"Clapper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dead too? den her clapper is stopped at last. [Pause.] So de old woman is dead; well, she led me a hard life—she was de wife of my bosom, she was mine frow for all dat. [Whimpering.] I'm dead too, unt dat is a fact. Tell me ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... impossible; even to toll it requires the united strength of three men pulling with separate ropes the vast clapper; above this are 40 ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... pretensions to intelligence who hasn't wept over little Cosette, been in love with Enjolras and "doted on" Gavroche and Jean Valjean! So ultra nice has the world become that we must skip the Canticles. Shakespeare's plays must now be clapper-clawed to make them palatable. Alexander Pope's philosophic rhyme must be deleted with dashes. Walt Whitman's poetry is too strong for the average stomach. But we continue to fire into the bosoms of our families the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... beautiful Magnolia. I wonder how the miles of green marsh through which we pass can seem to you such a dreary waste. To my eye it is all alive with interest. I never tire of watching how the lonely white heron spears his scaly prey, how the clapper-rail floats on his raft of matted rushes, how the marsh-wren jerks his saucy little tail over his bottle-shaped nest, or how with quick and certain stroke the oyster-catcher extracts the juicy "native" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... week, there was always a great to-do; Mrs. Iden, like nervous people, was cross and peevish when she was exceptionally busy, and clapper-clawed Iden to some purpose. It chanced that Amaryllis one day was just opening an envelope and taking out a returned drawing, when Iden entered, angry and fresh from Mrs. Iden's tongue, and, seeing ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... tin tube, with a small piston at each end. By pushing in one piston, the air in the tube conveys the effect to the piston at the other end, which strikes against the bell—this piston being, as it were, the clapper on the outside of the bell. The intensity of confined sounds is finely exhibited at Carisbrook Castle, in the Isle of Wight. There is here a well 210 feet deep, of twelve feet in diameter, and lined with smooth masonry; and when a pin is dropped into it, the sound of its striking the surface ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... replied the beadle in a distressed manner. "It's Monsieur Granoux, he's gone up into the steeple. I must tell you that I removed the clapper of the bell, by his Reverence's order, precisely to prevent the tocsin from being sounded. But Monsieur Granoux wouldn't listen to reason. He climbed up, and I've no idea what he can be making ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... passed, of which he had now some curiosity to know the particulars. He therefore applied to his bell, which he rung at least twenty times without any effect: for my landlady was in such high mirth with her company, that no clapper could be heard there but her own; and the drawer and chambermaid, who were sitting together in the kitchen (for neither durst he sit up nor she lie in bed alone), the more they heard the bell ring the more they were frightened, and as it were ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... doth hyr nest and byrdes also betraye By hyr grete chatterynge, clamoure dyn and crye Ryght so these folys theyr owne foly bewraye. But touchynge wymen of them I wyll nought say They can nat speke, but ar as coy and styll As the horle wynde or clapper or a mylle ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... are evidences of their all having at some time served the same purpose, even down to that strange instrument about which Du Chaillu tells us in his "Equatorial Africa", a bell of leopard skin, with a clapper of fur, which was rung by the wizard doctor when entering a hut where someone was ill or dying. The leopard skin and fur clapper seem to have been devised to make no noise, so as not to anger the demon that was to be cast out. This reminds us ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... whether or not the door or telephone bell rings during your absence, place a little rider of paper or cardboard on the clapper in such a way that it will be ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... much noise and confusion, they were seated at the antique mahogany, with the dent near one edge where a Yankee cavalryman had rested his spurred foot too carelessly once upon a time. It was then observed that Hen, having silenced her great clapper, was unobtrusively gone from the midst. The circumstance proved of interest ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Whiche doth hyr nest and byrdes also betraye By hyr grete chatterynge, clamoure dyn and crye, Ryght so these folys theyr owne foly bewraye. But touchynge wymen of them I wyll nought say, They can not speke, but ar as coy and styll As the horle wynde or clapper of a mylle. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... This bell is never tolled but upon the death of some of the Royal Family, of the Bishop of London, or of the Dean of St. Paul's, and then the clapper is moved and not the bell. In the stillness of night, the indication of the hour by the deeply sonorous tone of this bell may be heard, not merely over the immense Metropolis, but in distant parts of the country. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... curse of Saint Augustine, Saint Benedict, Saint Cuthbert and Saint Dominic light upon him for a lewd fellow, a clapper-claw, a thieving dog who hath no regard for Holy Church—forsooth a most vicious rogue, monstrum nulla ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... bell shown by our illustrations has been adopted for this purpose on the Austrian lines, and is a simple contrivance. It consists of a cylindrical chamber, a, ending in a narrower tube, c, which forms the seating for a flap valve, d, to which the hammer or clapper, e, is fixed. Steam is admitted through a small pipe, b, at the bottom, and after a certain interval attains sufficient pressure to lift the valve. The opening being large compared with the pipe, b, steam escapes more rapidly than it arrives through the small orifice; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... he stood on a chair and twisted away the bell's wiring. Using his pocket knife as a screwdriver, he released the bell from the door lintel. Then he cleaned and polished it. This done, he removed the clapper, wrapped the bell up in a piece of newspaper, and made his unhesitating way back to the cellar beneath the Chinese laundry. He was very much awake as he went slowly down the narrow steps. He wanted nothing to escape ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... describe. He knows the brutes are in his rear, approaching, and a feeling like an electric current runs at this exciting moment from one to the other; every man's finger is on his trigger, his pulse throbs at a feverish pace, his heart beats like the clapper of a bell in full swing—all, to take a surer aim, kneel, or place their back against the nearest tree, and each offers up a prayer for aid to his patron saint. This nervous moment has sometimes such ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... verdigris, and damp with dew; and the little cord attached to the clapper, by which I toll it, now and then slides through my fingers, slippery with wet. Here I am, in my slouched black hat, like the "bull that could pull," announcing the decease of the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... your folded wrapper Where two twin turtle-doves dwell; O Cuckoo-pint! toll me the purple clapper, That hangs in your clear, ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... passed through the bars of the gate at the top of the staircase leading to the terrace and seized the clapper of the little bell fastened to one of the bars. A push ... and the gate ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... ancient German singer—the poor clerk of the Chronicle of Limburg—whose sweet songs were sung and whistled from morning to night all through Germany; while the Minnesinger himself, smitten with leprosy, hooded and cloaked, and carrying the lazarus-clapper, moved through the shuddering city. God's satire weighed heavily upon him, indeed. Silently she held out her hand, and he gave her his bloodless fingers; she touched the strangely satin skin, and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... strip or armature S; and from S the current flows back to the battery. As soon as the current flows, the coils become magnetic and attract the soft iron armature, drawing it forward and causing the clapper to strike the bell. In this position, S no longer touches the screw P, and hence there is no complete path for the electricity, and the current ceases. But the attractive, magnetic power of the coils stops as soon as the current ceases; hence ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... that came before was all clad in white, and bare a full great cross, and each of the others a little one, and the more part came singing with sweet voices and bear candles burning, and there was one behind that carried a bell with the clapper and ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... then! "Ask and have" was their song.) We had rung 'em in, and he was in the tower with Black Nick Fowle, that gave us our rood-screen. The old man pinches the bell-rope one hand and scratches his neck with t'other. "Sooner she was pulling yon clapper than my neck," he says. That was all! That was Sussex—seely Sussex ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... greater than any I had heard before and set my heart a-beating like the clapper of the convent bell. But one only stayed in his chair, and his looks were heavy with anger. At him the rest pointed fingers and called on him derisively to pay the wager and be glad. Whereat he tugged from his belt a bag of gold which he flung at us as though with the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... read, and the contents thereof spread into all the corners of the den, command was given that, without let or stop, dead-man's bell should be rung for joy. So the bell was rung, and the princes rejoiced that Mansoul was likely to come to ruin. Now, the clapper of the bell went, 'The town of Mansoul is coming to dwell with us: make room for the town of Mansoul.' This bell therefore they did ring, because they did hope that ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... strong of arm. Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them; the lonely wayfarer shrunk within himself at the horrid clamor and clapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance, and hurried on his way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... anything but Blowes, Coles,[143] my Drink, and that clapper of the Divell, the tongue of a ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... life that he very often did the wrong thing. And I have no doubt that wherever he went he helped hold good the precedent that preachers' boys are not especially angelic. For instance, we have it on good authority that Bob, aged fourteen, once climbed into the belfry of a church and removed the clapper, so that the sexton thought the bell was bewitched. At another time he placed a washtub over the top of a chimney where a prayer-meeting was in progress, and the smoke broke up the meeting and gave the good people ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... listened, listened for years, to the awful, brazen hum from which there could be no escape; at the same time it seemed to him that he was only a Freshman on the slippery roof of the tower, trying to steal the clapper of the ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... play of chess, and causes the memory of Hector to be consecrated by the foundation of a chantry of priests who are to pray for the repose of his soul. A third finally condemns the erring Cressid to be stricken with leprosy, and to wander about with cup and clapper, like the unhappy lepers in the great cities of the Middle Ages. Everything, in short, is transfused by the spirit of the adapters' own times; and so far are these writers from any weakly sense of anachronism in describing Troy as if it were a ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... My wife and your wife. Squealing cat. Like tearing silk. Tongue when she talks like the clapper of a bellows. They can't manage men's intervals. Gap in their voices too. Fill me. I'm warm, dark, open. Molly in quis est homo: Mercadante. My ear against the wall to hear. Want a woman who can deliver ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the church, by the protestants called the Temple, was re-opened, and public worship performed on the morning of the 24th of December. On examining the belfry, it was discovered that some persons had carried off the clapper of the bell. As the hour of service approached, a number of men, women, and children, collected at the house of M. Ribot, the pastor, and threatened to prevent the worship. At the appointed time, when he proceeded ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... the stately, Richly vine-clad, blue-eyed Mosel— Ever from my heart can banish Thee, the Feldberg's lovely daughter. When I through the sands of Holland Weary drag my sluggish waters, And I hear the wind-mills clapper, Tender longings oft steal o'er me For my early lovely sweetheart. Then with deep dull sound my waves roll Onward through the tedious meadows, Roll out far into the North Sea, But not one there ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... sombre bell metal was slick as if oiled and absorbed light without refracting it. Bending backward, he looked into the upper abyss and perceived new batteries of bells overhead. These bore the raised effigy of a bishop, and a place in each, worn by the striking of the clapper, shone golden. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... the bell at once by thrusting his left hand in its mouth and holding the clapper; but the little peal he had rung had done its work of setting all the mules in motion, bringing them all up close to the ringer, who found himself in the midst of a knot of squealing and kicking brutes, who diversified their vicious play by running open-mouthed ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... manufacturers, the churches, the remains of the old days, the museums, the libraries, (of no interest to my mind), not forgetting the famous bell. I noticed that their bells are not allowed to swing like ours, but are motionless, being rung by a rope attached to the clapper. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... up the narrow spiral staircase. Arrived at the top, the soft wind was murmuring through the great iron railings, the cages of the bells. From the centre of the vault hung the famous "Gorda," an immense bronze bell, with all one side split by a large crack; the clapper, which was the author of the mischief, lay below it, engraved and as thick as a column, and a smaller one now occupied the cavity. The roofs of the Cathedral, dark and ugly, lay at their feet, and in front on a hill rose the Alcazar, higher and larger than the church, as ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... eavesdropping, suddenly appeared and interrupted the conversation with, "Ma, now don't you git started 'bout dem old times. You knows your mind ain't no good no more. Tomorrow your tongue will be runnin' lak a bell clapper a-talkin' to yourself." "Shut your big mouth, Henrietta." Frances answered. "I been sick, and I knows it, but dere ain't nothin' wrong wid my mind and you knows it. What I knows I'se gwine to tell de lady, and what I don't know I sho' ain't gwine tell no lie about. Now, Missus, what does you want ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... a rough platform which was built round the bell, probably to allow workmen to attend to it now and then in case it were not hanging safely. It looked a great mass of metal, so large and heavy that even the clapper must be ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... of the fan; and at last, twenty yards up the hill your lines have converged to a point—a single foot from that point you cannot find any gold. Your breath comes short and quick, you are feverish with excitement; the dinner-bell may ring its clapper off, you pay no attention; friends may die, weddings transpire, houses burn down, they are nothing to you; you sweat and dig and delve with a frantic interest—and all at once you strike it! Up comes a spadeful of earth ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... folded wrapper, Where two twin turtle-doves dwell? O cuckoopint, toll me the purple clapper That hangs in your clear ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... been observed by the passengers, and there was a dead silence aboard, broken only by the thumping of the engines and the splash of the paddle-blades as they pounded the still waters. Presently the dreary clang of the bell, struck by the clapper as the sea rocked it, came to us in uncertain and fitful tones. It was a melancholy sound, but its effect was cheering, because it gave the people some idea of our whereabouts, and was an indication that we had crossed the intervening space ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... a cowbell—that was it; but why did it seem to come from overhead, from up in the sky, like? And why did it shift so abruptly from one quarter to another—from left to right and back again to left? And how was it that the clapper seemed to strike so fast? Not even the breachiest of breachy young heifers could be expected to tinkle a cowbell with such briskness. The squire's eye searched the earth and the sky, his troubled mind ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... still moving along the Kaluga road, Napoleon's armies made their presence known, but later when they reached the Smolensk road they ran holding the clapper of their bell tight—and often thinking they were escaping ran right ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... February contains a gruesome moral tale by Ricardo Santiago, entitled "The Bell of Huesca". It is proper to remark here, that an important sentence was omitted at the top of page 3. The passage should read "'Sire, thy bell has no clapper!' 'Thy head shall be the clapper'; said the king, and he sent him to the block" etc. Whatever may be said of the aptness of the allegory, it is evident that Mr. Santiago possesses the foundations ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Melinda, and a separate sheet written by his younger sisters, with scrawly postscripts from the little boys to tell Jack how the workmen had dug down and found the old church bell, and that there was a crack in it, and the clapper was broken off. ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... appointed crier upon his disappearance. At the proper stations, Duncan blew a rousing pibroch, after which the bellman, who, for the dignity of his calling, insisted on a prelude of three strokes of his clapper, proclaimed aloud that Malcolm, Marquis of Lossie, desired the presence of each and every of his tenants in the royal burgh of Portlossie, Newton and Seaton, in the town hall of the same, at seven of the clock upon ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... their appearance, and there were plums in the orchard. Then they made use of all the devices which had been recommended to them against the birds. But the bits of glass made dazzling reflections, the clapper of the wind-mill woke them during the night, and the sparrows perched on the lay figure. They made a second, and even a third, varying the dress, but ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... order to attend a session of the Legislature to which he had been elected. The college students of the late seventies and early eighties were serious minded and thought of questions as men and not as boys. Though the clapper of the college bell was sometimes thrown into the well or the president's wagon was transferred to the chapel roof, these things were often done from a sort of sense of duty: college students were expected to be mischievous. Yet the ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... in your absence. I should place my bomb and run a fuse from the bomb to one of the holes in this telephone box. I should tie the clapper of the bell down in the box with a bit of weak thread, a bit of thread ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... only one besides who had the chance of gaining a penny, except little Ben, and as he was a sharp chap, he used to be set to scare away the birds, with a clapper in his hands, and such-like work; but to be sure ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... was very quiet. Diane lay back against the tree trunk and closed her eyes, listening to the welcome gypsy voices of wind and water, to the noisy clapper rails in the island grass at the end of the lake and to the drone of a motor on the road to the north. Dimly conscious that Johnny was briskly scrubbing the rude table among the trees, she ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... its own violent destruction. It not only consecrates, like the character of 1830, the division of powers, but it extends this feature to an unbearably contradictory extreme. The "play of constitutional powers," as Guizot styled the clapper-clawings between the legislative and the executive powers, plays permanent "vabanque" in the Constitution of 1848. On the one side, 750 representatives of the people, elected and qualified for re-election by universal suffrage, who constitute an uncontrollable, indissoluble, indivisible National ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... Dustman was first to forego his brass clapper, The Muffinboy speedily followed his shade; And, now, 'tis the Postman—that double-tongued rapper— Must give up his Bell for the eve's promenade. "Tantae Animis?' sage Legislators! Why rage against trifles like these? Prithee tell, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... tongue of wood Who essayed to sing, And in truth it was lamentable. But there was one who heard The clip-clapper of this tongue of wood And knew what the man Wished to sing, And with ...
— War is Kind • Stephen Crane
... College, what a warren! You entered by deep archways into secluded yards. Here was a darksome passage where murder might be (and no doubt had been) done. Here was an echoing gateway to a coaching inn, with a watchman ready to hit evil boys over the head with his clapper if they tried to ring his bell, the bell that announced the arrival of the Dumfries coach "Gladiator" after thirty hours' detention at the Beeftub in Moffatdale, or the shorter breathed "four" from Selkirk ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... he did look so like Old Scratch. Oh Hedges! how haggardised he was! His new hat was smashed down like a cap on the crown of his head, his white cravat was bloody, his face all scratched, as if he had been clapper-clawed by a woman, and his hands was bound up with rags, where the glass cut 'em. The white sand of the floor of Everett's parlour had stuck to his damp clothes, and he looked like an old half corned miller, that was a returnin' to his wife, arter ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... movement. The ponderous, organic labours of the engine in her bowels occupied the mind, and prepared it for slumber. From time to time a heavier lurch would disturb me as I lay, and recall me to the obscure borders of consciousness; or I heard, as it were through a veil, the clear note of the clapper on the brass and the beautiful sea-cry, 'All's well!' I know nothing, whether for poetry or music, that can surpass the effect of these two syllables in the darkness of a night ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her dinner. She was very deaf and infirm, all her joints shook when she tried to use them, and her voice quavered when she talked. She took the plate, and her hands trembled so that the tin dish played on the plate like a clapper. "Why," said she, overjoyed, "this looks just like Thanksgiving ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... esteem. Nor is the allusion to the ciphers at all inappropriate, seeing that, in themselves, Kooloo's profession turned out to be worthless. He was, alas! as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; one of those who make no music unless the clapper be silver. ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... night, in January, '39, Jake Hinkle came down to the "Court House," hitched his horse to the Court Square fence, and made a straight bend for Sanders' "Grocery," and began to "wood up." Old Jake's tongue was a perfect bell-clapper, and when well oiled with corn juice, could rip into the high and low Dutch like a nor'easter into a field of broom corn. Jake talked and talked, and drank and talked, and about midnight, the cocks crowing, the ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... and clapper their friendly old tongues, can hardly believe that once upon a time they were all at sixes and sevens,—and that Ernest himself was once in that very place ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... sharp, and the field crammed with visitors and friends. I had my work cut out for me that day. It would have been far less exertion to run the Quarter-mile. I was to be coat-minder, time-keeper, rubber-down, straight-tipper, clapper-on-the-back, and bottle-holder to the Conversation Club at large, a sort of mixture of parent, footman, and retriever dog, which, flattering as it undoubtedly was to my sense of my own importance, promised no little ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... stop your clapper," cried Francois, impatiently; "let us settle this business. You know that Monsieur Stanley said he would expect us to be ready with an answer to-night.—What think you, Gaspard? Shall we ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... "A palsy on her leg, and a palsy strike thee," he thundered, "if with thy old women's tales we miss the path! Go drive the goats in, thick-chops, and stay that clapper of thine till they ask for a crow-keeper. Move ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... public information, and there is collateral evidence that some similar system of marking time had been resorted to from early eras. But the whole story is vague. It seems, however, that the method of counting the hours was influenced by the manner of striking them. Whether bronze bell or wooden clapper was used, three preliminary strokes were given by way of warning, and it therefore became inexpedient to designate any of the hours "one," "two," or "three." Accordingly the initial number was four, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... this music for ever floating in the upper air as part of the city's life—the most spiritual, poetical, and recreative part of it. Nothing of the kind has ever been tried in London. The crashing peals of a dozen large bells banged violently with clapper instead of softly struck with hammer, the exasperating dong, or ding, dong, of the Ritualist temple over the way, or the hoarse, gong-like roar of Big Ben—that is all we know about bells in London, and no form of church discipline ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... sensibility has been touched and you forget everything; then she sobs while she speaks, and speaks while she sobs. This is a sort of machine eloquence; she deafens you with her tears, with her words which come jerked out in confusion; it is the clapper and torrent ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the chief families still continue the right of sepulture. The altar is not yet quite demolished; beside it, on the right side, is a bass-relief of the virgin with her child, and an angel hovering over her. On the other side still stands a hand-bell, which, though it has no clapper, neither presbyterian bigotry, nor barbarian wantonness, has yet taken away. The chapel is thirty-eight feet long, and eighteen broad. Boswell, who is very pious, went into it at night, to perform his devotions, but came back, in haste, for fear of spectres. Near the chapel is a fountain, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... empyema, bronchiectasis, or sarcoma of the lung. There is symmetrical enlargement and deformity of the hands and feet; the shafts of the bones are thickened, and the soft tissues of the terminal segments of the digits hypertrophied. The fingers come to resemble drum-sticks, and the thumb the clapper of a bell. The nails are convex, and incurved at their free ends, suggesting a resemblance to the beak of a parrot. There is also enlargement of the lower ends of the bones of the forearm and leg, and effusion into the wrist and ankle-joints. ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... music leaps rollicking up and down, here and there, till the air is all a-quiver with merriment. The old man draws himself up to his full height, all save that loving bend of the head over the beloved instrument. His long slender foot, in its quaint "Congress" shoe, beats time like a mill-clapper,—tap, tap, tap; his snowy curl dances over his forehead, his brown eyes twinkle with pride and pleasure. Other feet beside his began to pat the ground; heads were lifted, eyes looked invitation and response. At length the child Melody, with one superb outburst of song, lifted her hands above ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... time with his face hidden and I waited. My head was like a great bronze bell with one thought for the clapper. ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... Permacetty (or Spermaceti), "the sovereignst remedy for bruises;"—"perhaps," says Dr. Prior, "as a joke on the Latin name Bursa pastoris, or 'Purse,' because to the poor man this is always his best remedy." And in some parts of England the Shepherd's Purse is known as Clapper Pouch, in allusion to the licensed begging of lepers at our crossways in olden times with a bell and a clapper. They would call the attention of passers-by with the bell, or with the clapper, and would receive their alms in a cup, or a basin, at the end ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... first brings about. The vibrations due to any one shock take place with great rapidity. They may, indeed, be compared to those movements which we perceive in the margin of a large bell when it has received a heavy blow from the clapper. The reader has perhaps seen that for a moment the rim of the bell vibrates with such rapidity that it has a misty look—that is, the motions elude the sight. It is easy to see that a shaking of this kind is particularly calculated to disrupt any bodies which stand free in the air ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... but I reckon I have a heart big enough for you all; it's a whapper, you may depend, and every mite and morsel of it at your service.' Well, how you do act, Mr. Banks, half a thousand little clipper-clapper tongues would say, all at the same time, and their dear little eyes sparklin', like so many stars twinklin' of a ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... not count as one of his labors, and ordered him off to clear the woods near Lake Stymphalis of some horrible birds, with brazen beaks and claws, and ready-made arrows for feathers, which ate human flesh. To get them to rise out of the forest was his first difficulty, but Pallas lent him a brazen clapper, which made them take to their wings; then he shot them with his poisoned arrows, killed many, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... the truth. The matter really was a new line, invented by M. Jupille, cast a little further than an ordinary one, and rigged up with a float like a raft, carrying a little clapper. The fish rang their own knell as ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... below the gable termination, without any visible means of being rung, and we wondered how this was done, until we happened one day to be within sight at the Angelus hour, when we saw a man bring out a ladder and ascend to within reach of a short cord hanging from the clapper, which ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... he dashed along the frozen valley that lay between the snow-clad mountains. He had not ridden far, in company with his old attendant, when he heard a strange indistinct sound proceeding from a neighbouring cleft in the rock; it was partly like the clapper of a small mill, but mingled with that were hollow groans and other tones of distress. Thither they turned their horses, and a wonderful sight showed ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... have," announced Jack quietly. "Of course those marks might have been made by any sharp, rusty object. Now the bell metal rusts scarcely at all, but the iron clapper of a bell does. The rust from that runs down inside a bell, and gets on the edges. I took some iron rust from the clapper of the stolen bell and placed it in a test tube. I assumed, for the purpose of experimenting, that I did not know that it was iron rust, but only suspected it. I applied the ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... grew, the downy, the dapper; He flew in and perched on the knob of the clapper, And shouted Too-whoo! An echo awoke Like a far-off ghostly Bing-Bang stroke: "Just so!" he cried; "I am quite at home! I will take his place ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... The clapper on his giant side Shall ring no peal for blushing bride, For birth, or death, or new-year-tide, Or festival begun! A nation's joy alone shall be The signal for his revelry; And for a nation's woes alone His melancholy tongue shall moan: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... the fiend, "I wish he may turn up shortly, for I am half deaf already with the banging and booming of this infernal clapper, which seems to have grown much worse of late; and the blessings and the crossings and the aspersions which I have to go through are most repugnant to my tastes, and unsuitable to my position in society. Bye-bye, Eusky; come ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... was as still as only an English summer night can be, and the first clang of the clapper sounded like a million iron girders falling from a height on to a sheet of tin. He tugged away furiously, with an eye on the now rapidly advancing and loudly shouting ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper. For what his heart thinks his ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... begun, there is also a special behaviour to observe: "It shall crowne you with rich commendation to laugh alowd in the middest of the most serious and saddest scene of the terriblest tragedy; and to let that clapper your tongue, be tost so high that all the house may ring of it: your lords use it; your knights are apes to the lords, and do so too ... be thou a beagle to them all.... [At] first, all the eyes in the galleries will leave walking after the players and onely follow you; ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... even threw things at each other at table, the servants looking on. Nothing in his matrimonial relations so much became him as his conduct after their severance: he held his tongue like a man, in spite of the poor lady's shrieks and clapper-clawings. His whimsical, hair-splitting conscientiousness is less admirable. A healthy conscience does not whine—it creates. No one cares to know what a man thinks of his own actions. No one is interested to learn that Bulwer meant 'Paul Clifford' to be an ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... as much about sailing as most folks. But there's a nasty sea fog come on, and just as it happens the clapper is gone out of the bell by St. Morval's Head. Bevis is always a terrible one for hugging the coast, and I'm afraid if he doesn't hear the bell he won't quite know where he is in the fog, and he may be on the rocks before he knows they're there. I'd have told ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... nae doubt at ye lauoh at havers, an' there's mony 'at lauchs 'at your clipper-clapper, but they're no Thrums fowk, and they canna' lauch richt. But we maun juist settle this matter. When we're ta'en up wi' the makkin' o' humour, we're a' dependent on other fowk to tak' note o' the humour. There's no nane o' us 'at's lauched at anything you've telt us. But they'll lauch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... my sojourn in the west, only sometimes a little peppery and argumentative. Then came Mr Jacob Bumble, a sleek fat— pated Scotchman. Next I was introduced to Mr Alonzo Smoothpate, a very handsome fellow, with an uncommon share of natural good—breeding and politeness. Again I clapper—clawed, according to the fashion of the country, a violent shake of the paw being the Jamaica infeftment to acquaintanceship, with Mr Percales, whom I took for a foreign Jew somehow or other at first, from his uncommon name, until I heard him speak, and perceived he was an Englishman; indeed, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... approach the dwellings of men, or to wash in running streams, or to handle the ropes of draw-wells, or to drink from the cups of wayside springs. He was forbidden the highways, and when he went abroad a clapper must give token of his coming and going. Nothing that might be used by others should he touch except with ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... the depth of the green wood. The confectioner of the town came out, and set up his booth there; and soon after came another confectioner, who hung a bell over his stand, as a sign or ornament, but it had no clapper, and it was tarred over to preserve it from the rain. When all the people returned home, they said it had been very romantic, and that it was quite a different sort of thing to a pic-nic or tea-party. There were three persons who asserted they had penetrated to the end ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... ordinary cow-bell suspended to the neck of an animal, have observed that the natural sound is an irregular one—that is, there is no system or regularity about the sound made by an animal in cropping the grass or herbage. There is the clapper's tink-a-link, tink-a-link—an interval of silence—then the occasional tink, tink, tink, to be followed, perhaps, by a repetition of the first-named sounds, varied occasionally by a compound of all, caused by the animal flinging ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... ring of a bell to the clapper came Pierre Radisson on the third day, well pleased with what he had done and alert to keep two of us outside the fort in spite of Ben's urgings to bring the French ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... much made up his mind by this time what sort o' game lay behind it, and he was bound to be at it. Any one would 'a thought his nateral feelings would 'a stood in the way some, seein' as 'twor his own wife he wor clapper-clawin' at sich a rate; but they didn't seem to a bit: and, I tell you, he made the fur fly 'thout con-sideration. The blood streamed down inter my face, and the smell of that and the flesh choked me. ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... got out of bed, picked up the dinner-bell by the clapper, and went back up-stairs ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... time Oscar had so captured the public that he could afford to disdain critics and calumny. The play was praised by his admirers as if it had been a masterpiece, and London discussed it the more because it was in French and not clapper-clawed by ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... beat in my temples like the clapper of an alarm-bell. That which was going forward, and to which one after another was called forth, was my concern; it must be, and mine alone. I felt I could not longer keep my place, and I had pushed back my seat when I saw Uncle Tucher standing by Cousin Maud, and his kind and worthy face, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... e'e, she has but ane, The cat has twa the very colour; Five rusty teeth, forbye a stump, A clapper tongue wad deave a miller: A whiskin beard about her mou', Her nose and chin they threaten ither; Sic a wife as Willie had, I wadna gie ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... a piece," remarked the Colonel. "The neglect is in a fashion systematic." He laid his hand on the chain of the bell-pull, but the bell had lost its clapper. The two friends heard no sound save the peculiar grating creak of the rusty spring. A little door in the wall beside the gateway, though ruinous, held good against all their ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... said,—"That barbarous tongue of thine is like the imperfect clapper of a broken bell that strikes forth harsh and undesired sounds suggesting nothing! Thy present duty is to hear, and not to speak,—therefore listen discerningly and write with exactitude, so shall thy poor blank scrolls of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the borders of the island was alive with clapper rails. Before I rose in the morning I heard them crying in full chorus; and now and then during the day something would happen, and all at once they would break out with one sharp volley, and then instantly all would be silent again. Theirs is an apt name,—Rallus crepitans. Once I watched ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... lately, in the midst of the carnival, he announced his own literary death and burial, and even preached a burlesque funeral sermon upon his life and times. Such an artist, by the very nature of his endeavors, must needs stand above all public-clapper-clawing, pro or con. He writes, not to please his customers in general, nor even to please his partisans in particular, but to please himself. He is his own criterion, his own audience, his own judge ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... too, standing fast by the bridge, the manorial appendage of the town, which I loved in my boyhood for its gaunt and crazy aspect and dim interior, whence the clapper kept time mysteriously to the drone of the mill-sluice? I think it is gone. Surely that confounded thing can't be my ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... horse, I sent Bartlett, your servant, with all my servants, to circumspect the abbey, and surely to keep all back-doors and starting-holes. I myself went alone to the abbot's lodging, joining upon the fields and wood, even like a cony clapper, full of starting-holes. [I was] a good space knocking at the abbot's door; nec vox nec sensus apparuit, saving the abbot's little dog that within his door fast locked bayed and barked. I found a short poleaxe standing behind the door, and with it I dashed the abbot's door in pieces, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... cried the other. "Your tongue goes like the clapper of a mill-wheel. Sit down here, friend, and partake of this herring. Understand first, however, that there are certain conditions attached ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was with clergymen who gave out hymns and notices, and with his own solicitude at home that the singing should go well or that the choirboys should not fidget. But there was a terrible confusion with chairs, and a hideous kind of clapper that was used, apparently, to warn the boys to sit and rise. The service, moreover, as a reverential congregational act of worship such as he was used to hope for, was marred by innumerable collections, and especially by the old woman who came round even ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... the Mass at the moment of consecration—is the symbol of male and female together—the clapper, the male, within the hollow shell, the female—and was used in solar services at the moment of sacrifice. The position of the fingers of the priest in blessing the congregation is the old symbolical position ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... military on him; an' in the place o' that, hasna he keepit me in a sleep a' this while as deep as death? An' here do I find him abscondit like a speeder i' the mids o' my leddy's wab, an' me dreamin' a' the night that I had the Deil i' my house, an' that he was clapper-clawin me ayont the loom. Have at you, ye brunstane thief!" and, in spite of the good woman's struggles, he ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... Coke abhorred? That, at least, would have been more appropriate to present surroundings? But would it? Ah, Philip felt a twinge then. "Touche!" chortled some unseen imp who plied a venomous rapier. Thank goodness, a sailor was standing by the ship's bell, with his hand on a bit of cord tied to the clapper. It would soon be seven o'clock. Even the companionship of the uncouth skipper was preferable to ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... their fruit and count their pence, And, as by humour grown insane, Allows the boys to touch his cane! Poor little Sweep true comfort quaffs, Ceases to cry—and loudly laughs. See! what a wondrous powerful spell Punch holds o'er Dustman and his bell; And scolding Wife with clapper still— The Landlord quits awhile his till, While Pot-boy, busiest of the bunch, Steals pence for self, and beer for Punch. Look at that window, you may trace At every pane a laughing face. Yon graceful Girl and her smart Lover, And in the story just above her, The Housemaid, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... ha!' which wasn' none of it true, except about the drink, but you could see she only done it to make 'erself pleasant. An' then she told us ow' when they rang a bell somebody was goin' to put Mortimer to death, an' 'ow she stopped that by climbin' up to the bell and 'angin' on to the clapper. Then in came Mortimer an' sang a song with 'er—as well 'e might—about 'is true love 'avin' 'is 'eart an' 'is 'avin' 'ers, an' everyone clappin' an' stampin' an' ancorein' in the best of tempers. Well, an' what does the man do after an interval o' ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... principles of the electrostatic charge, involving the ringing of bells by electrostatic attraction and repulsion. It is used in connection with a frictional, or influence electric machine. Two bells are employed with a button or clapper suspended between them. One bell is connected to one of the prime conductors, q. v., of the machine. The other insulated therefrom is connected to earth, or if an influence machine is used, to the other prime conductor. The clappers are hung by a silk thread, so as to be entirely ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... return for the many I intend to do for you: do not expose me to Argueello's persecution, for I would rather lose your friendship than have to endure hers. Good God, friend! her tongue goes like the clapper of a mill; you can smell her breath a league off; all her front teeth are false, and it is my private opinion that she does not wear her own hair, but a wig. To crown all, since she began to make overtures to me, she has taken to painting ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the archives have reference, the hours have been regularly struck by the big bell. And, indeed the case was just the same with all the other clocks and watches in the borough. Never was such a place for keeping the true time. When the large clapper thought proper to say "Twelve o'clock!" all its obedient followers opened their throats simultaneously, and responded like a very echo. In short, the good burghers were fond of their sauer-kraut, but then they were proud ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... minister came along and took the younger boy. She is alone in the house. A steamer, probably bound for Cardiff, now crosses the horizon, while near at hand one bell of a foxglove swings to and fro with a bumble-bee for clapper. These white Cornish cottages are built on the edge of the cliff; the garden grows gorse more readily than cabbages; and for hedge, some primeval man has piled granite boulders. In one of these, to hold, an historian conjectures, the victim's blood, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf |
