"Ticking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like the body of a dead person, the body indeed of William Pepper, asleep too. Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight—here were three Portuguese men of business, asleep presumably, since a snore came with the regularity of a great ticking clock. Thirty-nine was a corner room, at the end of the passage, but late though it was—"One" struck gently downstairs—a line of light under the door showed that some ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... surprise he found the watch on his wrist ticking away as callously as though its owner had not experienced a prolonged lapse of consciousness. It told him that Eve would leave the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... such struggles before, knew better than to utter another word; the child stood perfectly still. There was no sound in the room but the ticking of the clock and the cracking of the seeds with which Miss Pollina, the old grey parrot in the cage by the window, amused herself unceasingly from morn until night. Even Miss Pollina seemed to be aware that perfect ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... I lay in silence, feeling cold and wretched, the throbbing in my head and the ticking of the clock in the passage seeming to keep time. The faint echo of some distant cries reached my ears, and I could distinguish the words of "Middleton for ever!" I trembled and hid my face in my pillow. What ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... Helen's plan, however, each time it proved to be a false alarm; and so the fifteen minutes passed completely, and then five, and five again. The girl had quite given up studying by that time, and was gazing at the clock, and listening to its ticking, and wondering very much indeed. At last when more than three-quarters of an hour had passed since David had left, she got up and went to the door once more to listen; as she did not hear anything she went out on the piazza, and finally to the road. All about her was veiled in shadow, ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... the little clock sitting there ticking to itself, with its funny grilled edges and the door. Inside the door was the cuckoo, waiting to come out. Was he listening, his head cocked on one side, listening to hear the clock strike so that he ...
— Beyond the Door • Philip K. Dick
... in the quiet hall, the old clock ticking away a solemn "I-told-you-so!" in the corner. I made one step toward the kitchen to send a message by one of the maids, but recoiled at the suggestion that this would publish a lovers' quarrel. So I retreated along the hall, my footsteps making no noise on the India matting, and entered ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... this with his wicked left eye, but continued to beam mildly with his right. Removing the coat and waistcoat of Gashwiler from a chair, he drew it towards the table, pushing aside a portly, loud-ticking watch,—the very image of Gashwiler,—that lay beside him, and, resting his ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... in amaze Stared at the clock with stupid gaze, And for a moment neither spoke; At last the landlord silence broke,— "You mean the clock that's ticking there? I see no wonder, I declare! Though maybe, if the truth were told, 'Tis rather ugly, somewhat old; Yet time it keeps to half a minute; But, if you please, what wonder's ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... He was never delirious; physically his fine and sane constitution was recovering well from a nasty blow—it was merely as though all his mind had been set a little faster, like a newly-regulated clock, a clock set to work backwards; and he could hear its ticking through all the sounds of everyday life that, hushed as much as might ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... had a small and beautiful hand of which it is said, though such a thing is hard to believe of him, he was somewhat vain. But his only gesture was to bring very infrequently the back of his hand down upon the cushion of the pulpit before him. The ticking of the clock in the College Chapel was inaudible when the chapel was empty. But it ticked out clear and loud upon the strained ears of the auditors who were waiting in the pauses of his sentences. I can remember his ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... He was so quiet and unassuming that you could hear his watch ticking in his vest pocket! Was he athletic? Don't be ridiculous! If he wasn't athletic anywhere but in his fingers he'd have been athletic enough. As it was, he was the best end that ever played on a football eleven ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... in, through a sort of queer spy-glass thing. Then he did it all over again with the other ear; and then he laid down the instruments and pulled out his watch. 'Write on a piece of paper,' says he to the other doctor: 'Do you know that the watch is ticking?' When this was done, he makes signs to little Mary to open her mouth, and puts as much of his watch in as would go between her teeth, while the other doctor holds up the paper before her. When he took the watch ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... she was gone, and stood as though he knew not whither to turn. He looked at the onyx clock ticking on the mantelpiece. He listened to the rumble of a carriage in the street. He put out his hands, and going slowly into his sleeping-room, sank upon his knees ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... nothing in the world. She did not know what was going to become of her; the burden of life seemed so unbearable; she felt so unhappy. She lay quite still, with her eyes wide open, seeing the questions go round like the hands of a clock; the very words sounded as loud and distinct in her brain as the ticking of a clock. Her nerves were shattered, and life grew terribly distinct in the insomnia of the hot summer night. ... She threw herself over and over in her burning bed until at last her soul cried out of its lucid misery: 'Give me a passion for God or man, but give me a passion. ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... skill and care of men rescue a drowned wretch from extinction, and warm the flickering spirit into steady flame, such pain it is, the blood forcing its way along the dry channels, and the heavily-ticking nerves, and the sullen heart—the struggle of life and death in him—grim death relaxing his gripe; such pain it is, he cries out no thanks to them that pull him by inches from the depths of the dead river. And he who has thought ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from Kenleigh's apartment... Get a drag out for the Magpie on the jump.... Eh?... Yes!... Left his visiting card.... What?... Yes, wound a mattress around the box and souped it; his scarf pin must have caught in the ticking and pulled out.... Sure, that's the one—the horseshoe—found it on the floor.... What?... Yes, the chances are ten to one he will, it's his only play.... All right, I'll get Mr. Kenleigh's story meanwhile.... I'll be here till you 'phone.... ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... these things the woman who sat idly before the library fire was thinking, as the quiet evening wore on, and the purring of the flames and the ticking of the little mantel clock accented rather than disturbed the stillness. She was unhappy with a cold, dry wretchedness that was deeper than any pang of passion or of hate. The people she met, the books she read, the gowns she planned so carefully, and the social events that were her life, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... his blankets to a woman who told him a pitiful tale. The cold was so bitter during the night that he had to open the ticking of his bed and crawl inside. Although this happened when he was a young man, it was typical of his usual response to appeals for help. When his landlady had him arrested for failing to pay his rent, he sent for Johnson to come and extricate him. Johnson asked him if he ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... gaze fastened upon a boule bric-a-brac stand, on which stood an Aretine vase two feet high, of peerless form and glaze. The ticking of the great Peter Hele clock drew his attention to a work of ebony and ivory as scarcely could be believed as ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... halcyon day, and the amazing doings of the Suffragettes but added a slight incentive to the perusal of the morning paper. The arts flourished, harvests prospered; the world like a newly-wound clock seemed to be in for a spell of serene and orderly ticking, with an occasional chime just to show ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... not poor, for to unite himself more closely to her he would have liked to win her clothes and food by his labour; and hearing himself speaking of love and seeing her as a maiden with the May time about her, his dreams drifted until the ticking of the clock forced him to remember that he could tell her nothing now of all his romance, so with pain and despair at ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... little mice first heard the ticking of the clock they were inclined to be frightened, and huddled close ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... entered all my clothing, all high-priced tea, white sugar, etc., all tableware, fine cutlery, table linen, bedding, curtains and towels; on his were, credits for farm products; on mine, only cash; and he was credited with butter and eggs on the same day that I was charged with bed-ticking and towels. My personal expenses from Nov. 18, '36, the date of our marriage, until Nov. 18, '56, twenty years, averaged less than fifty dollars a year. All my husband's labor for all his life, and mine for twenty years, with a large part of my separate ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... him and I did not know what to do, so beyond patting him on the back and begging him repeatedly to brace up and not behave like that, I did nothing. At last his sobs ceased and he was silent. I had risen from my chair and now I stood there with a hand on his shoulder; the ticking of the ancient eight-sided clock on the wall sounded ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... as the afternoon faded and the ticking of the clock thudded on his senses, no one ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... upon the busily ticking little clock on the table. As she looked, her gaze became fixed and she sat up in bed with a ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... quickly that we do not realize its having been stopped at all. A tiny arm holds the wheel firmly, and then lets it escape. Therefore, the fifth wheel and its accompaniments are called the "escapement." This catching and letting go is what makes the ticking. ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... good deal of English, and we chat together sometimes between classes. But more often no one speaks. All are tired after the teaching hour, and prefer to smoke in silence. At such times the only sounds within the room are the ticking of the clock, and the sharp clang of the little pipes being rapped upon the edges of the hibachi ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... For minutes the ticking of the clock sounded like the dropping of pebbles in a still pool. I could not speak, for the wonder of a miracle was upon me. By faith the impossible had come to pass. Finally Jane looked up and asked wistfully, "Oh! Zury, aren't ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... almost over.—The shrill little bell rang again, causing the President to start violently. Slowly, inch by inch, the white strip of paper was rolled off, and stooping together over the ticking instrument, the two men watched one letter, one word, one sentence after another appear, until at ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... was intense valleyward. Boylan felt the need of thinking further and dashed into the headquarters' stairway. There were excited voices above, and he made haste to see. Kohlvihr was wild-eyed in the center of the upper room—the telegraph ticking nervously, half of his staff bending with extraordinary intensity over the birth of a certain message.... What they wanted came ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... ticking of the wireless instrument now grew nervous, and it was plain that the sender was laboring ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... first editions of rare books, illuminated missals, dinner services of silver and gold, Dresden and Sevres, and even Royal Worcester; splendid crystal cases of spoons and jewellery; watches old and new; weapons of many countries, and an astonishing array of clocks, all ticking, and pointing to different hours. But the inner room, which only the intimate friends of Sidi Mohammed ever saw, was littered with no such incongruous collection. On the walls were a few fine pictures by well-known French artists of the most modern school, mostly representing ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... through the town, and two or three of them hastily putting on their best clothes, joined the picnic party under the gnarled oak tree in the meadow, and their joyous laughter rang merrily down the old staircase, where the grandfather's clock stood, tick-tick-ticking, like the great volcano which yawned at their very feet, and into which the two boys plunged merrily, and were soon splashing about in the shallow water like a mahogany chest of drawers ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... their jewellery in public like that," said Mrs. Hilary, in disgust, as she might have said tearing off their chemises, "and gold watches lying in piles on the collection table, still ticking...." She felt it was indecent that the watches should have still been ticking; it made the thing an orgy, like a revival meeting, or some cannibal rite at which victims were offered up ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... thing, I don't believe that any one should have a lot of money, so that a taxicab could remain ticking away fabulous sums while a charming young lady dines at her ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... once. There was disclosed an elderly, narrow-faced man seated at a large table and surrounded by manuscripts and books. The sunlight flowing through curtains of Turkey red fell sanguinely upon the bust of dead-eyed Pericles on the mantle. A little clock was ticking, hidden somewhere among the countless leaves of writing, the maps and broad heavy tomes that swarmed ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... I'd think it was one of those death-watch beetles had got in here. Sounds like a big watch ticking. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... put out their tongues, admired their sooty faces and began to pull out their bristles, for they all wore their upper lips shaved. Naturally, they confused right and left, and became entirely bewildered. A watch did not impress them; the ticking seemed mysterious and not quite innocent, and they put the instrument away at a safe distance. They asked to see some money, but were much disappointed, having imagined it would look bigger and more imposing. They preferred a little slip of paper, which ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... by the hand, and they walked cautiously down the hall. At the top of the stairs Highboy paused and leaned over the bannisters. Somebody was walking to and fro in the hall beneath with soft regular footfalls like the ticking of ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... Year's Eve. Job sat by the old stone fireplace. The household had gone to rest. The clock was ticking away the moments of the dying year. Outside, the world was still and white. With head in his hands, Job waited ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... directed, and awaited further orders. The silence was so great that I could plainly hear the ticking of my watch laid on the desk before me. At the end of several minutes the ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... the office bench, and while the wondering operator set the wires ticking, strove to get his breath, utterly spent in his mad race across the heather. And when it was got he set out ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... and began to long for a floor on which she might stretch herself; there was not a sound in the house but the ticking of a clock somewhere; and she was now wondering whether everybody had gone to bed, when she heard a step approaching, and presently Castle, who was the only man at home, stood up before her, and, with the ease of perfect self- satisfaction, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... prison, like a coffin on end the night held a hundred hours. The matchbox lay outside, where it had fallen, and though they could hear his watch ticking in his pocket, they were unable to look at it. After the watch stopped, they lost their sense of time altogether; they disputed what day of the week ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the quiet of that little bungalow upon the hill where the only other sounds were the ticking of the clock and the quick ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... face as he had known it. However, the closed lids, and the head resting calmly against the back of the high chair made a tranquil picture. For a long time he lay immovable, his eyes drinking in the vision. There was nothing to disturb the silence save the solemn ticking of a clock in another part of the cottage. He heard, beyond the big tapestry, the sound of a dog snapping at a fly. Pats smiled and would have whistled to Solomon, but he remembered the weary angel by his bed. With a sort of terror he recalled this ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... assumed by the domestic cat when in a state of semi-watchfulness, approaching to a doze. The senses of the matron were strung to an almost painful acuteness. The moonlight streaming in at the window was to her eyes like the glare of the sun at noonday: the ticking of the clock on the wall fell on her ears, each tick like a sharply pointed hammer seeming to bruise the nerve. A keen thrill ran like a knife through her tense frame when the infant stirred and moaned in his sleep. The lion roused himself in an instant, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... had occurred within the limits of my own family circle. All my sympathies attached themselves to the sad little figure of the adopted child. I remembered the poor baby on my knee, enchanted by the ticking of my watch—I thought of her, peacefully and prettily asleep under the horrid shelter of the condemned cell—and it is hardly too much to say that my heart was heavy, when I compared her prospects with the prospects ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... fond of shrimp-paste, which they spread on their bread-and-butter instead of jam. In every room there is always a loud noise like the wash of waves; that is made up of hundreds of busy little instruments ticking away hard all at once. It seems wonderfully quiet when we leave it behind, and step out into the street again where the lamps are ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... that, Stanistreet too had some grounds for self-reproach. He took up a book and tried to read; but the words reeled and staggered and grew dim before him; he found himself listening to the ticking of the clock, and the pulse of time became a woman's heart beating violently with pain, a heart indistinguishable from his own. Other women (it was he who had used the words)—was it simply by her share in their grim lot that Mrs. Nevill Tyson had contrived to invest herself with this ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... rewards without excitement. This atmosphere of his father's sterling industry was the best of Archie's education. Assuredly it did not attract him; assuredly it rather rebutted and depressed. Yet it was still present, unobserved like the ticking of a clock, an arid ideal, a tasteless stimulant in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... minute there was no sound save the ticking of the clock. Then the spaniel John, coming silently from under the sideboard, fell heavily down against his master's leg with a lengthy snore of satisfaction. Mr. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... black-looking wood with thin crooked legs and puppy feet. The mantelpieces are wide and high, and have not only time-pieces and cabbages sculptured over the front, but a real time-piece, which makes a prodigious ticking, on the top in the middle, with a flower-pot containing a cabbage standing on each extremity by way of outrider. Between each cabbage and the time-piece, again, is a little China man having a large stomach with a great round hole in it, through which ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... too!" then, pointing with his finger to a clock, cries with delight, "The clock goes too," we rightly find in such independent induction a proof of intellect. For the swinging of the pendulum and the ticking had indeed often been perceived, but to connect the notion of a "going clock" with the visible but noiseless swinging, just as with the audible but invisible ticking of the watch, requires a pretty well advanced power ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... For long afterwards he remembered those few minutes. There was a sort of volcanic intensity in the atmosphere. He was acutely conscious of small extraneous things, of the perfume of a great bowl of hyacinths, the ticking of a tiny French clock, the restless drumming of her finger tips upon the arm of her chair. All the time he seemed actually to feel her eyes, commanding, impelling, beseeching him to turn round. He did so at last, and looked ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... has certainly not been unheard. He has the room next to my dressing-room, and on two occasions, when I dare say he thought I was absent, I have plainly heard him announcing through the wall, 'I love you, Florrie.' Those partition walls upstairs are very thin; one can almost hear a watch ticking ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... say, well-modulated undulation of the back in our ladies of Circular rank is envied and imitated by the wife of a common Equilateral, who can achieve nothing beyond a mere monotonous swing, like the ticking of a pendulum; and the regular tick of the Equilateral is no less admired and copied by the wife of the progressive and aspiring Isosceles, in the females of whose family no "back-motion" of any kind has become as ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... sit down, though he grew very impatient at the end of a quarter of an hour. The ticking of the clock, the scratching of the pens of the three silent clerks, irritated him. At length, voices were heard, doors opened, and the clerk said, 'Mr. Millbank is coming, sir,' but nobody came; voices became hushed, doors were shut; again ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... in the ship, and Bart grabbed ticking as he felt the slow surge. Then a violent sense of pressure popped his ear drums, weight crowded down on him like an elephant sitting on his chest, and there was a horrible squashed sensation dragging his limbs out of shape. It grew ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... complete, and when he closed the heavy door of whip-sawed lumber it was necessary to light the small kerosene lamp, although the dollar watch ticking on its nail said the ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... or disturbance, he abandoned the site. And once when the compass was out of order, he camped, unconsciously, at a spot where there was iron. Then as his rheumatism developed he found that his watch had stopped. Later when his aches at last left him, his watch started ticking of its own accord. His watch was so sympathetic that it couldn't bear to run when he couldn't walk! But when he felt good, it was so joyous it ran ahead to make up for lost time. Then he set it right by ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... half-way round and looked the timepiece full in the face. Already the seconds had begun ticking off the last hour of his official life. On the stroke of twelve another man would be Governor of the State. He sat there watching the movement ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... are dying; the fact that persists in asserting itself when the noise of the world is still; the fact that does not care about daylight only, but comes up in the dark; the fact that whispers low when I am in the crowd, but speaks loud in the darkest night, when the clock is ticking on the stairs, and conscience has stalked out and stood before me, asserting facts that I cannot contradict—there is no look that can speak that fact of facts, that thirst, that longing, that desolation, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... watch. The explosion of the powder makes the bits o' glass join together agin; in flying through the air the wheels go round and round collecting all the other parts, and the watch as good as new and ticking away its 'ardest will be found in the coat-pocket o' ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... closed, but in reality they were fixed on a little clock in plain, white porcelain, to match the room, which stood on a glass shelf high on the wall in front of her. "I'm sure that old clock has stopped," she cried petulantly to the masseuse. "Tell me if it's ticking." ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... and uniformed in their bed-ticking suits; hated by the residents and despised by themselves, they doggedly marched, counter-marched and wheeled, knowing that they are loathsome in the island, and that their days in the New World are numbered. The sons of the colonies are too civil and Christianlike to be ruled ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... encountered his watch-chain; instantly he had plucked forth his watch and held it to his ear. He could hear it ticking. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... melancholy storm never, never ends. For more than fifteen months, for five hundred days in this part of the world where we are, the rifles and the big guns have gone on from morning to night and from night to morning. We are buried deep in an everlasting battlefield; but like the ticking of the clocks at home in the days gone by—in the now almost legendary Past—you only hear the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... more. Instead, he picked up a penholder from the tray on the desk, and began tapping lightly on the rim of the transmitter. It was a code message in Morse. In the room around the corner, the tapping sounded clearly, ticking out the message that the way was free for the ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... platform would come out with a tree upon it. There was a beautiful little bird upon the tree, and when the clock had done striking, the bird would flap its wings and sing. Then the platform would slide back into its place, the door would shut, and the clock go on ticking quietly ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... led, whether she wished it or not, to the kitchen—that bright kitchen with its well-kept pots and pans, and its heavy delf-ware ranged on shelves, its great Dutch clock ticking loudly in the corner, and the clear fire burning merrily in the stove, which was flanked with blue and white tiles with a variety of ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... between me and the fulfilment of my purpose is a gray-haired timekeeper with kindly eyes. He sits in a glass cage and about him are a score or more of clocks all ticking soundly and all surrounded by an extra dial of small numbers running from one to a thousand. Each number means a workman—each tick of the clock a moment of his life gone in the service of the pickle company. I rap on the window of the ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... on a form, whirling a sort of crackling rattle high above his head. In the next, another is yelling to call attention to his clocks. There they are, ranged tier upon tier, regular "English" busy-bee clocks, ticking away, as a small child remarks, as if they were alive. Then come sweet-stalls, clothes-stalls, lamp-stalls, fruit-stalls, book-stalls, stalls of pottery, and brass vessels, and jewellery, and basket work, and cutlery, and bangles in wheelbarrow ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... terrible facts, sat dry-eyed and pale, with her hands clasped in her satin lap. Newman gave a melancholy groan and fell forward, leaning his head on his hands. There was a long silence, broken only by the ticking of the great gilded clock on ...
— The American • Henry James
... we sat there, the wine untouched between us, listening alternately to the sound of speech-making and laughter that came from the dining-room, and the solemn ticking of the clock as it counted out the seconds on the mantel-piece. Then the guests came in from the table, filing before us past the open door on their way to the parlors. They were all gentlemen of course—Mr. Blake never invited ladies to his house—and gentlemen of well known ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... itself contribute to her alarm, she was conscious that the room was intensely dark, and that every one was very far away. The house, as she listened, seemed to be holding its breath, the clock in the nursery was ticking in a frightened, startled terror, and hesitating, whimsical noises broke, now close, now distant, upon the silence. She lay there, her heart beating as it had surely never been allowed to beat before. She was simply a very small, very frightened little girl. Then, before she could ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... would most assuredly wander off if not secured. Old Crump was chosen to lead the train, and Rogers was to lead him. We had made an extra halter for this old fellow, and quite a long strip of bed ticking sewed into a strap ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... galvanised iron. White ants are usually at work upon the clay walls, sending down little showers of dust upon the sleeper. Each hut contains two rough wooden frames, across which there is stretched, to make a bed, a piece of coarse linen or ticking. Very prudent people turn back the dirty rug or bit of old blanket which covers the bed, and cast a glance upon the clay floor, to see that no black momba or other venomous snake is already in possession. Such night ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Westcott was always hungry, and his querulous complaints were as regular an accompaniment to the evening meal as the ticking of the marble clock. But his beef had to be cut up for him into very tiny pieces and that gave Aunt Jessie a great deal of work, so that his appeals for a second helping were ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... maker are one. The watch is perpetually self-wound and self-regulated and self-repaired. It is made up of millions of other little watches, the cells, all working together for one common end and ticking out the seconds and minutes of life with unfailing regularity. Unlike the watch we carry in our pockets, if we take it apart so as to stop its ticking, it can never be put together again. It has not merely ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... dozed off and was whisked through a quick succession of fantastic dreams. Then he awoke suddenly, and as though someone had spoken to him. Listening intently, he only heard the low murmur of the machinery below and the ticking of the many clocks and indicators all ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... the little bed. The rhythmic dripping of a faucet is audible through the flat. It is so still that I can hear the paper crackling on the wall. Silence upon silence is added to the night; only the kitchen clock is the voice of my brooding thoughts,—ticking, ticking, ticking. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... are less terrified at thunder and lightning than at the ticking of the death-watch (anobium tesselatum), whose noise is supposed to prognosticate an early death in the household. With little less fear are the crowing of cocks, the lowing of cattle, and the howling of dogs at night listened to. The ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... external sounds are concerned, is by no means improved; on the contrary, it is impaired by the respiratory sounds being rendered more distinct. If a watch be placed within the mouth, but not allowed to touch the sides, the ticking is heard much less plainly than when held outside. In persons in whom from disease or a cold the eustachian tube is permanently or temporarily closed, the sense of hearing is injured; but this may be accounted for by mucus accumulating within the tube, and the ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... was now drawing near for our departure and at last word was sent round that General Hughes wished to meet all the chaplains on the verandah of his bungalow. The time set was the cheerful hour of five a.m. I lay awake all night with a loud ticking alarm clock beside me, till about half an hour before the wretched thing was to go off. With great expedition I rose and shaved and making myself as smart as possible in the private's uniform, hurried off to the General's camp home. There the other chaplains were assembled, about twenty-five ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... something fearful to a little lonely body in the possibilities of a great, empty house. She got up and opened her door, and the "tick-tock" of the old kitchen clock for a moment seemed like company; but pretty soon its ticking began to strike louder and louder with a nervous insistency on her ear, till the nerves quivered and vibrated, and she couldn't go to sleep. She lay and listened to all the noises outside. It was a still, clear, freezing night, when the least sound clinked with ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... acquired by those who have thus struggled upward to success is not their only, or indeed their chief reward. When, after years of toil, of opposition, of ridicule, of repeated failure, Cyrus W. Field placed his hand upon the telegraph instrument ticking a message under the sea, think you that the electric thrill passed no further than the tips of his fingers? When Thomas A. Edison demonstrated in Menlo Park that the electric light had at last been developed into a commercial success, do you suppose those bright rays failed to illuminate ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... tea. When this was done he made up the fire, and went back to his work, sitting at the corner of the table, having the fire to his left. For a little while the rats disturbed him somewhat with their perpetual scampering, but he got accustomed to the noise as one does to the ticking of a clock or to the roar of moving water; and he became so immersed in his work that everything in the world, except the problem which he was trying to solve, passed ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... thoroughly soaked let them dry in a hot sun for six or seven successive days, shaking them up well and turning them over each day. They should be covered over with a thick cloth during the night; if exposed to the night air they will become damp and mildew. This way of washing the bed-ticking and feathers makes them very fresh and light, and is much easier than the old-fashioned way of emptying the beds and washing the feathers separately, while it answers quite as well. Care must be taken to dry the bed perfectly before ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... the effect produced, while the colouring should be of a vivid tone, but excluding the bright aniline dyes already once referred to as being unsuitable to blend with other shades. A strong piece of ticking is required for the foundation, and on this the pieces are arranged. They should be pinned on while the amalgamation of colouring is being tried, and, when that is settled, basted on to the lining, the edges of soft materials being turned under and secured ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... sat gazing at my remarkable find, which was ticking and clicking away there in the silence of the desert night, trying to convey some message which I was unable to interpret, my eyes fell upon a bit of paper lying in the bottom of the box beside the instrument. I picked it up and examined it. Upon it were written ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... cheerlessly over all, the dark outside air looked in so coldly through the windows, that he thought he had never seen a church so vast, nor a tomb so melancholy. The regular sobs of Blanche de Maletroit measured out the time like the ticking of a clock. He read the device upon the shield over and over again, until his eyes became obscured; he stared into shadowy corners until he imagined they were swarming with horrible animals; and every now and again he awoke with a start, to remember that ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... will it never end? Or will not life itself go out, and let the sufferer have rest? The slow and sleepless hours toil through the darkness; and there is a ticking of a clock in the hushed room; and this agony of pain still throbbing and throbbing in the breaking heart. And then, as the pale dawn shows gray in the windows, the anguish of despair follows him even into the wan realms of sleep, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... words." This time she did not interrupt him, but listened with a smile, and her absorption was so great that when he ceased speaking she still listened, although nothing was to be heard in the salon save the ticking of the clock and the rustling of the leaves of the album that Jack, half asleep, was turning over. Suddenly she ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... left the room, and Christine sat on. Though it still wanted fifteen minutes to the hour at which Nicholas had promised to be there, she began to grow impatient. After the accustomed ticking the dead silence was oppressive. But she had not to wait so long as she had expected; steps were heard approaching the door, and ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... its place seemed to have become more immobile, and to lose itself in the shadow as in an ocean of darkness. The fire was out, the clock went on ticking, and Emma vaguely marvelled at this calm of all things while within herself was such tumult. But little Berthe was there, between the window and the work-table, tottering on her knitted shoes, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... certain sneering surprise and curiosity. A wretched little dog ran up, sniffed at his legs and began to wag its tail. He flourished his arms angrily at it. He was most annoyed of all by a small boy from a factory in a bed-ticking jacket, who seated himself on the bench and first whistled, then scratched his head, dangling his legs, encased in huge, broken boots, the while, and staring at him from time to time. "His employer is certainly expecting him," thought Aratoff, ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... was bruited that Graves was sick, and the morrow's Whig diagnosed his malady as influenza. Shelby thanked his practical stars that the ducking had had no such issue for him. By the second evening he was doubly thankful, for the press despatches were ticking out to whom it might concern that the distinguished author of the ode on the "Victory of Samothrace" and other poems ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... events he celebrates in his earliest History. In its opening pages, we are made to listen to the feet and chariots of "Dubarrydom" hurrying from the "Armida Palace," where Louis XV. and the ancien regime lay dying; later to the ticking of the clocks in Launay's doomed Bastile; again to the tocsin of the steeples that roused the singers of the Marseillaise to march from "their bright Phocaean city" and grapple with the Swiss guard, last bulwark of the Bourbons. "The Swiss would have won," ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... dead silence. As she stood there, she could hear again the ticking of the clock, and the chock of piles of books taken out of the low cupboard. Then came the faint flap of books on the desks. The children passed in silence, their hands working in unison. They were no longer a pack, but each one separated ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... it was one he had been looking for for a long time, and his letter describing his glee when it was brought up to his bedroom in the morning with his breakfast was very comic. He kept an oblong volume like a washing-book, with all the editions he knew of, some thousands in all, and his delight in ticking one more off the lengthy desiderata was like that of a schoolboy marking off the "days to the holidays." Edmund Waterton had a number of rare books besides those in his "Imitation" collection; notably a very tall First Folio Shakespeare, with contemporary comments ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... inform us of it, but if we stand in a sunbeam the dust particles will show that it is so. Our sense of feeling will not register above certain degrees of heat or below certain degrees of cold. Sensation, moreover, is not indefinitely sustained, as anyone may learn who will follow the ticking of a watch for five ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... a slit in the wall that had been shoved in. Kennedy was busy adjusting the apparatus, and paused only to remark that the boxes contained two sensitive selenium surfaces balanced against two carbon resistances. There was also in the box a clockwork mechanism which Craig wound up and set ticking ever so softly. Then he moved a rod that seemed to cover the slit, until the apparatus was adjusted to his satisfaction, a delicate operation, judging by the care he took. Several of these boxes were installed, and by that time it was ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... great quantity of hay opposite—or straw, I believe it actually was—seemed to deaden the sound of his voice, but the silence, too, had become so oppressive that I welcomed his torrent and even dreaded the moment when it would stop. I heard, too, the gentle ticking of my watch. Each second uttered its voice and dropped away into a gulf, as if starting on a journey whence there was no return. Once a dog barked somewhere in the distance, probably on the Lower Farm; ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... wall, and in it an open door—he could see that much through the very faint light that filtered through the windows. Seemingly, he was in luck. There was absolutely nothing to make him doubt that he was alone in the house. Everything was still. There was not even the ticking of a clock, the one sound he might reasonably have expected to hear even in a temporarily deserted house. But he waited for quite a minute, to make sure that no one was about. He felt certain that, had anyone been there, he would have heard breathing, no matter ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... themselves very little about their night's lodging; they, like Sam Green, were satisfied with the bare ground under the dray if it threatened rain, or anywhere near it if the weather was fine. A small tent had been provided by Mr Prentiss, which, with some ticking filled with dry grass, gave the Gilpins a luxurious lodging for the night. They could scarcely go to sleep on turning in for their first real night in the bush, from the novelty of the scene and the prospects opening up to them. Before dawn they both started up, ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... barrel of his piece, he raised it toward the bird, Every eye glanced rapidly from the marks man to the mark; but at the moment when each ear was expecting the report of the rifle, they were disappointed by the ticking ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... peremptorily to the ticking vehicle and the impatient driver. Meadows went mechanically, paid the driver, shouldered the bag, and carried it into the hall of the Lodge. He then perceived that two grinning and evidently inquisitive footmen, waiting in the hall for anything that might turn up for them to do, had been watching ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... to myself, "Now for another breaking up, in which Europe will be involved; now for the conscription, Joseph, the abolition of all permits and all the other things that we read of in the gazettes. In the place of quiet, we must be plunged in confusion; instead of listening to the ticking of clocks, we must hear the thunder of cannon; instead of talking of convents, we must talk of arsenals; instead of smelling flowers and incense, we must smell powder. Great God! will this never come to an end? Everything would go prosperously without missionaries and emigres. What ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... head resting on the same pillow day in and day out. I'd come to know he was on his death bed," she said resignedly, "for one day when I smoothed a hand over his pillow I felt there his crown a-forming inside the ticking. I'd felt the crown with my own hands and I knew death was hovering over my man. Though I didn't tell him so. I wanted he should not be troubled, that he should die a peaceable death and he did. When we laid him out we put the pillow under his ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... down couch, which consisted of a single feather laid upon a rock, and, like him, if it had not been for the name of it, I should have preferred the bare rock. They said that there was straw in the ticking upon which we lay, but I should never have imagined so from the feeling. We had neither pillows nor sheets, but the coarsest blue blankets, and not enough of them, for bedclothes; so that we suffered with cold, to add to our other miseries. And then the fleas! Well, like the Grecian ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... study, the table-clock ticked merrily on, seeming to hasten its ticking as the hand crept around closer and closer to midnight. The mosaic shade of the lamp mingled reds and blues and greens upon the white ceiling above and poured golden light upon the pages of manuscript strewn about beneath ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... continued Whiteside, ticking the item off on his fingers. "Item number two is Mr. Milburgh, an oleaginous gentleman who has been robbing the firm for years and has been living in style in the country on his ill-earned gains. From what he hears, or knows, he gathers, that the jig is up. He is in despair when ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... Dim with flick'ring candlelight, Lies a man on bed of sickness. Fiercely but a moment past Did he wage with Death the battle; Worn he sinks back into sleep. Save the clock's persistent ticking Not a sound invades the room, Where the gruesome quiet warns us Of the neighborhood of Death. O'er the pale, distended features Plays a melancholy smile. Is he dreaming at life's border Of his childhood ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... silence except the loud ticking of the bank clock and an occasional groan from the cashier, who was just beginning to return to consciousness. Twice the man left on guard called down to those in the ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... proud hearts. The painful reverie might, perhaps, have lasted till the pallid dawn looked in with tearful eyes at the window, but Paragon, who was sleeping on the rug at her feet, started up and growled. She raised her head and listened, but only the ticking of the clock was audible, and the wailing of the wind through ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... which money could buy—even this didn't console Bulbo. The Cook brought him dishes which he once used to like; but he wouldn't touch them: he sat down and began writing an adieu to Angelica, as the clock kept always ticking, and the hands drawing nearer to next morning. The Barber came in at night, and offered to shave him for the next day. Prince Bulbo kicked him away, and went on writing a few words to Princess Angelica, ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the boy camper is made as follows: Take a piece of heavy bed ticking and sew it into a bag about three feet by six feet. When you reach camp you can make a regular mattress by filling it with whatever material is most easily found. Dry leaves? grass, hay, even moss or wet filler can be used if nothing dry can be found, but in this case the rubber blanket ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... flowering plants in curious old pots of blue china-ware. The yellow afternoon light came in through the flowers and flickered a little on the white wainscots. Eugenia paused a moment; the house was perfectly still, save for the ticking, somewhere, of a great clock. The lower hall stretched away at the foot of the stairs, half covered over with a large Oriental rug. Eugenia lingered a little, noticing a great many things. "Comme c'est bien!" she said to herself; such a large, ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... things went forward Mary Burton still sat alone in the private office of Jefferson Edwardes, waiting. Through century-long hours she had in her ears only the din from the street and that incessant ticking of the stock-tape ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... the house save the ticking of an invisible clock. It might have been a place bewitched, so intense and so uncanny was the silence, broken only by that grim ticking that sounded somehow as if it had gone on exactly the ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... lower into the car, and attempted to look like a rug. In the silence, while the sentry evidently examined a passport and flashed a lantern over the chauffeur, Nikky cursed the ticking of his watch, the beating of his ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... looking at the copper man carefully, "this must be, indeed, my old friend Tik-Tok, whom I left ticking merrily in the Land of Oz. But how he came to this lonely place, and got into that old well, ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... shaped like an inverted flower-pot. His bodily covering was, however, the most extraordinary: the outer garment, if garment it can be called, resembled a very large mattress in size and shape, with the ticking made of innumerable pieces of raw hide sewn together. It was about a foot in thickness and stuffed with sticks, stones, hard lumps of clay, rams' horns, bleached bones, and other hard heavy objects; it was fastened round him with ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... her hand with a startled cry. Fletcher blinked at us stupidly, and the old man sat down with one elbow on the table and his head drooping forward limply, while for a moment or two afterward no one moved, and the ticking of a nickeled clock almost maddened me. Then the woman came forward timidly with the word "Father" on her lips, and Lee, groaning as though in pain, checked her with a gesture. "Who is this man here, lass?" ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... as we 'taxied' over the aerodrome that the roar of the engine on each side of me, the flashing of lights, the other machines as they passed us or waited with slowly 'ticking-over props' for us to pass, the different-colored lights which were being fired down from machines already in the air and the lights fired up from the ground, all combined and whirled through my excited brain like a meaningless nightmare. ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... bottles and glasses and candlesticks, "Take the news to Paris, fools! Spell it largely! It will amuse the court. Drink, drink, drink!" Wine bubbled and ran about the table; candles sputtered and died; still the sword rose and fell. Then came silence, broken only by heavy breathing and the ticking of the clock in the salon. The Chevalier sat crouched in his chair, his arm and sword resting on the table where ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... especially near. It was so near, that though I thought it quite unlikely under the circumstances, I wanted to satisfy myself that no one was playing jokes on Mr. C——, whose room was close by. The house was deadly still. I could hear the clocks ticking on the stairs. As I stood, the sound came again. It might have been caused by a very heavy fall of snow from a high roof—not sliding, but percussive. Miss Moore had wakened up and ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... Too true! Beneath you on the floor Lay blent in ruin all the obscure things That were the sofa's strength, a scattered store Of tacks and battens and protruded springs. Through the rent ticking they had all been spilt, Mute proofs and mournful of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... the apartments of the opulent. After they had slept upon the beds in the bivouacs, as they could not carry them away, they ripped them open, consigned the feathers to the winds, and sold the bed-clothes and ticking for a mere trifle. Neither the ox, nor the calf but two days old; neither the ewe, nor the lamb scarcely able to walk; neither the brood-hen, nor the tender chicken, was spared. All were carried off ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... these words soothed Bumper's ruffled feelings. It was like being rescued from a terrible giant who intended to dash out your brains and eat you for supper. Bumper's heart began to beat slower and slower until pretty soon it wasn't going any faster than the ticking of the clock outside ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... "For bed-ticking, 13,000 webs; of shirts ready-made, 18,000; shoes," I forget in what quantity; but "from the poor little Town of Duderstadt 600 pairs,—liability to instant flogging if they are not honest shoes; flogging, and the whole shoemaker guild summoned out to see it." Hardy women ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... during which all could hear the ticking of the clock on the table, and the three pairs eyes were fixed on Jewel with such varying expressions of amazement and disapproval that the child's breath ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... he was ever completely absent from it, but that there he had no sort of power. There it was Razumov who had the upper hand, in a composed sense of his own superiority. A vanquished phantom—nothing more. Often in the evening, his repaired watch faintly ticking on the table by the side of the lighted lamp, Razumov would look up from his writing and stare at the bed with an expectant, dispassionate attention. Nothing was to be seen there. He never really supposed ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... proceed to hide the object, at the end of the room, mentioning where you have put it, but not mentioning that you have placed the watch close beside it. You then request "Silence" and lead in the blind man and ask him to begin his search. He is guided, of course, by the ticking of the watch, and knows that whatever he finds close to it is the object hidden. When he calls "Found," he must slip the watch into his pocket. You then turn up the gas and quietly ask your audience if they do not think your friend is a ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... customary stance on the platform in front. His face looked stern, and he held his hands clasped behind his back. His royal blue uniform was neat and trim. Over his head, the second hand of the big clock whirled endlessly. In the silence of the briefing room, it seemed to be ticking much too loudly. ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... the feverish hunger which glowed in Dryad Anderson's face, piquantly, wistfully earnest in the dull yellow lantern light as she leaned forward, ticking off each item and its probable cost upon her fingers, and waited doubtfully for him to mock at the expense; and yet, at that, he understood far better than any one else could ever have hoped to comprehend, for Young Denny knew too what it was to wait—to wait ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... There was no sound except the deadly ticking of the clock. The men stared fascinated at that massive, lifeless figure on the floor. Even in death he was terrible. Then Dan's hand slid inside his shirt, fumbled a moment, and came forth again bearing a little gleaming circle of metal. He dropped it upon the body of Jim Silent, and turning, ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... what cause I know not, just as it used to be in the old days that the feverish child might be the better served, a peep of gas illuminated a narrow circle far below me. But where I was, all was darkness and silence, save the dry monotonous ticking of the clock that came ceaselessly up ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hut. For a long time he stared without consciousness upon the rafters of the ceiling, on which fish and ragged aprons were hung up to dry, and swinging to and fro in the current of air. This monotonous motion, which under other circumstances might have lulled him to sleep like the ticking of a clock, gradually awoke him to entire consciousness. The awful scene, which had just passed over him, came up to his mind in sudden contrast with that bright moment on the deck of the Halcyon in which he had first beheld the coasts of Wales ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... them. The combined roar of the guns exceeded all the thunder they had ever heard. About three hundred Confederate cannon were concentrated on the turreted monitors, and some of the commanders said that "shot struck the vessels as fast as the ticking of a watch." It would seem that the ships which appeared so diminutive in the distance must be annihilated, yet Mary with her powerful glass saw them creep nearer and nearer. It was their shots, not those of her friends, that she watched with agonized ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... grandfather say that the ticking of a death-watch used to scare him so that he could not sleep when he ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... do all you can for your mother," said he, while he held her in his lap, and Doctor Sennar counted her mother's pulse by the ticking ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the bottom. Water pursuing its surging course downward, its power used again and again. The canyon dry at one place near the lower edge of the city, the water all electrified, resolved into piped hydrogen and oxygen. Like a tremendous clock ticking, the water, momentarily dammed back, was released in a torrent to the electrolysis vats. The hissing gases, under tremendous pressure, raised up the heavy-weighted tops of two expanding tanks. Another tick of this giant clock—the gases released, were merged again to water. ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... securely behind him, Gard turned toward the sole occupant of the room. Mahr did not heed his coming nor rise to greet him. The ticking of the carved Louis XV clock on the mantel seemed preternaturally loud in ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... they returned to the parlor, where the bright flame on the hearth was setting their shadows to dancing on the walls. The feet of Mary Shrimpton were keeping time to the ticking of ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... rocking chair in which the helpless old dame arrived for her enforced visit. The household goods of one family had been torn from them and thrown into the melee of another, and the Jamison clock was found ticking busily away over on the roof of the Todd's chicken house. A girl mother in a little cottage on the edge of the river bank was found floating against the shore in her wooden bedstead, drowned, while ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and sat down upon one of those straight backed seats of plain, unpainted pine my feet felt as if I had been caught in a bear trap. There was always such a silence in the room after the elder had sat down and adjusted his spectacles that I could hear the ticking of the watch he carried in the pocket of his broadcloth waistcoat. For my own part I know I looked with too much longing for the good of my soul on the great gold chain that spanned the broad convexity of his stomach. Presently I observed that a couple of young women were looking at me and whispering. ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... the storm. I laughed at the ghastly fancy, and told it to Tardif in one of his waking intervals, but he was so terrified and troubled by it that it grew to have some little importance in my own eyes. So the night wore slowly away, the tall clock in the corner ticking out the seconds and striking the hours with a fidelity to its duty, which helped to keep me awake. Twice or thrice I crept, with quite unnecessary caution, into ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... resist, she didn't even sigh, she didn't look at me or attempt to settle herself in any way. It was I who settled her after taking up a position which I thought I should be able to keep for hours—for ages. After a time I grew composed enough to become aware of the ticking of the clock, even to take pleasure in it. The beat recorded the moments of her rest, while I sat, keeping as still as if my life depended upon it with my eyes fixed idly on the arrow of gold gleaming and glittering dimly ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... by the pounding of his heart rather than the ticking of his watch, it seemed to him he had a long time to wait before the woman reappeared, handing him back his card through the openwork of the grille, saying briefly: "Madame la marquise ne recoit pas." Perhaps it was the crestfallen ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... princess thought quite pretty. Fancy trousers immediately became the rage among the villagers. One young man of dudish propensities came out with a pair that had been worked in rings of various colors down each leg, while his competitor introduced knee breeches made from fancy bed ticking, heavily frilled at the knees and fancily embroidered in bright colors. The village belles, not to be outdone by the young men, discarded the old bone fish-hooks they had been wearing for ear jewelry ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... in the house or under the hat of any suburban clerk may be the limbo of a quite separate philosophy. The first man may be a complete Materialist and feel his own body as a horrible machine manufacturing his own mind. He may listen to his thoughts as to the dull ticking of a clock. The man next door may be a Christian Scientist and regard his own body as somehow rather less substantial than his own shadow. He may come almost to regard his own arms and legs as delusions ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... cellars. The cellar rats will swim out, and men will curse in the rain and wind as they drag their rubbish to their upper storeys. What time is it now?" And he had hardly thought it when, somewhere near, a clock on the wall, ticking away hurriedly, struck three. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... would intrude, but it did not find a resting-place to-day. Again the fire crackled and the pendulum swung; but the fir-logs burned right merrily, throwing out small feux de joie through the stove door, and the clock kept constantly ticking to her ear, "He is come! he ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... the dew has disappeared the approximately ripe plants or seed heads must be harvested and spread thinly—never packed firmly—upon stout cloth such as ticking, sailcloth, or factory cotton. A warm, open shed where the air circulates freely is an admirable place, since the natural temperature of the air is sufficient in the case of seeds to bring about good results. Usually in less than a week the ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... Ellicott was ticking off the data gathered so far on her fingers. The brutal quarrel with Nancy. The rush to the nearest blind-tiger. The debauch. The insult to Law. The drunken struggle. The prison. The alias. And now ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... this morning, in making the bed Mr. Pemberton sleeps in, I noticed the ticking loose, and I put my hand in, as I felt something hard, ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... also a dressing-table, the washstand, the dwarf book-case with its store of Edna Lyalls, Elizabeth Gaskells, Thackerays, Charlotte Yonges, Charlotte Brontes, a Thomas Hardy or so, and some old school-books. She looked at the pictures, including a sampler worked by a deceased aunt, at the loud-ticking Swiss clock on the mantelpiece, at the higgledy-piggledy photographs there, at the new Axminster carpet, the piece of linoleum in front of the washstand, and the bad joining of the wallpaper to the left of the door. She missed none of the details which she knew ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett |
