"Tick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hurls his own hopes in the mire, and makes the very thought of them a dishonour; it snatches from him the bright prospect of the career on which he has set his heart, the gate to which stood wide open but a moment earlier. And all this in the tick of a watch, in the space of time filled by one ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... yore tent an' truck didn't make a good job of it, Plimsoll," drawled Sandy. "I reckon they warn't the right so't of help. Ef you-all are aimin' to take that stuff erlong with you I'd recommend you 'tend to it yorese'f. It's gettin' erlong to'ards sun-up, fast as a clock can tick." ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... war on tick's ez dear'z the deuce, But it wun't leave no lastin' traces, Ez't would to make a sneakin' truce Without no moral specie-basis: Ef green-backs ain't nut jest the cheese, I guess ther' 's evils thet's extremer,— Fer instance,—shinplaster ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... 'late' Overland Red Summers. You took particular noise to make me hear that word 'late.' Have you got any objections to explainin' that there idea? I been examinin' the works of that word 'late,' and it don't tick right to me. 'Late' ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... her grave eyes were brooding over the prisoner's bent, dark head below. He dared not look at her. The court-room was so still that when she paused for a word one could hear the clock on the wall tick. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Jones's little house, where he lived all alone in the dirt and filth. It was just at the foot of the mountain and no neighbors under half a mile. I say he lived there, but he wasn't there more than a third of the time. The boy will remember how he used to go along the road, full as a tick, and the school children making fun of him and then running before he could get at them. I don't know as he would, though. There never was any harm in him, only he did neglect himself so he was an awful sight. And the only ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... stick and that the kite joints are all firmly tied and the kite evenly balanced; otherwise it may be lopsided. Fasten on the strings of the frame, beginning at the neck at equal distances from the spine, as indicated by the dotted lines in the diagram. Extend a string slantingly from the arms tick to the head on both sides of the spinal column, and run all the other strings as shown in the cut, being careful that both sides of the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... to shut out the evening which shed its damp melancholy over the Faubourg, and to the girl the great, still room seemed like a stage set for a drama. She sat on a stool beside the Comtesse's chair, her fingers busy with many-colored skeins of silk, and the soft stir of the fire and the tick of a little clock worked themselves ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... neatness with which the instruments were kept in their magnificent appropriate apartments, each having its appropriate observer proceeding quietly with his allotted special work, with nothing to break the silence but the "tick, tack!" of the sidereal clock—this was indeed a most impressive sight! And the kindly companionable manner of the great master of the establishment was in all respects in harmony with the astronomical work which he conducted in this ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... and drops, Wherever an outline weakens and wanes Till the latest life in the painting stops, Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains; One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick, 45 Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster, —A lion who dies of an ass's kick, The wronged great soul ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... feels the same, let's go down to the mill, and buy a barrel of flour for each company, and give the boys a rest on hardtack." I heartily assented, but asked what should we do about paying for it, as the boys were now pretty generally strapped. Press responded that we'd get the flour "on tick," and settle for it at our next pay day. To my inquiry if we should take Company B in on the deal (the other company with us at Chester), Press dryly responded that B could root for themselves; that this was a "cahootnership" of D and G only. Without further ceremony ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... If they gave tick, they would never recover the money, and if every Irishman is a knowing scoundrel, the publican is a trifle more knowledgable than the customer, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... Malone said savagely. "But if I'm going to get any information on what makes teleports tick, I'm going to have to get it from Dr. ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... that men of but little nerve or resolution find insupportable. To me, trained to a serenity of stoicism, it could make no demoralizing appeal. I had out my matchbox, opened it at leisure, and, while the whole vaulting blackness seemed to tick and rustle with secret movement, took a half-dozen vestas into my hand, struck one alight, and, by its dim radiance, made my way through the building by the passages we had penetrated in the morning. If at all I shrank or perspired ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... Council Chamber and is now in the possession of one who has driven it into the edge of his chamber-door casement, and every night hangs his watch upon it, at the head of his bed, with the infatuated notion that thereby, through some "most fine spirit of sense," the tick of a death-watch will disturb the political dreams of our Massachusetts rulers, we hereby declare that this is most chimerical and visionary, and that the great party of freedom in Massachusetts need not feel the slightest apprehension that our rulers have ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... a sardonic smile. "Don't," he said, "again allude to any such thing as selling on tick! Some time back a partner in our establishment got several ounces of goods for his relatives on credit, and up to this date the bill hasn't as yet been settled; the result being that we've all had to make the amount good, so that we've entered into an agreement that we should ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... here, you see, to the tick," he said noisily, kissing the forehead his goddaughter pressed forward to him. Then, turning to the waiter, "You can serve without delay," he said. "I like my ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... performers to awaken the soul of it; a good table, good weather, good luck, and positively nothing to do but have a good time for three solid weeks in the wilderness. The pestiferous telephone can not play the earwig on board this ship; the telegraph, with metallic tick, can not once startle us by precipitating town tattle; the postal service is cut off; wars and rumors of wars, the annihilation of a nation, even the swallowing up of a whole continent, are now of less consequence to us than the possibility of a rain-shower this afternoon, ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... one side of the ingle. The kitten, with a bell attached to a ribbon about its neck, sported with the bows of her dainty slippers. Only the click of the needles, and the tinkle of the bell, and the hollow tick of the great clock in the ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... of no other way to account for Tick-Tock's spooked behavior—nor, to be honest about it, for the manner her own nerves were acting up without visible ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... the Old Man seein' 'nd talkin' about things that the fever made him see. I wuz too big a coward to stay 'nd help his mother to bear up; so I went out-doors 'nd brung in wood,—brung in wood enough to last all spring,—and then I sat down alone by the kitchen fire 'nd heard the clock tick 'nd watched the shadders flicker through ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... Faba. THE BEAN.—Several kinds of Beans are cultivated by farmers. The principal are the Horse-Bean or Tick-Bean; the Early Mazagan; and the Long-pods. Beans grow best in stiff clayey soils, and in such they are the most convenient crop. The season for planting is either the winter or spring month, as the weather affords opportunity. They are either ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... his snuffers is prowling about And his shaky old fingers will soon snuff us out; There's a hint for us all in each pendulum tick, For we're low in the tallow and long ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... parrot, the best images the jew had on his head, over the mantlepiece; and was I to leave you all alone by yourself, isn't there an eight day clock in the corner, that when one's waiting, lonesome like, for any body, keeps going tick-tack, ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... of thoroughfare, very seldom used, it is true, and at each end of it there was a gate by which wayfarers occasionally passed to shorten the way. There we sat without speaking a word, shivering with cold and fear, listening to the clock which went slowly, tick, tick, and occasionally starting as the door creaked on its hinges, or a half-burnt billet fell upon the hearth. My sister was ghastly white, as white as the garment which was drying before the fire. And ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... what tick is, after you have been a week in the bumboat," replied the lad, laughing. ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... a huge clock in one of the corners, whose loud tick filled up every interval of silence. By this clock it was just ten minutes to eight when two gentlemen—I should say men, and coarse men at that—crossed the open ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... no tricky slipping-over under his sway—no finger-at-nose connivance between the pilot-house and the chief engineer's grille platform. No, Captain Wass was not that kind of a man, though the fog had held in front of him two days, vapor thick as feathers in a tick, and he had averaged not much over six nautical miles an hour, and was bitterly aware that the rate of freight on steel rails was sixty-five ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... that Eyot's price was chalked up at five to one, and backed him for four pounds. He had to push and elbow his way through a struggling crowd; immediately after the bet was made, Eyot's quotation was reduced by two points in response to signals tick-tacked from the inclosures. This, of course, argued a decided following for Dale's selection, and these eleventh hour movements in the turf market are illuminative. Before he got back to the car there was a mighty shout of "They're off!" and he saw Cynthia Vanrenen ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... descend rapidly, with the little old gentleman in a shuffling run, and the Policeman springing from hand to hand as if he feared pursuit, and swaying his legs from side to side with a tick-tock, tick-tock. The going was easy. Soon the bottom of the slope was reached. Then all ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... windows straight an' flat, Not big enough to zun a-cat, An' dealen door a-meaede so thin, A puff o' wind would blow en in, Where woone do vind a thing to knock So small's the hammer ov a clock, That wull but meaeke a little click About so loud's a clock do tick! Gi'e me the wold house, wi' the wide An' lofty-lo'ted rooms inside; An' wi' the stwonen pworch avore The nail-bestudded woaken door, That had a knocker very little Less to handle than a bittle, That ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... and Drop so clear, Pip and Trip and Skip that were To Mab, their sovereign, ever dear, Her special maids of honour; Fib and Tib and Pink and Pin, Tick and Quick and Jill and Jin, Tit and Nit and Wap and Win, The train that ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... and thanked Him for it all—heights of glory, depths of tribulation; thanked Him for whatsoever Infinite Love had given in the days of that dark, dark year now ending. The clock gave a warning tick—it was going; a moment, and it would be gone forever. Into his heart came a great purpose—the purpose to leave the past with the past, and in the new year go out to a new life—a life of love for all ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... then, my bed and bedding, My only chattels worth the sledding, Consisting of a maple stead, A counterpane, and coverlet, Two cases with the pillows in, A blanket, cord, a winch and pin, Two sheets, a feather bed and hay-tick, I order sledded up to Natick, And that with care the sledder save them For those kind parents, first who ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... who blandly demand six-and-eightpence, And, while toiling themselves, send all petticoats spinning; And Porters who tick off our names for our gate-pence; And Bull-dogs who help to withhold ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... he had made up his mind to instant action, the vicar's brief discourse began to drag itself into supernatural length. Facing the preacher, and immediately beneath Reuben's feet, was a clock of old-fashioned and clumsy structure, and the measured tick, tick of its machinery communicated a faintly perceptible jar to a square foot or so of the gallery flooring. The mechanical rhythm got into Reuben's brain and nerves until every second seemed to hang fire for a phenomenal time, and the twenty minutes' discourse dragged into ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... found Him? Did anyone really think they had found Him? These were questions that beat in upon his soul day after day as he drilled his men and went through the long hard hours of discipline, or lay upon his straw tick at night while a hundred and fifty other ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... tick for fatal creeds, For youth on folly bent, A steady tick for worthy deeds, And moments wisely spent; No warning note of emphasis, No whisper of advice, To ruined rake or flippant miss, For ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... to a micro organism (Piropalasna Bigenium) which imbeds itself in the red blood corpuscles. This disease is transmitted or scattered by means of a tick which drops from the affected animal. The disease has various names, according to the locality in which it appears. Among them are: Spanish Fever, Red Water, Black Water, Red Murrian, ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... and ting. They ain't treat you like a beast. Ain't take no advance o' you. What the Cap'n do he do for you good. I b'long Dr. Ward. I entitle to bring him two string o' bird. Rice bird come like jest as tick as dat (thick as that) Sometimes a ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... magnifying-glass fixed in his eye, ready to inspect some farmer's old "turnip," and suspended over his bench thirty silver and gold watches left by farmers the week before, who would profit by the next market-day to come and get them, all going together with a merry tick. It may be questioned whether a trade as low as this would have been fitting for a young man of education, a Bachelor of Arts, crammed with Greek roots and quotations, able to prove the existence of God, and to ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... I saw it in the market prices; I heard the story in each tick of the ticker and each rustle of the tape; and every time my eye caught "SUG," the stock-exchange abbreviation for Sugar, I winced, as one does at the dentist's probe—well, I could not stand it. I determined to put up Sugar—that is, I determined to try. Little the woman knew what she asked ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... as well for the encouragement 180 of the like, which else would stand under grievous imposition, as for the enjoying of thy life, who I would be sorry should be thus foolishly lost at a game of tick-tack. I'll to her. ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... Agnes begins that monotonous heave-and-drop stunt. Course, it ain't any motion worth mentionin', but somehow it sort of surprises you to find that it keeps up so constant. It's up and down, up and down, steady as the tick of a clock; and every time you glance over the rail or through a porthole you see it's quite a ride you take. I didn't mind goin' up a bit; it's that blamed feelin' of bein' let ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... one room, and that was wretched enough. Many of the windows were broken, and pieces of shingle were stuck over the holes in the glass. In one corner stood a miserable bedstead, with a ragged coverlet partially spread over a dirty bed tick filled with leaves. There was only one chair, and that was a broken rocker, on which the unhappy mistress of the cottage was seated. But there were two or three rough stools, made of pieces of pine slab, standing beside the rickety table. Pointing to these stools, Mrs. Button, without quitting ...
— Aunt Amy - or, How Minnie Brown learned to be a Sunbeam • Francis Forrester
... doing, opening the letters before I get here?" he exclaimed. "I'm punctual, am I not? Twenty-two minutes past nine to the tick. Get out of my ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Her first glance at the alarm-clock on her dressing-table was incredulous. And she refused absolutely to believe that the hour was so late. Yet the alarm-clock was giving its usual sturdy, noisy tick, and the sun was high. Then she refused to believe that the alarm had gone off, and in order to remain firm in her belief she refrained from any testing of the mechanism, which might—indeed, would—have proved that the alarm had in fact gone off. It became ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... sumptuously with its own silk, and then constructs a lid that closes inevitably, as the insect leaves its house. Here too are the scorpions. The last table of the series (12) is covered also with varieties of the spider, including the land and shepherd spiders; the African scarlet tick, and the centipedes. The visitor has now completed his survey of the contents of this room, and should at once pass forward in an easterly direction, traverse the British zoological room, which he has already ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... was blue with the smoke of three pipes and a cigar. The leave-season had opened in India, and the first-fruits on this side of the water were "Tick" Boileau, of the 45th Bengal Cavalry, who called on me, after three years' absence, to discuss old things which had happened. Fate, who always does her work handsomely, sent up the same staircase within the same hour The Infant, fresh from Upper Burma, ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... this trifle of metallic dust manage loudly to utter its signals through a telegraphic sounder, or forcibly indent them upon a moving strip of paper? Not directly, but indirectly, as the very last refinement of initiation. Let us imagine an ordinary telegraphic battery strong enough loudly to tick out a message. Be it ever so strong it remains silent until its circuit is completed, and for that completion the merest touch suffices. Now the thread of dust in the coherer forms part of such a telegraphic circuit: ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... things hum," and "whooped 'em up" around the bar-room of their village for exactly three days; when, "dead broke," they took to the gulches again, to search for more. "Yer oughter hev happened through here with that instrumint of yourn about that time, young fellow; yer might hev kept as full as a tick till they war busted," remarked a slouchy-looking old fellow whose purple-tinted nose plainly indicated that he had devoted a good part of his existence to the business of getting himself "full as a tick" every time he ran ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... man turned on his heel, without replying, and walked up the siding. The spare man shuffled back to the uneasy group. "Jim's ez full ez a tick, ez ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... to howl and moan during the night, with his head in the direction of the house where the patient lay; was there heard in the silent watches of the night in the room occupied by the sick person, a tick, ticking as of a watch about the bed or furniture, these were sure signs of approaching death, and adult patients hearing these omens, often made sure that their end was near. Many pious people also improved ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... matter. Griselda felt her way as best she could, past the Chinese cabinet and the pot-pourri jar till she got to the ante-room door. It was open, and now, knowing her way better, she hurried in. But what was the use? All was silent, save the tick-tick of the cuckoo clock in the corner. Oh, if only the cuckoo would come out and call the hour as usual, what a weight would ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... he prayed for its preservation, and he had strong faith in prayer. At any rate, at half past eleven o'clock that night he was up and dressed, and routed his two sons out of their beds. At the stroke of midnight, waiting a tick longer perhaps, to be quite sure that Sunday had gone and Monday morning had arrived, he and his sons pushed out in their ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... some upside down, and one standing upright. The door by which he had entered was at one side, on the other side was another, and between the two stood a sofa, the shape of which was plainly discernible under the sand. Over this was a clock, which had ticked its last tick. ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... had a persistent, relentless, remorseless regularity. Tick, tick—tick, tick. Every moment it appeared to be louder and louder. His brow wrinkled and his head bent forward more deeply, while his eyes were set straight before him. Tick, tick—tick, tick. The solemn beat became human as he listened. He could not raise his head—he could ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... threw up their emetic, And thirty thousand muskets flung their pills Like hail, to make a bloody diuretic. Mortality! thou hast thy monthly bills; Thy plagues, thy famines, thy physicians, yet tick, Like the death-watch, within our ears the ills Past, present, and to come;—but all may yield To the true portrait ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... slavery, moral galley-driving with a master high above them, driving them with a lash that their chained limbs may not resist. Such men, if they try to explain that torment, can often point to the very day and even hour of their sudden slavery; at such a tick of the clock the clouds gather, the very houses and street are weighted with a cold malignity, thoughts, desires, impulses are all checked, perverted, driven and counter-driven by a mysterious force. Let no man who has not known such hours and the ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... stay in that cursed room?" he mutters, striding wildly among the sand-hills. "The very tick of the clock was enough to drive one mad in those long fearful pauses—solemn and silent as death! Can't the fools do anything for her? What is the use of nurses and doctors, and all the humbug of medicine and science? My darling! my darling! It was too cruel to hear you wailing and crying, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... had been all melted together, we heard a strange noise, hin, hin, hin, hin, his, tick, tock, taack, bredelinbrededack, frr, frr, frr, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, track, track, trr, trr, trr, trrr, trrrrrr, on, on, on, on, on, on, ououououon, gog, magog, and I do not know what other barbarous words, which the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... not a true tick. It resembles a fly more than it does a tick, and its right name is Melophagus ovinus (Fig. 66). Louse-fly is a better name for this parasite than tick, as its entire life is spent on the body of a sheep. The general color of the body is brown. The legs are ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... tin-peddler, stroking his long yellow goatee. "Go into the store: nobody speak to you; go to cattle-show: everybody follow you 'round; go to the wharf: nobody weigh your fish; go to buy seed-cakes at the cart: baker won't give no tick." ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... hesitated, and murmured something to herself about "an old bald-beaded galoot," but when he told her that to him life without her would be a blasted mockery, and that his income was L50,000 a year, she threw herself on to him and froze there with the tenacity of a tick on a brindled cow, and said, with tears of joy, "Hen-ery, I ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... therefore, has its hour or quarter hour in the daily program when its big problems are considered and settled on the tick of the clock. This schedule is flexible, since no two days bring from any division of production, distribution, or financing the same demands upon the owner's attention. Yet each keeps its place and comes invariably under his eye—through reports and his own mastery of ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... faint streak of the dawn of June 7 the mines at Hill 60 and St. Yves were exploded. The sight was awe-inspiring, and the ground trembled as if in the throes of an agonizing palsy. On the tick of the appointed time our 'boys' went 'over the top.' It was for this experience that they had worked and waited. They advanced immediately behind the barrage so consistently sustained by the artillery, and in the face of a terrific fusilade of machine-gun fire which seemed ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... timekeeper, horologe, horometer: clepsydra, isochronon; scarab, scarabee, beetle. Associated Words: horology, horography, horologiography., pendulum, strike, dial, tick. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... and that only! Tick! Tick! Tick! Tick! That only! Why then had she felt it impossible to finish her sentence? The judge was looking at her; he had not moved; nor had an eyelash stirred, but the rest of that sentence had stuck ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... the intestine of the ossifrage, if worn as an amulet, is well known to be an excellent remedy for colic. A tick from a dog's left ear, worn as an amulet, was recommended to allay this and all other kinds of pain, but one must be careful to take it from a dog that is black. Alexander of Tralles recommended the heart of ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... fable of the clock, whose pendulum and wheels stopped one day, appalled by the discovery that they would have to move and tick over three million times a year for many wearisome years, but resumed work again when reminded that they would only have to ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... one might have heard a watch tick, Doble leaned forward, his body rigid, danger written large in his burning eyes ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... Chev as fit as anything, and he sent all sorts of messages," he reported, thinking it more discreet to deliver Chev's messages thus vaguely than to repeat his actual carefree remark, which had been, "Oh, tell 'em I'm jolly as a tick." ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... with other idlers, playing marbles all day in the West Park, and going home at night to tell his landlady how he had been seeking for a job. I believe this kind of existence was not unpleasant to Alick himself, and he might have long continued to enjoy idleness and a life on tick; but he had a comrade, let us call him Brown, who grew restive. This fellow was continually threatening to slip his cable for the States, and at last, one Wednesday, Glasgow was left widowed of her Brown. Some months afterwards, Alick met another ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came the tick-ticking of an alarm clock, from the corner of the room to his right. He dare not look at it. Warren's eyes grew ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... glance that she belonged to the old order of things when the seed of a woman's soul seldom had a chance to sprout. She performed her duties with the precision of a clock, with the soft alarm wound to strike at a certain hour, then to be set aside to tick unobtrusively ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... swampers down to the levee where the men are working. As long as this flood keeps rising we're safe. Then the other three of us will go for the house. We may be seen that way, but there's no use spending any more time here playing tick-tack-toe on that wood up there. We locate what we want, and if we're cornered we can come out through here to ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... house, with its long passages and large rooms, was full of those nameless sounds which fill the air in the quiet of night. He heard his father's footsteps as he paced up and down in his study, he heard the tick-tack of the old clock on the stairs, the bureau creaked, the candle spluttered, but there was no human voice to break the silence, With a yawn he rose, stretching his long legs, and, throwing back his broad shoulders, made his way along the dark passage which led ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... got only that small mess of greens. Knew you'd be disgusted, and sat down to see what we could do. Then Jack piped up, and said he'd show us a place where we could get a plenty. 'Come on,' said we, and after leading us a nice tramp, he brought us out at Morse's greenhouse. So we got a few on tick, as we had but four cents among us, and there you are. Pretty clever of the little ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... out clearly to his uncaring sight; the snap of the fire, the tick of the clock smote like separate reports upon his hearing; and while he lived he was to recall, when he smelled burning pine, this tense moment. Presently he rose unsteadily and reached out for his coat and ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... tender skin, are driven nearly frantic by these pests. Others, of whom I am thankful to say I am one, get off comparatively easy. In a particularly bad tick country, one generally appoints one of the youngsters as "tick toto." It is then his job in life to de-tick any person or domestic animal requiring his services. His is a busy existence. But though at first the nuisance is excessive, ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... us club together, fellow- riddles:—Kings, clowns, and intermediates. We are bundles of comical sensations; we bejuggle ourselves into strange phantasies: we are air, wind, breath, bubbles; our being is told in a tick.'" ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... them. Well, I liked the spaniel; it was a perfect beauty! Roper said Blake only wanted ten shillings for it, and it was an absolute bargain. He advised me to buy it and keep it at the kennels. I'd run through all my cash by then, but Blake said I could go on tick if I cared; and I thought it was a pity to miss the chance, because if I didn't have the dog, Jarrow was going to ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... Isabel would come—she could not help but come. With the passing of the fateful hour, strength began to return slowly. She would come to-morrow, and every tick of the clock ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... energetic morsel of a boy, who seemed to have discovered the secret of perpetual motion, for he never was still. Fortunately, he was not mischievous, nor very brave; so he kept out of trouble pretty well, and vibrated between father and mother like an affectionate little pendulum with a lively tick, for Rob was ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... it came to Bibi-the-Smoker's turn he whispered to the landlord who refused with a shake of the head. My-Boots understood, and again set to abusing the old Jew Colombe. What! A rascal like him dared to behave in that way to a comrade! Everywhere else one could get drink on tick! It was only in such low boozing-dens that one was insulted! The landlord remained calm, leaning his big fists on the edge of ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... drew the conclusion that the clock was not contrived for a purpose, he would be quite wrong. On the other hand, imagine another death-watch of a different turn of mind. He, listening to the monotonous "tick! tick!" so exactly like his own, might arrive at the conclusion that the clock was itself a monstrous sort of death-watch, and that its final cause and purpose was to tick. How easy to point to the clear relation of the whole mechanism ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... thread thro' the blaze— "It should be" balked by "here it cannot be." 190 And oft the man's soul springs into his face As if he saw again and heard again His sage that bade him "Rise" and he did rise. Something, a word, a tick o' the blood within Admonishes: then back he sinks at once To ashes, who was very fire before, In sedulous recurrence to his trade Whereby he earneth him the daily bread; And studiously the humbler for that pride, Professedly the faultier that he knows 200 God's secret, ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... the whiskey, I told you before. Not a sound could we hear of Godfrey or of my father. Only the rapid, calling and calling,—I mind it well that night. Ay, and well I mind the striking of the great clock,—tick, tick, tick, tick, tick,—I listened and I dreamed on it till I doubted but it was the ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... usually borrowed from somewhere to give decency and privacy to the rites—an acolyte dabbed a large yellow patch of iodine on the victim's arm. Moving into the superheated shrine, he assisted Sergt. Lyon to tick off his name on the nominal roll, and then approached the M.O. Some doctors were bland and cheerful, others humorous, others strictly businesslike, but they all knew that this was their chance to pay ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... and there was no sound within doors but the tick of the clock on the stairs, and the quick breathing of Lizzy, partly from her walk and partly from agitation, as she stood close to the wall, not in such complete darkness but that he could discern ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... while I was helping Timmy Finbrink out of his difficulties, and afterwards tried to fool you with the fake window-breaking, some of the Central fellows had been down at Ritchie's playing tick-tack on one of his front windows. Tick-tack is a stupid game, and it got me into ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... anything that the Catholic Church could produce. I remember one of his most dramatic bits, borrowed from a much earlier preacher, a passage in his description of hell. In hell, he said, there was a clock, which, instead of "tick," "tick," said, "Eternity," "Eternity," and when the damned, weary of their tortures down in the depths, came up to see what time it was, they heard the sentence of the clock, and turned in despair to go down into the depths again as far ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... was so high she had to climb on a chair to get in. She heard Maria's heavy feet go shuffling down the stairs. A door banged. Then it was so still she could hear the clock tick in the ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... "The tick of the lock is as well known to the knaves, as the blast of a trumpet to a soldier! lay down the piece—lay down the piece—should the moon touch the barrel, it could not fail to be seen by the devils, whose eyes are keener than the blackest snake's! The smallest ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... man, looking at her with admiration; 'I hadn't thought of that. I have dismissed my chauffeur,' he went on, 'because he was always wanting things. I said to him, "My good man, get anything you want if you can get tick for it." He was a maniac about ready money. I got on all right for the first forty miles or so after leaving London, and I was going on splendidly when my motor, to gain some private end, went mad. How do these things happen? Thank 'e, Jane,' as Jane fastened a silk handkerchief ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... grumbled, "and see what makes these Huks tick. They raised a lot of hell, eighty years ago. It took all the off-duty men from six precincts to handle the last riot. The Huks had got together and built themselves a fightin' fleet then, though. It's not likely there's more than one planetful of them where ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... case stands on a basement formed of cork blocks, which project a wee bit beyond the case; this structure is supported by 4 feet of a club-like form. So far so good. Now we will raise the structure higher. A case in which the pendulum with its chain is supposed to be hanging and swinging and tick-tacking is formed likewise of bricks of cork: its length is 2-1/2 inches, its breadth is 1 inch. Now as the upper case is smaller, you see, than the lower one, there would be a cavity, and indeed nothing for the higher one to rest upon, so we put little bevelled pieces on the lower ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... my dear," he went on, seeing that his wife still looked pale, "they could burn down a tick or two, on a windy night in winter and, to satisfy you, I will have an extra sharp lookout kept in that direction, and have a watchdog chained up ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... imaginary keys. The blue flame darted and quivered through the gloom. The hushed purr of the spring broke the stillness in metallic tinklings. A smile flitted across the sleeper's face. Her lips parted. The crackle of the flame seemed loud as tick ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... of the distinction before. Now altho' the public will make all rational allowance for the judge's want of distinction where Mr. Thompson is concerned, yet I suspect they could hardly account for his present lack of apprehension, unless he took that statement upon tick, and ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... a duty which none but he apparently could or would do, and he had been wrestling with it. With more philosophy than usual, too, since every tick of the clock behind him bore him nearer to an appointment which, whatever it might be, would not ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... word from him that he had a headache and would confer with me on the morrow. Neither did I see Lois again that evening, a gill of rum having been issued to every man, and I sticking close as a wood-tick to my red comrades—indeed, I had them out after sunset to watch the cattle-guard, who were in a sorry pickle, sixty head having strayed and two soldiers missing. And the manoeuvres of that same guard ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... grape, and of a liverish color. I thought that one of them had fallen on my left forearm and went to flick it off. Instead of being that, the thing burst into a blood splotch as soon as I hit it. That was the first time I had been bitten by one of those bugs. They are about the size of a sheep tick when empty, but they get on you and suck and suck, till they are full of your blood and size of a grape. Queer things, but ugly. Ista laughed as you would laugh if you saw a nigger afraid of a harmless snake. It's queer that it should be considered a joke ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... from branch to branch, whisper us to retire to our bedchambers. In the morning, again, the dull monotonous double note of the whee-whee, (so named from the sound of its calls,) chiming in at as regular intervals as the tick of a clock, warns us to rub our eyes and con over the tasks of the impending day, as it is but half an hour to dawn; till again the loud laughter of the jackass summons us to turn out, and take a peep at the appearance of the morning, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... fascinate you, Dr. Morees. But while you are counting blood types and admiring your thermometers, I hope you will be able to devote a little time to a study of the Disans' obnoxious personalities. We must either find out what makes these people tick—or we are going to have to stand by and watch the whole ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... If a tick could express anything, my reply at that moment must have satisfied him his parting wish would not be forgotten. Then returning me to my ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... "My sentiment to a tick," said he. "Now, Challenger, it's up to you to tell us where we are. We ain't nervous folk, as you know well; but when it comes to makin' a week-end visit and finding you've run full butt into the Day of Judgment, it wants a ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The trout would not bite, for I had no tackle and no hook. I was starving. I sat me down, and rested my trusty, but futile rifle against a fallen tree. Suddenly I heard a tread, turned my head, saw a Moose,—took—my—gun,—tick! he was dead. I was saved. I feasted, and in gratitude named the lake Moosetookmyguntick.' Geography has modified it, but the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... "After a week in this town, and in this bedroom? Look here, Mister, if you want to scare me about the future you just hint that they'll put me on a straw tick in an ice chest. Anything hot and lively 'll only be ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of the commandant, an insect, well known in the southern country by the name Tampan, bit my foot. It is a kind of tick, and chooses by preference the parts between the fingers or toes for inflicting its bite. It is seen from the size of a pin's head to that of a pea, and is common in all the native huts in this country. It sucks the blood until ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... an ethnological standpoint, Barotseland essentially belongs not to South but to Central Africa. The great river has also served to prevent the spread from South Africa into Barotseland of such disastrous cattle diseases as tick fever ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... my bed back of the quilt. You'll find a hoe there. You can dig up the dirt under the shuck tick with it—which helps astonishingly. What would the world say if it could know that judge Slocum Price makes his bed with a hoe! There's Spartan hardihood!" but the boy, not knowing what was meant by Spartan hardihood, remained silent. "Nearing threescore years and ten, the ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... within, and a mischievous smile spread over his angry countenance. He tiptoed to the window, and peeped in. He saw his Heart's Desire sitting alone. He cheered up a little, not much—but sufficiently to reach in his pocket for his tick-tack. ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... and goloshes I was ushered into a magnificent room with a high gold clock on the mantlepiece, gilt chairs, heavy dark carpets and large portraits frowning from the grey walls. The whole room was bitterly silent, save for the tick of the clock. There was no fire in the fireplace, but a large gleaming white stove flung out a close scented heat from the further corner of the room. There were two long glass bookcases, some little tables with gilt legs, and a fine Japanese screen of dull gold. The only ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... ends of the weaver's warp; coarse yarn made from THUMB-RING, familiar spirits were supposed capable of being carried about in various ornaments or parts of dress TIBICINE, player on the tibia, or pipe TICK-TACK, game similar to backgammon TIGHTLY, promptly TIM, (?) expressive of a climax of nonentity TIMELESS, untimely, unseasonable TINCTURE, an essential or spiritual principle supposed by alchemists to be transfusible into ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... Every tick of the old-fashioned clock sent a throb racing through his brain. Every rustle of the pages seemed to release a fresh shot of adrenalin into his blood stream. This time, his mind was pleading. It has ...
— Dead Ringer • Lester del Rey
... several French farmers to bring a quantity of straw to the public square, where the soldiers, later in the afternoon, filled their bed ticks. It was on a tick of straw, thrown on the floor of the old dilapidated, vacated house, that one hundred of the battery spent their nights of sleep in Montmorillon while the other half occupied similar beds on ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... gets married he will give her "a feather bed and a cow," and feel that her claim upon him has been handsomely met. The gift of a feather bed is rather interesting, too, when you consider that it is the daughter who has raised the geese, plucked them, and made the bed-tick. But "father" gives it to her just the same. The son, for a corresponding term of ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... to hold us both when we got into the house, and the big clock on the wall with long weights reaching almost to the floor and red roses painted around its white face, did not tick long before we were deaf to its sound, telling each other about the doings of ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... didn't mean THAT," protested Faith. "The spare room is all torn up. The mice have gnawed a big hole in the feather tick and made a nest in it. We never found it out till Aunt Martha put the Rev. Mr. Fisher from Charlottetown there to sleep last week. HE soon found it out. Then father had to give him his bed and sleep on the study lounge. Aunt Martha hasn't had time to fix the spare room bed up yet, so she says; ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... now surveying the sides with his spectacles almost touching the case, and now trying to peep between it and the wall to get a slight view of the back. Then he would retire a pace or two and look up at the dial to see it go, and then draw near again and stand with his head on one side to hear it tick: never failing to glance towards me at intervals of a few seconds each, and nod his head with such complacent gratification as I am quite unable to describe. His admiration was not confined to the clock either, but extended ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... smoky an' dark kaze dey wuzn' no windows. We didn' have no sheets an' no towels, so when I cried an' said I didn' want to live on no Yankee house, Mammy beat me an' made me go to bed. I laid on de straw tick lookin' up through de cracks in de roof. I could see de stars, an' de sky shinin' through de cracks looked like long blue splinters stretched 'cross de rafters. I lay dare an' cried kaze I wanted to go back ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... any inclination to fall in love or to give much serious thought to religion. The classical example is given by Mark Twain, who relates how Tom Sawyer exchanged one of his own teeth, which had been pulled out that morning, for a tick in the possession of Huckleberry Finn, and then 'the two boys separated, each feeling wealthier than before'. In fact, of course, they both were wealthier than before, because each had got something that he wanted more than the article with which he had parted; and this pleasant result ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... mustn't look where I put them," and she insisted that not even Nan should know the mystery of the clocks. "This will be a real surprise party," finished Dorothy, having put each of five clocks in its hiding place, and leaving the tick-ticks to think it over, all by ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... referred to at the commencement of this sketch. He discovered the now celebrated change of dimensions produced by the magnetization of soft iron by the current. The peculiar noise which accompanies the magnetization of an iron bar by the current, sometimes called the "magnetic tick," was thus explained. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... that time, and the reading would be apt to continue. But no sooner was there stillness than it began again—tick, tick, tick. With a wild explosion of blasphemy, the book would go across the floor and the light would disappear. Sometimes, when he couldn't sleep, he would dress and walk out in the street for an hour, while the cruel Steve slept like the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... one there was, though," replied Jerry. "You ain't so well 'quainted with them Comanches as I be. They're cunnin' fellers! They never show themselves when they're on a horse, or in a fight. They just stick closer'n a tick to their hoss's side, and do a heap of mighty good shootin' from under his neck, I can tell you. Why, I've seen forty of 'em comin' full tilt right towards me, and narry Injun ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... garrafon, jug. garrapata, wood-tick. garza, heron. gracias, thanks, thank you. guaquero, hunter of Indian graves. guerrillas, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... record, "Set my clock." He grows terribly indifferent to the weather. A clock then was a wonderful thing, and it is a wonderful thing now. Think of it. How these little wheels and springs are so contrived that they tick the seconds and the minutes and the hours day and night, so that Father Time might himself set his watch by some of them. But then it was a rarer and a more interesting thing than now. We can easily ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... be to begin with. Then there was a mantelboard with maroon plush and wool fringe that did not match the plush; a dreary clock like a black marble tomb—it was silent as the grave too, for it had long since forgotten how to tick. And there were painted glass vases that never had any flowers in, and a painted tambourine that no one ever played, and painted brackets ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... corner of the large hall stands a huge cylinder stove, the pipe of which rises nearly to the ceiling, before it disappears in the kitchen chimney. In another corner stands a tall clock which emits a sonorous tick-tack, as its carved hands travel slowly around its enameled face. Here is a secretary, black with age, side by side with a massive iron tripod. Upon the mantel is an immense terra-cotta candlestick which can be transformed ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... end first, and then the other, smoothing it afterwards equally all over into the required shape, and place the mattress gently over it. Any feathers which escape in this process a tidy servant will put back through the seam of the tick; she will also be careful to sew up any stitch that gives way the moment it is discovered. The bedclothes are laid on, beginning with an under blanket and sheet, which are tucked under the mattress at the bottom. The bolster is then ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... but no one could notice that, while his opponent had a bleeding nose and a cut lip. The school was amused, but Gordon overheard a Milton man say: "I don't think much of the way these Fernhurst men play the game. Look at that tick of a ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... the surgeon. I passed my time as I best could. Stretched on my bed, I either abandoned myself to reflection, or listened to the voices of the birds in the neighbouring garden. Sometimes, as I lay awake at night, I would endeavour to catch the tick of a clock, which methought sounded from some distant part ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... with three boys, almost in rags. A dingy and threadbare shawl partly hides her poor calico wrap and patched apron. The woman shrinks in the pew, fearful of being seen; her boys stand upon the benches, and applaud with the rest. She endeavors vainly to restrain them. "Tick, tick!" goes the old clock over the door through which wealth and fashion went out long years ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... garnered, and the year turned upside down, And the winter it come on, and the fires were early lit, And he'd never come anigh again, and all my life was sick. And I was cold alone, with nought to do but sit With my hands in my black lap, and hear the clock tick. For father, he lay dead With the candles at his head, And his coffin was that black I could see it through the wall; And I'd sent them all away, Though they'd offered for to stay. I wanted to be cold alone, and learn to bear it all. Then I heard him. I'd a-known ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... but two cents left!" he groaned. "Thet won't buy no supper nor nuthin! It's lucky I've got a train ticket back. But I'll have to walk to hum from the station, unless they'll tick me ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... Cullen, "that I am a bit more curious than most people, but it has nearly made me frantic to have you tick away on that little machine and hear it tick back, and not ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... away. The lads were sitting in their cosy office, Teddy lounging back on the divan, Phil in an easy chair at the roll-top desk. The lights shed a soft glow over the room; the bell rope above their heads swayed, tapping its rings with the regularity of the tick of a watch. ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington |
