if she were asked any questions by either of them she would not reply, and that she would not look at either of them, and then she thought that she would snap and stamp her feet and say that she hated him, that he had looked down on her because she worked for his aunt, that he had meanly been ashamed of and cut her because she was poor, that he had been going with another girl ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... one day I will not be so kind to thee. On that day my mouth will be filled with a rushing wind and my arms will become as strong as steel rods, and I will blow over this palace, and all the bones in thy foolish body I will snap between my fingers. I will beat upon a large drum and thy head will be my drumstick. I will not do these things now. But one day I will do them. Therefore, when my voice sounds again in thine ears, begging for bread, remember what I have told thee. Remember, ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... traces of his fleeting visit. Something inside them had broken with a snap; they gripped their tools more freely, more courageously; and they had seen their handicraft pass before their eyes like a species of technical pageant. For a long time the wind of the passage of the great bird hung about the little workshop ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... her old ribs have come all crashing through, If a whisk of Fate's broom snap your cobweb asunder; But her rivets were clinched by a wiser than you, And our sins cannot push the Lord's right hand from under. Better one honest man who can wait for God's mind, In our poor shifting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... hostile Reichstag or Diet into an assembly of men eager to do his bidding, but that it was his firm grasp on the realities of life and his supreme command of everything which makes for true statesmanship. His policies were not based on snap judgments, they were the result of serious thought. All this showed in his speeches, and made him one of the most powerfully effective speakers of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... they had daily, for weeks, and even for months, been doing all that humanity and professional skill could suggest in order to relieve him, let us suppose of great suffering, and one fine morning to see the patient leap out of bed, laugh, and snap his fingers in their faces, and tell them that there had been nothing the matter with him all the while!—ninety-nine of them would probably look upon the next patient with some suspicion, and if deception was at all frequent, the really diseased would come in time ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... when the earth caves in beneath those who walk over his trap and they fall, he is already far away, and looks as innocent and bland as a badger on top of the ground. But if you follow him, then he will turn around and snap at you, like a real tyope. Your mother is right in fearing him; perhaps not so much on her account as for your sake. You and Mitsha are both very young, and that man knows how to ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... the West, and three days before his coming Helen fled from the city. He had spoken his message to Philadelphia, he had spoken to New York, and for a week the papers had spoken only of him. And for that week, from the sight of his printed name, from sketches of him exhorting cheering mobs, from snap-shots of him on rear platforms leaning forward to grasp eager hands, Helen had shut her eyes. And that during the time he was actually in Boston she might spare herself further and more direct attacks upon her feelings she escaped to Fair Harbor, there to remain ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... to snap all these threads of association, visual and sentimental; yet still harder, now that he was alone, to live so far from his boy. Ronald Grew was practising law in New York, and there was no more chance of ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... I stepped on a stick that bent down under my foot. The stick didn't snap and how that young scout ever caught the faint sound is more than I ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... away and chase squirrels, he scrutinized one of the pages of a newspaper some person had left there. What the young man read seemed to give him no great pleasure. He put down the paper; then picked it up again and regarded a snap-shot illustration occupying a conspicuous position on the ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... b, A; b, b, b, b![69] Very often, however, the designer is satisfied with one surprise, but I never saw a good illuminated border without one at least; and no series of any kind was ever introduced by a great composer in a painting without a snap somewhere. There is a pretty one in Turner's drawing of Rome with the large balustrade for a foreground in the Hakewell's Italy series: the single baluster struck out of the line, and showing the street below through the gap, simply makes the whole composition right, when otherwise it would have ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... doorway and was literally deluged with a stream of Spanish. She stood there, hands clasped on her tremendous bosom, staring unbelievingly at the bearer of these tidings of great joy, the while tears cascaded down her flat, homely face. With a snap of his fingers, Pablo dismissed her; then he darted into the house and emerged with his rifle. A cockerel, with the carelessness of youth, had selected for his roost the limb of an adjacent oak and was still ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... snap his fingers at the thought. "I am a weather-vane, a leaf in the wind, a—an ass. I haven't known my own mind ten minutes during the last two years, and the only thing I've ever gone honestly about is my own pleasure. Oh, yes, I have the courage of ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... but a considerable risk to snap, and I suppose the American captain could not quite make up his mind to capture a vessel (albeit a blockade-runner piled full of cotton) lying in an English port, insignificant though that port might be. We had got a large white English ensign hoisted on a pole, thereby showing the nationality ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... contemplated it with the utmost satisfaction. Now she would be able to join the Photographic Club at school, to go out on some of the Saturday afternoon expeditions, and to have a few of her prints in the Exhibition. She could take snap-shots of the girls and the classroom, and make them into picture postcards to send to her mother, and she could make a series of home photos to hang up in her bedroom at Abbey Close. There seemed no limit indeed to the possibilities of her new camera. She guarded it jealously from the prying fingers ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... just now. The rope strained as if it would snap; the bows of the nuggar were buried in foam, and the men hauling were forced to take the corporal's hint, and keep their breath for other ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... used the name of God in such a merry, jesting manner, though Plato in that book makes Socrates several times to talk with great boasting and arrogance, as he does now. "There are many, dear friend, so affected towards me, that they are ready even to snap at me, when I offer to cure them of the least madness. For they will not be persuaded that I do it out of goodwill, because they are ignorant that no god bears ill-will to man, and that therefore I wish ill to no man; but I cannot allow myself either to stand in a lie or to stifle ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... he protested, with a snap of the fingers. "I did not suggest that it could be a matter of importance. It was all a bagatelle, a fairy-tale, that should not have had so serious an end. And your husband—he has heard the ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... be turned loose outside the village. The Bedouins, as he pointed out, would be likely to snap up readily a horse of such good appearance, and in any case Hassan was plainly of the opinion that a horse's existence was of very little importance when graver matters were ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... called Snuffy Davie, from his inveterate addiction to black rappee, who was the very prince of scouts for searching blind alleys, cellars, and stalls, for rare volumes. He had the scent of a slow-hound, sir, and the snap of a bull-dog. He would detect you an old blackletter ballad among the leaves of a law-paper, and find an editio princeps under the mask of ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... which Democrates felt himself endued he did not even whisper to himself. His mood changed suddenly. He closed the box with a snap ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... behind a brazen gate; which being communicated sympathetically to his cousin, the latter chimed to it in boisterous shouts of anticipated careless jollity at Fairly Park, crying out how they would hunt and snap fingers at Jews, and all mortal sorrows, and have a fortnight, or three weeks, perhaps a full month, of the finest life possible to man, with good horses, good dinners, good wines, good society, at command, and a queen of a woman to rule and order everything. Edward affected a disdainful ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and many sailors from the fleet were going home for a holiday. The quay was crowded with passengers, and a queerly shaped engine, belching forth thick smoke, with train attached, was drawn up behind them. This we thought a fair subject for a snap-shot, but the production of the camera attracted the attention of a policeman who would not be satisfied until it was put away, though the arsenal was behind us. The sailors swarmed on board and filled the whole fore part of the boat—fine-looking fellows for the most ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... hope has fled; When vanishes each prospect fair, When the last flickering ray has sped, And naught remains but mute despair; When inky blackness doth enshroud The hopes the heart once held in store, As some tall pine, by great winds bowed, Doth snap, and when the tempest's o'er, Its noble form, magnificent and proud, Doth prostrate lie, nor ever riseth more; Thus breaks the heart, which sees no ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... to have lost all ambition. No; I won't just say that. But you appear, Mr. Darrin, either to have lost some of your snap or ambition, or else you ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... of a mind-reader, ma'am," said he, "that I know you don't care a snap of your finger for Dan Anderson. That's everdent. I ain't in on that side of the play. I'm just here to say that, so far as he's concerned hisself, he'd 'a' laid down and died cheerful any minute of ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... tinkling bells, labouring up the steep with the heavy timbers in tow, to the sad-faced contractor and his jovial, good-looking partner. As I stood one morning watching the latter go up with a springing step to the top, to superintend the placing of a beam, I saw the chain below snap, and at the same instant the huge beam swung round, striking the contractor, who, with a groan, fell headlong to the bottom of the ravine—a distance of twenty feet. Instantly half a dozen men sprang down and pulled him up, while ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... Williams & Van Horne, printed on the uppermost envelope. The reminder aroused a host of associations. Flossy had not been much in her thoughts lately, yet she had not failed to plume herself occasionally with the reflection that she could afford now to snap her fingers at her. She had wondered more than once what Flossy would think when she heard that she was ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... of glad and sad: glad to give; yet aching to keep. Daughter of Rajputs though she was, she had her moment of very human shrinking when the sharp actuality of parting was upon them; when he held her so close and long that she felt as if the tightened cord round her heart must snap—and there ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... beams and rafters of some old building. How close the air was in the stifling passage through which he was crawling! The scene changed, and he was climbing a slippery sheet of ice with desperate effort, his foot on the floor of a shallow niche, his hold an icicle ready to snap in an instant, an abyss below him waiting for his foot to slip or the icicle to break. How thin the air seemed, how desperately hard to breathe! He was thinking of Mont Blanc, it may be, and the fearfully rarefied atmosphere which he remembered well ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... economical of their steps, I have noticed. Perhaps this is how they gain time for play. The little girl jumped down presently and looked over at the wild flowers. There were clusters of yarrow in bloom, spikes of yellow snap-dragons, and a great clump of thistles in their purple glory. She must tell her father about them, and have them rooted out. Would it hurt them to be killed? She felt ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... given me one thousand pounds for it, and that he ought not to have given me less. "You have nothing to do now," continued he, "but to take your pen in hand, for your fame and reputation are made, and any bookseller will snap at what ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... himself down from the saddle. Already several mounted men were clustered about something, while just before he joined them there was another crash, and a little thin smoke drifted among the trees. Then, he saw one of them snap a cartridge out of his rifle, and that a horse lay quivering at his feet. A man stood beside it, and Grant was speaking to him, but Breckenridge ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... the unbearable nervous horror grew, and the inner tension, terrible and so taut that it seemed to be ready to snap every second, was beginning to turn into a sort of nightmare, which makes one shiver all over, which dims one's eyes with red mist, which banishes all fear of death and suffering and turns all that is human ...
— The Shield • Various
... question, and the subsequent laughter, came back with a faint twinge. Tillie knew she was short-sighted about facts, but this time—Why, there were her scrapbooks, full of newspaper and magazine articles about Thea, and half-tone cuts, snap-shots of her on land and sea, and photographs of her in all her parts. There, in her parlor, was the phonograph that had come from Mr. Ottenburg last June, on Thea's birthday; she had only to go in there and turn it on, and let Thea speak for herself. Tillie finished brushing her ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... bark in the midst of a shoal of enormous sharks. If I came in contact with one of them, I was lost, for the frail boat would certainly be upset, and as Jackson had assured me, if ever I allowed these monsters to come near enough, one snap of their jaws, and there would be an end of the Little Savage. I thought of the warning of Mrs Reichardt, and was inclined to think I had better have taken her advice, and remained in the fishing-pool; ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Why, it would be as easy as pie. Think of it; all you have to do is to let the current carry you along. It's a snap, that's what!" cried the other, brimming ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... auger, near the top of the decayed trunk, and the white chips of the workman strewing the ground beneath. When but a few paces from the tree, my foot pressed upon a dry twig, which gave forth a very slight snap. Instantly the hammering ceased, and a scarlet head appeared at the door. Though I remained perfectly motionless, forbearing even to wink till my eye smarted, the bird refused to go on with his work, but flew quietly off to a neighboring ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... that Hereward and Oger should hold that land between them, as he and Toli had done. But when "two dogs," as Ivo said, "have hold of the same bone, it is hard if they cannot get a snap at each ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... boat-house by the side of the Floss, is Mr. Deane's. The neat little lady in mourning, whose light-brown ringlets are falling over the colored embroidery with which her fingers are busy, is of course Lucy Deane; and the fine young man who is leaning down from his chair to snap the scissors in the extremely abbreviated face of the "King Charles" lying on the young lady's feet is no other than Mr. Stephen Guest, whose diamond ring, attar of roses, and air of nonchalant leisure, at twelve o'clock in the day, are ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... him, indeed, that the people in the neighbourhood he frequented scarcely dared stir out of doors, except in parties of five or six. We had had several hunts after him, but, like all man-eaters, he was old and awfully crafty; and although we got several snap shots at him, he had always ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... die will be gain, because we can honestly say that to live is Christ? If so, our hope is valid, and will not yield when we lean heavily upon it for support in the ford over the black stream. If our hope is built on anything besides, it will snap then like a rotten pole, and leave us to stumble helpless among the slippery stones ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... if, instead of making the mayor issue out of the Norman arch, he had painted him moving under the sign of the "Checquers," or the "Three Brewers," with mace—yes, with mace,—the mace appears in the picture issuing out of the Norman arch behind the mayor,—but likewise with Snap, and with whiffler, quart pot, and frying pan, Billy Blind, and Owlenglass, Mr. Petulengro and Pakomovna; then, had he clapped his own legs upon the mayor, or any one else in the concourse, what matter? But I repeat that I have no hope of making heroic pictures out of English mayors, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... his great slack muscles and welded them into whip-cords. And in front of him, facing him, stood a slim, six-foot whipper-snapper of a lieutenant, hatless, coatless, tireless, merciless—a creature whom Buzz at first thought he could snap between thumb and finger—like that!—who made life a hell for Buzz Werner. Until his ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... in thus moralising, merely taking the mean advantage the author is apt to imagine he has established over his reader when he ends off a chapter with a snap, and hopes the said reader will not dare to skip? No, we are not. We really mean something, and shall get to it in time. Let us only be clear ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... no real need to describe "Snap," but perhaps it may be useful to have the rules in print here in case of any dispute. A pack of "Snap" cards is dealt round, any number being able to play; and the game begins by the players taking their cards one by one from their hands and in turn laying them face upward on the table before ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... their masters and the peacefulness of the occasion generally, they make furtive dashes through the ranks of the spectators at me as I wheel round the small circular threshing-floor, and savagely snap at the revolving wheels. Sometimes, after being held in check until I am out of sight beyond a knoll, these vindictive and determined assailants will sneak around through the fields, and, overtaking me unseen, make stealthy onslaughts upon me from the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... mad, sprang up, calling out something in Scotch about "the deil." Seizing a great spear which had fallen from the hand of one of the priests, he rushed furiously at the giant who had given the order, and with a yell drove it at his heart. I saw the spear snap, from which I concluded that this man, whom rightly I took to be Rezu, ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... that kind. They've been worrying me for a week or two," he said. Then he seized the litter, and bundling it together flung it into an open drawer, which he shut with a snap. "Anyway, that's the last of them for to-day. I'm awfully glad ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... out into the garden. I saw a flowering branch bend and snap as though a hand had broken it—but no hand was there! Saw then another and another bend and break, a little tree sway and fall—and closer and closer to us came the trail of snapping boughs while down into the garden ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... I'll give it to Sary, and then you can look for trouble! She'll snap pictures of Jeb at dinner, of Jeb at the pump, and Jeb ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... not cry out. His body writhed mutely, and down his back appeared a red mark. The whip whirled again and fell, this time bringing a stifled curse for a response. Once more it whirled, and this time merely cracked in the air. Again and again an idle snap in the air. Broken by that grim suspense, Borgson yelled ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... he alarm'd the laity, while reverend men of grace, Like Father Joe, we're told, might snap their fingers in his face, Or order him to take a dip all in the sea so red; Wherefore, when holy men he saw, he turn'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... very happy, then these little brown nuts, one bright autumn day, suddenly popped open! And out of each one flew two brown shiny little seeds. You never saw such a popping and a snapping and a jumping! Pop! pop! snap! snap! hippetty hop! they went, faster than the corn pops in the corn popper. Reddy Fox, who always is suspicious, thought some one was shooting at him. Down on the ground fell the little brown shining seeds and tucked themselves ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... vivaciously of many things: of little Don's pleasure in her gift, of her fall on the ice on the way over, of Sara Downs' Valentine party, of Phil's letter. When the last subject was mentioned Mrs. Ware remarked, "That snap-shot of 'Eloise' shows her to be a ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... was quick. 'Groll is not his name,' said he, 'and Grand Street is not where you are to go to find him. I threw out a bait to see if you would snap at it, but I find you timid, and therefore advise you to ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... closed his eyes with a snap and his heart turned to water. He held his breath and ran-sacked his brain in vain for a reply which should ignore the inner meaning of the fatal words. Something careless and jocular he wanted, combined with a voice which should be perfectly under control. Failing these things, he kept his eyes ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... notice that they fought most brutally, scratching away savagely on each other's hard shells, without doing a great deal of damage, however. But one of them had lost one eye in the fight, and so we seized him and made off, leaving the other to snap his tongs together in anger because he had nobody to pinch. It must be a dreadful thing to want to hurt somebody and have nobody ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... many intervening obstacles between him and the other, that he was forced to hurry up so as to keep nearer. In doing so he stepped suddenly on a twig which lay across the track. It broke with a loud snap. At that moment Lord Chetwynde was but a few yards away. He turned, and just as Gualtier had poised himself so as to dart back, he caught the eyes of his enemy fixed upon him. There was no time to wait. The danger of discovery was too great. In an instant ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... abuse of you is absurd. I have heard grave and industrious persons declare emphatically that any one who allows himself to fall under your sway debars himself utterly from every chance of success. Fiddlesticks! I snap my fingers at such folly. What do these gentlemen say to the case of FIGTREE, the great Q.C.? Everybody knows that FIGTREE is, without exception, the most indolent man in the world. Let any doubter walk down Middle Temple Lane and ask ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... gauge the matter accurately, as Bob soon found out to his cost. He managed to burn more holes in his garment—and himself—than in the bonds. However, he kept at it, and after a half hour's steady and patient effort he was able to snap asunder the last strands. He stretched his arms over his head in ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... the carter lad— A jolly cock am I; I always am contented, Be the weather wet or dry. I snap my finger at the snow, And whistle at the rain; I've braved the storm for many a day, And can ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... snap our heads off, Master Guy! I can't help that young woman's tantrums upstairs; so, if she puts you out of temper, you needn't come howling at ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... despite! Once, jealous of the breeze that blew on thee, I was, Alas! on whom Fate falls, his eyes are veiled with night. What boots the archer's skill, if, when the foe draws near, His bow-string snap and leave him helpless in the fight? So when afflictions press upon the noble mind, Where shall a man from Fate and Destiny ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... I tell you how that galleon sank, Could I but bring you to that hollow whirl, The black gulf in mid-ocean, where that wreck Went thundering down, and round it hell still roars, That were a tale to snap all fiddle-strings." ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... steps of archery there was something to be learnt, and that the mere stringing of his bow was a performance attended with considerable difficulty. It was always slipping from his instep, or twisting the wrong way, or threatening to snap in sunder, or refusing to allow his fingers to slip the knot, or doing something that was dreadfully uncomfortable, and productive of perspiration; and two or three times he was reduced to the abject necessity ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... the playground was raised with a sharp snap, and the head-mistress appeared, shouting alternately at the children and the parents; but she was neither heard nor understood, and a Polish crone shook ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... spite of his kindness and hospitality, which soothed me for a day or two, I was not quite happy until I found myself aboard of a Leith smack, and, standing down the Firth with a fair wind, might snap my fingers at the retreating outline of Arthur's Seat, to the vicinity of which I had been so ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... out. There at the quiet little French inn everything suddenly changed color. It was quick, it was quiet. There was a complete change in the snap of a finger. All the chauffeurs and the porters and the waiters—men who had been there for years and with whom we who visit there Summer after Summer have grown familiar—suddenly stopped work, gave up their jobs, were turned into soldiers. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... black smoke like a blast from a furnace. When its poisonous breath has blown this smoke away for an instant, it shows two rows of teeth like knives and a long forked tongue like a snake's, and its jaws are opened wide enough to take the young man into them and bite him into a dozen pieces at one snap. Surely if he is ever to learn what fear is ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... that would seem to be desirable, and that ordinary skill might devise, is some sort of snap clutch by which the main spindle could be stopped instantly by touching a trigger with the foot; many drills and accidents would be saved thereby. Of the many special devices I have seen for use on a drilling machine, one used by Mr. Lipe might be made of universal use. It is in the form of a bracket ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... by the feet of his master, lifted his head also, but made no sound. He knew already whom to let alone and whom not. Formerly he would have jumped up and barked, and tested the long coat of the doctor to see if it was made of good material or not. Today, he would rather snap at a fly which paid with her life for daring to buzz around his nose. Well, the dogs did not give it away and the people did not notice that they had a listener, neither then nor even after Palko began to read in his Book, where there was written about the great man who was the captain of ...
— The Three Comrades • Kristina Roy
... a bit of silk thread is absurd. What he would have gained would have been a feeling of physical inconvenience during the quiet passages, and terror during the tremendous scenes of passion at the thought that the string might snap. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... vision flashed before me of thus verbally snap-shotting the scene with dear old Dickie as we stood against the rail of the ship and watched the waves fling back silvery radiance at the full moon, and I also wondered how I was to render in serviceable written ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and often it must pass off in laughter. It is something less than passion. It is not concerned with tragedies or crises, but the subtlest apprehensions of what comes and goes at every moment of life. It must never be treated as if it were passion, or the slender threads of which it consists will snap, and ridicule will justly reveal the unbalanced judgment of the sentimentalist. Nor must it ever be far from laughter, or it will collapse under its own strain, and we may be betrayed into thinking that ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... could hardly tell which was which,—I or the hen. They would all fall asleep in a soft, stirring lump for five seconds, and then rouse up, with no apparent cause, but as suddenly and simultaneously as if the drum had beat a reveille, and go foraging about in the most enterprising manner. One would snap at a ring, under the impression that it was petrified dough, I suppose; and all the rest would rush up determinedly to secure a share in the prize. Next they would pounce upon a button, evidently thinking it curd; and though they must have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... weapon showed the warden that the cartridges had been drawn! His teeth closed with a snap at the treachery of it, and with his left hand he pulled back one of the levers—that which should arouse the jailers, turnkeys and guards. Instead of the insistent clangor which ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... overseers, who are continually moving around among them, on the watch for delinquencies of all kinds. Some of these minor potentates are white and some black. As a rule, Mr. Young gives the blacks the preference and on strictly business principles, too. "The colored men have more snap, and can get more work out of their own people," he says. By means of these sub- overseers, large numbers can be transferred from one part of the ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... of the trip. Florian had answered Jessie's eleven thousandth question about things of which he was quite, quite ignorant. His brain felt queer and tight, as though something were about to snap. ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... himself, so as to be sure and not miss a word of it, when going at this tremendous pace, and as usual, without looking in front, but blundering onwards, he flew with his whole force against a post. His body, crushed by the impetus of its own weight, rebounded with a snap, and he fell disabled and insensible to ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... seem quite to realize," he writes in the letter before me, "that uniformity of pace leads inevitably to languor. You should deliver a pistol-shot or two. Remember Philippa is a fiery girl; she can snap. If only for variety, she should snap James' head off when she says, 'Do I speak as ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... of seconds now. Any instant she might hear the snap, and see the one who was giving his life for her quiver and become still. No longer hesitating, she flew at them with the blade raised high and poised herself for the stroke. Yet she could not send it. Again she tried, and a sob of rage burst ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... the newly-hatched ducklings almost entails such a result to a certainty." The wild ducklings were from the first quite tame towards those who took care of them as long as they wore the same clothes, and likewise to the dogs and cats of the house. They would even snap with their beaks at the dogs, and drive them away from any spot which they coveted. But they were much alarmed at strange men and dogs. Differently from what occurred in Sweden, Mr. Hewitt found that his young birds always changed and deteriorated in character in the course of two or ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... sharp the link of life will snap, And dead on air will stand Heels that held up as straight a chap ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... other—the two cords that soonest knit A fast and stubborn tie; your true love knot Is nothing to it. Faugh! the supple touch Of pliant interest, or the dust of time, Or the pin-point of temper, loose or rot Or snap love's silken band. Fear and old hate, They are sure weavers—they work for the storm, The whirlwind, and the rocking surge; their knot Endures ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... nothing of such things; I have never had anything to do with them, and I am certainly not going to begin now, and with you." He gathered up the papers impatiently, thrust them back into the pocketbook, which he closed with a snap, and seeing Pilar standing there like a disappointed child balked of a surprise, he added: "However, I am grateful for the suggestion, as it helps me out of a dilemma. I was at a loss in what form to put what I must say to you—you have helped me in the nick of time. Pilar," ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... not a sign was to be seen, and at dusk I stood alone, faint and broken, amongst the ruins of my ancestors' home. As I looked at this scene of desolation and I contrasted what had been my life twenty-four hours before and what it was then, something seemed to snap in my brain, and for the first time I cried. Oh! the blessed relief of those tears, my Karl, for I was a poor weak, helpless girl, and alone with death and bitterness all round me. Late that night I hid once more in my hay-loft and ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... nice, you know, Vixen," said Roderick critically, as Titmouse made a greedy snap at an apple, and was repulsed with a gentle pat on his nose, "but it can't go on for ever. What'll you do when you are ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... scarcely regained their composure and silence when, "snap!" went a dry stick. The sharp sound sent a thrill through the hearts of the boys, and instantly they became rigidly watchful. Not a leaf could move on the ground now—not a bush might bend or a bird pass and escape being seen by the four sharp eyes ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... been a wife and a mother for fifteen years, to be snuffed out at one snap of the marital snuffers. As Mr. Skratdj leaned forward in his chair, she leaned forward in hers, and defended ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Betsy Snap was a withered, hard-favoured, yellow old woman—our only domestic—always employed, at this time of the morning, in rubbing my uncle's legs. As my uncle adjured her to look at me, he put his lean grip on the crown of her head, she kneeling beside him, and turned her face towards me. An involuntary ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... said Lois, briefly, closing her lips with a snap, as if to keep the blood out of ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... not forgiven the girls for laughing at his overset on the toboggan slide the night before. And as he sat whistling "Good Night, Ladies" in a dreadful minor, he evolved such a plan for reprisal in his fertile mind that his eyes began to snap and he could hardly whistle for the grin that ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... was on my neck to get him out of the thing. I must do it! I must not let them harm him! And all that kind of thing. She seems to think that I've got a heavy drag with the police, and all there is for me to do is to snap my fingers and they'll sit up and perform. I tried to persuade her that this was a dream; but I couldn't convince her. And the result was that I had to promise to see her right away." Bat looked dolefully at his friend. "I'm on my way there now," he said, "and I ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... town; and as for Glycera, she behaved confoundedly ill to me. Well, well, now that we understand each other, it is for ever that our hearts are united, and we can look at Sir Cresswell Cresswell, and snap our fingers at his wig. But this Maria of the last century was a woman of an ill-regulated mind. You, my love, who know the world, know that in the course of this lady's career a great deal must have passed that would not ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Long point. Withdraw. On guard. Rest. Now, when I snap my fingers I want to see you come to the high port and get roun' me like lightning. Some of you men seem to be treatin' this bizness in a light-'earted way. We don't do this work to prevent you gettin' into mischief. Not much. Wotjer join the army for? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... head ached appallingly, and she looked at the clock-hands nearing five with a feeling that she could bear the sounds of building so long and no longer. If they lasted a single minute beyond that time something inside her head would snap. Knock—knock—knock; scrape—scrape; the thud of something thrown down. She felt her breath coming fast as she waited for the moment when her aching senses would be lulled by the cessation of it all—when she would rest on a ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... street boys followed in groups at their heels making the air ring with shrill "Vive's." There were not many of them, only three companies. The men looked trim and clean-cut. They were tall and husky-looking and the snap with which they walked was good to the eyes of old Paris ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... appendix. The press chap appeared wholly receptive to my views, and, after securing details of my plan to smarten Red Gap with a restaurant of real distinction, he asked so civilly for a photographic portrait of myself that I was unable to refuse him. The thing was a snap taken of me one morning at Chaynes-Wotten by Higgins, the butler, as I stood by his lordship's saddle mare. It was not by any means the best likeness I have had, but there was a rather effective bit of background ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... invention, though in his Life of Cicero Plutarch refers to the orator's nicknames, 'Grecian' and 'scholer,' due to his ability to "declaim in Greek." Cicero had a sharp, agile tongue, and was fond of using it; and nothing was more natural than that he should snap off some keen, sententious sayings, prudently veiling them, however, in a foreign language from all but those who might safely understand them.—/Greek to me./ 'Greek,' often 'heathen Greek,' was a common Elizabethan expression for unintelligible speech. In Dekker's Grissil (1600) occurs ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... variety of lap-dog, and among them the tiniest little Italian greyhound,—not more than eight inches long. This last was like a porcelain toy dog, and looked brittle, as if its thin legs would snap if much handled. I did not think it a pretty pet; it seemed too fragile to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... day because I must," he would assure her gayly; "but, I tell you, the snap is gone out of it. When there was a chance that every cap was YOUR cap, the mere progress along a corridor became thrilling." He had a foreign trick of throwing out his hands, with a little shrug of the shoulders. ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... his jaws with a snap, and strode off. I'm sorry he should take the matter to heart so seriously. We ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... first, at least—but she could wear away a stone in the end, as you know. The arranging of this place is still amusing her, so she may decide to spend a good deal of time here. She closed her mouth with that firm snap this morning that I have described to you often, and said that it was going to be her delight to make them put themselves out and come so far away from London for her. "Them," for the moment, are Mr. Derringham and Mr. Hanbury-Green, almost a Socialist person, who is on the other side—very brilliantly ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... more shingles jump and flee, and this time a clammy hand slaps your face. It is only the wing of a bat, fluttering in dismay from his crevice. Blow after blow you drive upon this board from beneath, till all the nails are loose, its shingle-fetters outside snap, and with a surge it rises, to fall grating down the roof, and land with a crash on the grass by the ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... one can believe the weather bureau." Here Hawkins allowed "Bleak House" to drop listlessly into his lap while he indulged in a moment or two of retrospection. "Let's see; that was said to have been the deadliest cold snap Chicago has ever known. Scores of people were frozen to death on the streets and many of them in their homes. I hope there is no one so luckless as to be homeless tonight. The hardiest man would be helpless. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... did you ever hear a flock of Union Square sparrows chirp faster than them fellers is talkin' now? Nix. You go into the village gay with these Schwabs by the sewer line, I guess." Truxton pricked up his ears. "The old man has had a hole chopped in the sewer here, they tell me, and it's a snap to get into the city. Not very clean or neat, but it gets you there. Well, so long! They're ready, I see. They don't monkey long when they've got a thing to do. I'd advise you not to be too stubborn when they ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... warned me with a fierce growl not to touch it. The snow melted, the season changed, and I was standing in mud and mire up to my neck. Ropes were tied around me, and horses were hitched to them to drag me from the deeps, but in trying to draw me out the ropes would snap asunder and I was left imbedded in the clay. They could not move me, because Christ had commanded me to stand there. A little while before the break of day the Savior appeared and told me to go. I started to run, but when I got alongside the ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... coming! How the spray from their oars glittered in the sun, and how their wake lengthened with every stroke! No spectator from the shore (if there had been any) could have doubted that the boat was in pursuit of the skiff, and would snap it up presently. Rolf saw that he had five determined foes gaining upon him every instant; and yet he was not alarmed. He had had his reasons for thinking himself safe near Vogel islet; and calculating for a moment the time of the tide, he was quite at his ease. As he took his ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... the curse of God follow every last one of you till you are damned in a fiery hell! You will kill me now, but you won't be rid of me. I'll haunt you every one to your graves. I will follow you night and day till your brains snap and you go howling to hell ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... to guess—never effective. Yet he was moving toward that tumult; as inexorably as death, he approached it. With eyes feeding upon this new world and ears startled by fierce rumblings, he felt as though he were living in a nightmare; and when the next minute threatened to snap his reason or strangle his frantically pounding heart, he turned to the driver, asking—but fearful ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... inoffensive snap, and Rex frowned. But he had not the slightest intention of relinquishing his purpose. With incredible coolness, he went to a corner of the room and took a box of perfectly fresh cartridges from the drawer where ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... Mark could have pleaded: 'At such a moment I would do anything to oblige you—except this, and this I really can't do. Forgive me.' Such amenities would possibly have eased the cord which was about to snap; but the idea of regarding Edward's condition as a factor in the case did not suggest itself favourably to the grim Beechinor stock, so stern, harsh, and rude. The sick man wiped from his sunken features the sweat which continually gathered there. Then ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... earth seemed to close with a snap around his brain. The next moment, they had receded an immeasurable distance, and in limitless wastes of exhausted being he stood alone. What time had passed when he came to himself he had not an idea; ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... two stood silent for a time. The wind murmured above in the maples, lazily, ominously. Then the gate clicked, with a vicious snap that pierced the silence like the report of a distant rifle. "That is probably Ned," she said wearily. "I had forgotten they close the barrooms earlier on Saturday nights. So good-bye, Bobbie. You—you may ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... reptile, against whom the whole country should rise to tear him in pieces. And I look round and see the same feeling written in the eyes of them all. I found it more hard to get used to that than to the snap of a pistol; but I have got used to it. Poor Florian will have had no such experience. And there will be no mercy shown to him because he is only a boy. Neither sex nor age is supposed to render any such feeling necessary to a lawyer. A lawyer in defending the worst ruffian that ever committed ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... catfish as long as my arm (forearm), jumped out jest a flopping. Well the catfish had a big belly too, so we beat 'em on his belly until he opened his mouth and out came one of these women's snapper pocketbooks. You know the kind that closes by a snap at the top. Well the pocket book was swelling all out, so we opened it, and guess what was in it? Two big copper pennies. I gave my cousin one and I took one. Now you mayn't believe that, but it's true. I been trying to make people believe that for near fifty years. You can put it in the ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves - Virginia Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... then an awful explosion, which hurled Dymond to the ground, and, as he fell, Newman's words seemed to run through his head: "I wish as 'ow we was a bit closer to the devils so that they couldn't shell us." He was aware of a moment's acute terror, then something in his brain seemed to snap and everything that followed was vague, for Captain ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... the girl. "I'm the only one who knows how to take a decent picture, so I have always had to be left out. I got tired of it and bought an attachment so I can snap the thing and be in it at ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... and vanishes again for revolving years, is more gazed upon than either? But I am afraid the comet is too sublime an idea for your lordship's comprehension. I would therefore recommend to you, to make the cracker the model of your conduct. You should snap and bounce at regular intervals; at one moment you should seem a blazing star, and the next be lost ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... corpse,—"Abide, abide—happy thou that mayest—the vision is not yet ended." So saying, he reared himself from the ground, drew back from the threshold on which he had hitherto lain prostrate, and closed the door of the chapel, which, secured by a spring bolt within, the snap of which resounded through the place, appeared so much like a part of the living rock from which the cavern was hewn, that Kenneth could hardly discern where the aperture had been. He was now alone in the lighted chapel which contained the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... surprised. "Fit us all to that cramped prison-pallet! Oh lor! It may suit a few stumpies, but England holds more. Might as well fit us out with fixed 'duds' from our birth. Regardless of difference in growth, or in girth. No! Snap-votes may be caught 'midst a Congress's roar, But tool us all down to one gauge, mate? ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... anything our friends had ever seen. I think that a man's friends often take away the freshness from sights that otherwise might move him. I've never been to Europe but what with magazine pictures and snap shots and Mrs. Grover, who never forgot that before she married Grover she had travelled for a whole year, I haven't any special desire to visit London or Paris. I suppose it would be different if I ever went but even then I don't think there would be the novelty to ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... metallic snap of fresh cartridges as Pelliter slipped them into the chamber of his rifle, but beyond that sound, the wind, and the straining of the huskies there was no other. A grim silence fell behind. The roar of the distant ice ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... voices affect us like music, Some voices arouse to action and ambition. Some voices fill you with despondency. Some voices irritate like a buzz-saw. Some voices snap like turtles, and some hiss ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... and the racing driver who is striving for new records on specially built tracks. If aeronautics is to be made popular, every one must be able to take part in it. It must cease to be a highly specialized business. It must be put on a basis where the ordinary person can snap the flying wires of a machine, listen to their twang, and know them to be true, just as any one now thumps his rear tire to see whether ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... handles two lines, and when the fishing is good he is kept busy hauling in and striking off the fish until his arms ache, and the tough skin on his hands is nearly chafed through. Sometimes the hooks are baited with bits of clam or porgy, though usually the mackerel, when biting at all, will snap with avidity at a naked hook, if tinned so as to shine in the water. Mr. Nordhoff, whose reminiscences of life on a fishing boat I have already quoted, describes this method of fishing and its ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... to snap up a convert in Ireland, it matters not from what church or to what church, that Mr. Lucre lost no time in securing the appointment of honest Darby to the office of Castle Cumber Deputy Goaler—an appointment to which both M'Clutchy and M'Slime strongly recommended him, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... common in our own lives we do not notice them, which may be but the illusions of this spirit of darkness showing as a fictitious spirit of light: Hurry and carelessness both in thought and in action; snap-judgment at short range; compromise with the spirit of the time in the interest of "good business," "practical considerations" or "sound policy"; worship of the doctrine of "get results," acceptance of the horrible principle: that it is every man's business to "sell" something ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... but he volunteered nothing further, having again bent over his search. For several minutes we watched in silence. Then he sat up with a snap, as a steel ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... the mistake of estimating Stover simply by his lack of weight, without taking account of the nervous, dynamic energy which was his strength. Consequently, at the snap of the ball, he was taken by surprise by the wild spring that Stover made directly at his throat and, thrown off his balance momentarily by the frenzy of the impact, tripped and went down under the triumphant Dink, who, unmindful of the fact that the play had gone by, remained proudly fixed ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... his account, you'll not be," replied Alice with a snap, and it is likely that moment ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... of low class, especially when they are as ignorant as possible. Then again, we are well represented on the Poor Law Board, which really has all the power, attending as it does to sanitation and so forth. The Nationalists greedily snap at every shred and semblance of power, and leave no stone unturned to get the mastery. There has come a sad change over the poor folks, that is, the Roman Catholics. Formerly they were civil and kind, and we all got on famously together. If a Protestant was out in the country a mile or ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... tree big enough to hold more than nine of them. The record of the story is now obscure, but the horrid tale goes on to relate that the lion gave a frightful roar and leaped upon the tenth man, biting him to death in a single snap. The dilemma of the others is obvious. They knew better than to disturb a lion while it is eating. To do so would be to court sudden death. So they sat still and watched the beast slowly and greedily devour their comrade. Having finished his meal the great beast, surfeited with food, slowly moved ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... the shadow of a big rock near a deep, dark, cool pool. And when his wide-open shiny eye saw a little fly fall on the top of the water, he would flip his slippery, shiny tail and wave his slippery, shiny fins and dart out and up and—snap! he'd have the fly inside him! Then like a shiny streak he'd quietly slip back to the ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... Southner a guidin, controllin, and directin the machine, and assoomin to hisself the places uv honor, and the Dimokrat uv the North follerin, like a puppy dog, at his heels, takin sich fat things ez he cood snap up; the Southerner ashamed uv his associations, but forced to yoose em; the Northerner uncomfortable in his presence, but tied to him by self-interest. I saw a comin back the good old times when thirty-four States ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... justify his West Indian character. An "ancient mariner" told us, that full forty miles from Syracuse, a shark, which had been following him for a long time, thrust his head suddenly out of the water, and made a snap at him; and if the boat had not been a thunny boat, high in the sides, there is no saying how much of him might have been extant! A pair of trousers drying in the sun over the side of the boat should have small ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... entered his mind. It seemed though as if all the elements of nature were conspiring to facilitate the flight of the hunter and himself. The sentinels, whose dusky figures they were yet able to see, moved sleepily up and down. No dead wood that would break with a snap thrust itself before their feet. The wilderness opened ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... have no doubt that it was the sound of the constable's fall. West's pipe had gone out, and he struck a match to relight it. As he did so, Marden saw him drop the match, clench both fists, and with eyes glaring in the moonlight and his teeth coming together with a snap, drop from his chair. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... door to. It shut with a rasping snap; and at the same moment a great body from without thundered against it with terrific violence, and a deep voice roared like the sea when thwarted ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... cork and smell like cheese. It has to be cleaned, passed through a machine that tears it into bits, then between rollers before it is ready to be manufactured. It is not elastic like rubber; it may be stretched; but it will not snap back again as rubber does. It is a remarkably good nonconductor of electricity, and therefore it has been generally used to protect ocean cables, though recently rubber has been taking its place. It makes particularly excellent casts, for when it is warm ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... but to kindle it to decisive consecration and self-surrender. The loving look interprets the severe words. If once we meet it full, and our hearts yield to the heart that is seen in it, the cords that bind us snap, and it is no more hard to 'count all things but loss,' and to give up ourselves, that we may follow Him. The sad and feeble and weary who may be half despairingly seeking for alleviation of outward ills, and the young and strong and ardent whose souls are fed with high desires, have but ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... I'll give ye a sup of milk with it." Up she gets with the tow-cards and the tailor with the goose, and the two 'prentices, the one with the big shears, and the other with the lawbrod; but it dodged them, and ran round about the fire; and one of the 'prentices, thinking to snap it with the shears, fell into the ashes. The tailor cast the goose, and the goodwife the tow-cards; but it wouldn't do. The bannock ran away, and ran till it came to a wee house at the roadside; and in it runs and there was a weaver sitting at the loom, and the wife winding ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... for letters, writes of her disappointment in not finding one from Susy. The reports from Quarry Farm had been cheerful, and there had been small snap-shot photographs which were comforting, but her mother heart could not be entirely satisfied that Susy did not send letters. She had a vague fear that some trouble, some illness, had come to Susy which made her ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to Sicily, and fill up there with corn. You will have to use care before entering port, for with war now certain, both parties will begin to snap up prizes when they get the chance. So you must keep a sharp lookout for Genoese galleys. If you find the coast is too closely watched, you will go to the Moorish ports. We are friends with them at present, though doubtless, as soon ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... which were old stagers and knew the words of command far better than their riders, started at the beginning of the note; and before the call had well ended the brisk impressive 'Halt!' would snap across it like a pistol-shot. 'Pick up Sullivan, somebody!' The luckless man, after more than three months' lessons, came to me one morning in triumph and told me with a broad grin, 'I didn't fall, off the day,' He was recognised from the first as incorrigible, ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray |
