"Clocks" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... clock strike ten somewhere in the hall, then another somewhere else, and another, and another; the house seemed full of striking clocks. Then in the distance the stable clock chimed in. In another hour they would all be striking eleven, and he would be listening to them as a disgraced outcast, unable to pay, even in part, the wager ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... mean" said Mr. Dooley. "Scales an' clocks ar-re not to be thrusted to decide annything that's worth deciding. Who tells time be a clock? Ivry hour is th' same to a clock an' ivry hour is different to me. Wan long, wan short. There ar-re hours in th' avenin' that pass between two ticks iv th' clock; there ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... all the good days in the year, upon a Christmas eve—old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting, foggy weather; and the city clocks had only just gone three, but it ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near thoroughfare, filled up the ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... over from yesterday. Such a mind must be a reliably co-ordinated piece of machinery, with a pendulum in place of a heart. It is overawing to average mortals who have not the temerity to say "Nonsense!" to great egos. Yet the best adjusted clocks may have a lapse in a powerful magnetic storm, and in an earthquake they might even be tipped off the shelf, with their metal parts rendered quite as helpless by the fall as those of a human organism subject to the constitutional ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... critic frown such themes arraign, Here sleep the mellow lyre's enchanting keys; Here the wrought table's darkly polish'd plain, Proffers light lore to much-enduring ease; Enamelled clocks here strike the silver bell; Here Persia spreads the web of many dies; Around, on silken couch, soft cushions swell, That Stambol's viziers ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... finery that makes me uncomfortable to think of even yet. On the walls hung all sorts of trumpery pictures in tawdry frames (how different from those capital performances of my cousin Michael Angelo!); on the mantelpiece huge French clocks, vases, and candlesticks; on the sideboards, enormous trays of Birmingham plated ware: for Mr. Aminadab not only arrested those who could not pay money, but lent it to those who could; and had already, in the way of trade, sold and bought ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... metal objects were found adhering to each other. Just off the tornado's track the same effects were noticed, and several persons experienced sharp electric shocks during the passage of the storm. Afterward it was found that the magnetic influence was so strong that clocks and watches were stopped ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... one, because he belonged to the family. And it is well known that if the yard-cock belonging to this family happened to crow at midnight, they would declare it was morning, although the watchman and all the clocks in the town were proclaiming the hour ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... matter to bestow twenty nobles, ten pound, twenty pound, fortie pound, yea a hundred pound of one pair of Breeches. (God be merciful unto us!)" To these gay hose they add nether-socks, curiously knit with open seams down the leg, with quirks and clocks about the ankles, and sometimes interlaced with gold and silver thread as is wonderful to behold. Time has been when a man could clothe his whole body for the price of these nether-socks." Satan was further let loose in the land by reason of cork shoes and fine slippers, of all colors, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... pistols, seeing that their airplane compasses, speed indicators, special airplane clocks, mounted on wire springs, and altitude barometers were in their proper places and in working order. Their very lives might depend on a little thing, and no one could ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... enormous quantities of damask napkins and table-linen, silver and pewter ware, candle sticks of brass, silver and pewter, flagons, dram-cups, beakers, tankards, chafing-dishes, Spanish tables, Dutch tables, valuable clocks, screens, and escritoires."[156] ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... training was that which children had in that outdoor knowledge which had been useful to their mother! The chemistry of common life learned from the processes wrought out by the air and sunshine; astronomy from the great luminaries which are the clocks of the wilderness, and the science of the weather from the phenomena of the sky. There was no "cramming" in that home-school; each item of knowledge was well absorbed and assimilated, for the mother's toils made the intervals long ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... office a beaten man. Through the deserted City streets the clocks were booming the hour of midnight and ushering in his majority. His brother! All along he had persuaded himself this quest was to end in victory, that before now he should have met his brother face to face and given him what was his. To-day it was no longer his to give. The race was ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... enmity more bitter. And, as Dr. Levillier very well knew, it was often the mind of the priest within him that gave to him his healing power over the body. It was the mind of the priest that had won him testimonial clocks and silver salvers from grateful patients. Often as he sat with some dingy-faced complainant, listening to a recital of sickness or uttering directions about avoidance of green meat, sauces, pastry, and liquids, till the atmosphere seemed that of a hospital, a pastry-cook's ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... I mean? He would be quite charming if one were forty-three. He's quite charming now, if it comes to that, and I'm dreadfully fond of him, but he thinks about me too much; he's too devoted. I hear his devotion going on tick, tick, all the time, like the best clocks. That's one reason for ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... the eastern frontier, besides which potter's clay, building stone, hydraulic lime and cement are produced in the department. There are many corn and saw mills and the wood-working industry is important. Silk fabrics, coarse woollen cloth, paper and clocks are manufactured. Live-stock and agricultural products are exported; the chief imports are wood and raw silk. The department is within the judicial circumscription of the appeal court of Lyons and the educational circumscription ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and by she slept a little, and then, in the silence of the night, crept down to the lower regions to add something to the tempting little supper which she had ready in the green room. But time crept on, and in the silence she could hear dozens of clocks telling each hour, and the train had been long due, and still ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... In the parlor the marble statue of the "Diving Girl" was thrown from its pedestal and broken into fragments. The glass case containing the table glassware in the dining-room and its contents were uninjured; very little china and glassware were broken in the pantry; the clocks were not stopped. A water-pipe broke in the ceiling of the spare room and the water ...
— San Francisco During the Eventful Days of April, 1906 • James B. Stetson
... Madame do Rio Seco. Her house is really a magnificent one; it has its ball-room, and its music-room, its grotto and fountains, besides extremely handsome apartments of every kind, both for family and public use, with rather more china and French clocks than we should think of displaying, but which do not assort ill with the silken hangings and gilt mouldings of ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... sleepy clocks now began to chime; a steam-whistle joined in with a diabolical shriek. In the taverns which 'open before the clock strikes' they were already serving early refections of hot coffee and schnapps; girls with hair hanging down their backs, after a wild night, came out of the ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... Tashil—a large walled enclosure, with a portico all round inside and circular towers at the four corners. The actual Tashil office, occupying the north-east corner, has a most business-like appearance, with handsome iron despatch-boxes, clocks that mark each a different time, but look most imposing all the same, and folio-documents folded in two and carefully arranged in piles upon the floor by the side of wise-looking clerks squatting in their midst. The Tashildar himself, Sardar ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... steady, turnip-shaped watch of the squire's was one of the insults which, as it could not reasonably be resented, was not to be forgiven. That watch had been given him by his father when watches were watches long ago. It had given the law to house-clocks, stable-clocks, kitchen-clocks—nay, even to Hamley Church clock in its day; and was it now, in its respectable old age, to be looked down upon by a little whipper-snapper of a French watch which could go into a man's waistcoat pocket, instead of having to be extricated, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... from Graham's dead-beat escapement for clocks. Thomas Mudge was the first horologist who successfully applied it to watches in the detached form, about 1750. The locking faces of the pallets were arcs of circles struck from the pallet centers. Many ...
— An Analysis of the Lever Escapement • H. R. Playtner
... face and hands. They were filled with curiosity about her clothes. They felt the texture of her dress, fingered the brooch she wore, knelt down and took her feet into their hands that they might examine her shoes. They explored the clocks on her stockings. Miss Daisy—no queen for the moment—was seriously embarrassed. She jumped to her feet, thrust the baby she held into its ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... brazen bells told the hour: at noon a dozen mounted knights paraded the face and closed the portals. Trithonius mentions an horologium presented in A.D. 1232 by Al-Malik al-Kamil the Ayyubite Soldan to the Emperor Frederick II: like the Strasbourg and Padua clocks it struck the hours, told the day, month and year, showed the phases of the moon, and registered the position of the sun and the planets. Towards the end of the fifteenth century Gaspar Visconti mentions in a sonnet the watch proper (certi orologii piccioli e portativi); and the "animated eggs" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... said the good-natured grocer, as he took down his hat and coat from behind the door. "Our hearts are open like them clocks, with all the works outside, eh, Lucy, my dear?" Laughing at his own simile, he ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... occasion, anyway—just a splash of soda! Yes, Brimberly, when the clocks strike midnight I shall ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... splendid salons with tapestried or silken walls, gilded or painted friezes, and frescoed ceilings. By way of furniture, however, there were only pier table, stools,* and thrones. And the lamps and the clocks, and the crucifixes, even the thrones, were all presents brought from the four quarters of the world in the great fervent days of jubilee. There was no sign of comfort, everything was pompous, stiff, cold, and inconvenient. All olden Italy was there, with its perpetual display and ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... if it does nobody would have time to listen. And Crossroads has a bell on its school that calls to the countryside. City children are not called by a bell—that's why they are all alike—they ride on trolleys and watch the clocks. My little pupils ran across the fields and down the road, and hurried when I rang for them, ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... work at different places. After he had learned his trade he frequently walked thirty miles to a job with his kit upon his back. One day he heard people talking of Eli Terry, of Plymouth, who had undertaken to make two hundred clocks in one lot. "He'll never live long enough to finish them," said one. "If he should," said another, "he could not possibly sell so many. The very idea is ridiculous." Chauncey pondered long over this rumor, for it ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... the clocks were chiming out the hour, Orlando Vickery presented himself, and was ushered ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... appointment, I placed my foot on the first notch of the zigzag next night, as the distant clocks were striking eleven. He was waiting for me at the bottom, with his white light on. "I have not called out," I said, when we came close together; "may I speak now?" "By all means, sir." "Good-night, then, and here's my hand." "Good-night, sir, and here's mine." With that we walked side by ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... waited. Above the chant we could hear the striking of the city clocks, and the occasional rattle of a cart in the street overhead. The absolute watchfulness and expectation, the dim, mysterious half-light of the cellar falling in a grewsome way upon the misshapen bulk of a Chinese deity in the back ground, a faint smell of opium-smoke mingling with spice, and ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... the morning-room, looking at the pictures on the walls as if for the first time. After that he leaned for a little while against the mantelpiece, and then, as if an idea had struck him, began to wind up the clock. He went through the house winding up the clocks, though this duty was usually left to a servant; and when that was over he came back to the breakfast-room and talked about Waterbury watches. His wife had to go to the kitchen, and he followed her. On their way back they passed the nursery, and he said he thought he ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... capture the snake and secure this precious stone, for an old prophecy promises wealth to whoever shall wrest it from the serpent. But thus far the people of Connecticut have found more wealth in clocks and tobacco than ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Although clocks are listed in seventeenth century inventories, one of the earliest mentions of a watch was in 1697, when Richard Aubrey of Essex County, bequeathed two silver ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... henroost is decreased, We shall be thought to share the feast. The change shall never be believed, A lost good name is ne'er retrieved.' 'Nay, then,' replies the feeble fox, '(But hark! I hear a hen that clocks) Go, but be moderate in your food; A chicken too might ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... civilians that we had come to. Most of them were preparing to leave, and roomy French farm carts, piled high with curious medleys of mattresses, chairs and tables, clothing, carpets, kitchen utensils, clocks and pictures, kept moving off. But children played about the streets; girls stood and talked to French and British soldiers; and M. le ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... don't care how religious they are, they'll just bust up and turn natural if you git too many of 'em together. That's what's happened here. The Epworth League kept on flourishin' so, we didn't understand it. It met every Saturday night as prayerful and punctual as clocks. But as soon as the old folks left they shet the doors, and then they'd dance like sin—been doing it for months before anybody found out. Oh! I'll tell you everything is on the downward road in this church, and your husband is going to ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... only determiners of weight and quantity—as the hour-glass and sun dial were of time—possessed at first (so far as appears) by the passengers of the Pilgrim ship, though it is barely possible that a Dutch clock or two may have been among the possessions of the wealthiest. Clocks and watches were not yet in common use (though the former were known in England from 1540), and except that in "Mourt's Relation" and Bradford's "Historie" mention is made of the time of day as such "o'clock" (indicating ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... Meshed, having done good business in Sistan. They had with them every possible article they could think of, from tea to phonographs, lamps, razors, music boxes, magic lanterns, bedsteads, cottons, silks, cloths, chairs, glass-ware, clocks, watches, and I do not know what else. I believe that it was the largest caravan of that kind that had ever come over ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... over three weeks before that happy day, a slender old man walked erectly along the country road. He carried a cane over his shoulder, and, slung upon it, a small black leather bag, bearing the words, painted in careful letters, "Clocks repaired by N. Oldfield." As he went on, he cast a glance, now and then, to either side, from challenging blue eyes, strong yet in the indomitable quality of youth. He knew every varying step of the road, and ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... both for pleasure and use. We imitate also flights of birds; we have some degrees of flying in the air. We have ships and boats for going under water and brooking of seas, also swimming-girdles and supporters. We have divers curious clocks and other like motions of return, and some perpetual motions. We imitate also motions of living creatures by images of men, beasts, birds, fishes, and serpents; we have also a great number of other various motions, strange for ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... he knew exactly where he was going; the sobs of Madame were still faintly audible, and no one uttered a word. A dog barked furiously in a courtyard as they went by; then the church clock struck two, and many domestic clocks followed or preceded it in piping tones. And just then Berthelini spied a light. It burned in a small house on the outskirts of the town, and thither the party now directed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the city clocks were striking a quarter to twelve, but the place was still brightly lighted, and at the soda-counter a young man was treating his flame to a glass ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... cheap. That is a painfully low and grovelling type of the malady; and, fortunately for the honour of literature, the bargain-hunter who suffers under it is not in general a special votary of books, but buys all bargains that come in his way—clocks, tables, forks, spoons, old uniforms, gas-meters, magic lanterns, galvanic batteries, violins (warranted real Cremonas, from their being smashed to pieces), classical busts (with the same testimony to their ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... The church clocks at West Lynne struck eight one lovely morning in July, and then the bells chimed out, giving token that ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... named Guinther discovered anthracite coal in Pennsylvania; that Whitney invented the cotton gin; that Samuel Slater built the first mill for making cotton yarns; that Eli Terry started the manufacture of clocks as a business; that cotton sewing thread was first manufactured in the United States at Pawtucket, R.I.; and that the first turnpike in our country was completed. This extended from Philadelphia to Lancaster, ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... clock, and present it with great ceremony. He replies in a speech on the nebular hypothesis and all are very happy. One year the present assumed the form of an Ingersoll Dollar Watch, which the Wizard showed to me with great pride. In the stockade is a beautiful library building and here you see clocks galore, some of which must have cost a thousand dollars a piece, all silent. One clock had a neatly printed card attached, "Don't look at this clock—it has stopped." And another, "You may look at this clock, for you can't stop it!" It ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... he might have proved an alibi. We will suppose, for argument's sake, that the household of Wisteria Lodge are confederates in some design. The attempt, whatever it may be, is to come off, we will say, before one o'clock. By some juggling of the clocks it is quite possible that they may have got Scott Eccles to bed earlier than he thought, but in any case it is likely that when Garcia went out of his way to tell him that it was one it was really not more than twelve. If Garcia could do whatever he had to do and be back by the hour mentioned ...
— The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of all this, Dickens shows—through his characters—a deep interest in bells and bell-lore. Little Paul Dombey finds a man mending the clocks at Dr. Blimber's Academy, and asks a multitude of questions about chimes and clocks; as, whether people watched up in the lonely church steeples by night to make them strike, and how the bells were rung ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... said the wind. "Now you may go—puff!" And away flew some of the seeds, just as they do when you blow the dandelion "clocks." ...
— Laugh and Play - A Collection of Original stories • Various
... I should have added. Going east the time is faster, and vice versa," continued the young officer. "At our present speed our clocks must be put about twenty minutes ahead, for a third of an hour has gone to ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... were loitering about, whose attention it would not be prudent to attract. The day, which seemed the longest I ever knew, at length drew to a close, which we only learnt by my father's watch, for we were out of hearing of the town clocks. He said it would make time pass less heavily if we divided it methodically, and had our set hours for meals, rest, prayer, and mutual improvement, whether by exhortation, discussion, or general discourse, We followed his ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... walked slowly up the faubourg towards the new town. The clocks were striking the hour. He took off his hat, and gave a little sigh of enjoyment of the fresh air ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... clocks and watches has been achieved only by the laborious efforts of many ingenious artisans. Of one of these, to whom France owes no little of its celebrity in this branch of art, we propose to speak. Breguet was the name of this remarkable individual. He ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... you're playing round games, and he calls you bad names when you tell him that "ties pay the dealer"; But this you can't stand, so you throw up your hand, and you find you're as cold as an icicle, In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold clocks), crossing Salisbury Plain on a bicycle: And he and the crew are on bicycles too - which they've somehow or other invested in - And he's telling the tars all the particuLARS of a company he's interested in - It's a scheme of devices, to ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... you and lies with a good taste on your tongue. And you goes quick on through it till you comes to where the lights do blink, and 'tis a large town and there be folk moving this way and that and the music playing, and great fowls and horses what's got clocks to the inside of they, a-stirring them up for to run, and girls and men a- riding on them—And the booths with red sugar and white, all lit and animals that's wild a-roaring and a-biting in the tents—And girls what's dancing, standing there in satin gowns all over gold and silver—And ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... Bunker, as the clock began to shake and tremble in his hand, "this is one of those alarm clocks that ring for a half minute or so, and then stop, then, in a few minutes, ring again. That is so when a person falls asleep, after the first or second alarm, the third or fourth may ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... and it pained him. I never met a better man. Then he dressed himself to go to wind up the city clocks—those of Monsieur the Commandant of the place, of Monsieur the Mayor, and other notable personages. I remained at home. Monsieur Goulden did not return until after the Te Deum. He took off his great brown coat, put his peruke back ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... presently Chest after chest, and pile after pile, Of the little folks' goods began tossing and rolling, And pitching like fun, beyond fairy controlling. O Mab! if the hubbub were great before, It was now some two or three million times more. Crash! went the wee crocks and the clocks; and the locks Of each little wee box were stove in by hard knocks; And then there were oaths, and prayers, and cries: "Take care"—"See there"—"O, dear, my eyes!" "I am killed!"—"I am drowned!"—with groans and sighs, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... ridiculing kings and the most portentous events, of calling anything and everything in question with a jest. Then he sauntered along the boulevards. It was an entirely novel amusement; and so agreeable did he find it, that, looking at the turret clocks, he saw the hour hands were pointing to four, and only then remembered that he ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Sangha are performed. Internally it is a hall: the walls are often covered with paintings and at the end there is always a sitting figure of the Buddha[216] forming the apex of a pyramid, the lower steps of which are decorated with smaller images and curious ornaments, such as clocks ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... bell proclaiming the hour of midnight. Scarcely had the last stroke died away before the announcement was taken up and repeated by a multitude of bells of all sizes, and the air was filled with the sound of striking clocks and the pealing of steeple chimes. The old man uttered a cry of alarm. The stranger sharply demanded the cause. "The bells! did you not hear them?" gasped Padre Vicentio. "Tush! tush!" answered the stranger, "thy ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... life had Betty met her stepfather's celebrated aunt, and the meeting had taken place nearly twelve years ago. The figure that remained in her memory was of a pale-eyed, grenadier-like old lady, almost entirely surrounded by clocks. It was these clocks that had impressed her most. She was too young to be awed by the knowledge that the tall old woman who stared at her just like a sandy cat she had once possessed was one of ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... The city clocks were striking seven as he walked across the Toornoifeld, where the morning mist still lingered among the trees. The great square was almost deserted. Holland, unlike France, is a lie-abed country, and at an hour when a French town would ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... Motraye, in describing the interior of the Grand Signior's palace, into which he gained admission as the assistant of a watchmaker who was employed to regulate the clocks, says that the eunuch who received them at the entrance of the harem, conducted them into a hall: "Cette salle est incrustee de porcelaines fines; et le lambris dore et azure qui orne le fond d'une coupole qui regne au-dessus, est des plus riches.... Une fontaine artificielle ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... bedrooms, dining- or sitting-rooms for the huge delft platters, whole sets of the old green dragon pattern, quaint perforated baskets, pitchers and mugs of British lustre, with queer dogs, and cats, and peacocks, and clocks of china. The massing of colour is picturesque and brilliant, and the whole effect decidedly unique. The landlady's father and grandfather had been Bideford sea-captains and had brought here these and other ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... plentiful, the streets are quiet by day and night, and only those who still have something to lose or who cherish very modest hopes of gain, still take an interest in financial affairs. One may dream again, as one dreamed thirty years ago, when all the clocks were set once a fortnight to follow ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... thought of than ever; every fragment of antiquity valued. Almost everything old is of the country, either of the mansion or of the cottage; old silver plate, and old china, and works of the old masters in the one, old books, old furniture, old clocks in ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... pickled cabbage, while Gustavus got up from the what-not in a bemused manner, and proceeded to search dreamily for an armchair. He came upon one by chance in the dining-room, and wheeled it out into the hall just as the clocks in the house rang out the half-hour ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... it may appear, I was influenced in my excited search for clues by the fact that the clock had, after it was re-wound, only struck the hour of twelve. The significance of that deduction lay in the observation—my experience is, admittedly, limited—that clocks which have run down must be patiently made to re-toll the hours they have missed, or they will pick up their last neglected reminders of the time at the point at which they stopped. And from that I inferred an esoteric knowledge of ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... of all the kinds of herbs. She took some tansy and peppermint, and caraway-seed and dill, spearmint and cloves, pennyroyal and sweet marjoram, basil and rosemary, wild thyme and some of the other time,—-such as you have in clocks,—sappermint and oppermint, catnip, valerian, and hop; indeed, there isn't a kind of herb you can think of that the little old woman didn't have done up in her little paper bags, that had all been dried in her little Dutch-oven. She ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... for the number of Italian proverbs relating to England, which show an intimacy with our manners that could not else have occurred. It was probably some sarcastic Italian, and, perhaps, horologer, who, to describe the disagreement of persons, proverbed our nation—"They agree like the clocks of London!" We were once better famed for merry Christmases and their pies; and it must have been the Italians who had been domiciliated with us who gave currency to the proverb—Ha piu da fare che i forni di natale in Inghilterra: "He has more business than English ovens at Christmas." Our pie-loving ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the house was—how loudly all the clocks in the neighborhood ticked. The woman upstairs craved love. That must have been the story. She hungered for love with her whole being. She wanted to create in love. When the white silent man came into her presence ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... the mother once more, an' she lives in the midsummer rose. She smiles in the peony clump at the door, an' sings when the four o'clocks close. She loved every blossom God gave us to own, an' daily she gave it her care. So never I walk in the garden alone, for I feel that the ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... another table for rough work, on which lay tidily arranged a watchmaker's tools and watches taken to pieces. On the walls hung hammers, pliers, awls, chisels, nippers, and so on, and there were three hanging clocks which were ticking; one was a big clock with thick weights, such as one sees ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a ponderous throb, the great black belts sagged and fell inert, the wheels whirred listlessly, clocks all over the great city began to toll for one more long day ended and gone, while the voices of the girl toilers rose superbly and filled the gathering stillness with the ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... to put up one of these men's horses he wants to break his wagon and whip, and he does give them a few ferocious shakes in the solitude of the stable. The boy worships the clockmaker, who comes once a year on a Saturday and stays over Sunday, mending all the clocks in the house, the tall, timeworn wooden one up in the boy's bedroom as well as the rest. This fellow has a taste for pugilism. While working at the clocks he holds discussions with the hired folks about Heenan, Sayers, Morrissey, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... affecting our history. Charles Claret, Comte de Fleurieu, was the principal geographer in France. He was at this time director of ports and arsenals. He had throughout his life been a keen student of navigation, was a practical sailor, invented a marine chronometer which was a great improvement on clocks hitherto existing, devised a method of applying the metric system to the construction of marine charts, and wrote several works on his favourite subject. A large book of his on discoveries in Papua and the Solomon Islands is still ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... morning Emmie would be keeping an eye on the kitchen fire, lest the cook might let it out. And shortly after noon Mrs Blackshaw would be keeping an eye on the thermometer in the bedroom where the bath occurred. From four o'clock onwards the clocks in the house were spied on and overlooked like suspected persons; but they were used to that, because the baby had his sterilized milk every two hours. I have at length allowed you to penetrate the secret of ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... loyal: I put out my hand. I am putting out my hand to you, Mr. Speaker. I am putting out my hand to you Mr. Majority Leader. For this is the thing: This is the age of the offered hand. We can't turn back clocks, and I don't want to. But when our fathers were young, Mr. Speaker, our differences ended at the water's edge. And we don't wish to turn back time, but when our mothers were young, Mr. Majority Leader, the Congress and the Executive were capable of working together to produce a budget ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... they like. It isn't the piano-tuner. It isn't the man who does the clocks. They know who it is. It isn't that Marriott man. I've found out something about him they don't know. He's got a false ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... people," said the stout gentleman, "think the stars were made to set their clocks by. They lack the magnanimity to drop the personal reference. A friend, a confrere, saw a party of these horrible Extension people at Rome before that exquisite Venus of Titian. 'And now, Mr Something-or-other,' said one of the young ladies, addressing ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... the crime. An individual who for some months past specialised in thefts of clocks was last week ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... a long time, till the clocks struck twelve, and still Meg did not come. From time to time Kitty spoke some reassuring words to Robin, or sang him some little songs she remembered from her own childhood; but his cries grew more and more distressing, and at length Kitty resolved to break her promise, and unlock ...
— Little Meg's Children • Hesba Stretton
... described does not signify, as the times of vibration will be the same, whether the arc be the fourth or the four hundredth of a circle, or at least they will be nearly so, and would be so exactly, if the curve described were a portion of a cycloid. In the pendulum of clocks, therefore, a small arc is preferred, as there is, in that case, no sensible deviation from the cycloidal curve, but in other respects the size of the arc ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... that morning, to the Hotel Bellevue on the Little Scheideck. In spite of the rain and the squalls, tables had been laid outside in the shelter of the veranda, amid a great display of alpenstocks, flasks, telescopes, cuckoo clocks in carved wood, so that tourists could, while breakfasting, contemplate at a depth of six thousand feet before them the wonderful valley of Grindel-wald on the left, that of Lauterbrunnen on the right, and opposite, within gunshot as it seemed, the immaculate, grandiose slopes of the ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... As the city clocks struck nine on Monday morning, Mrs Clennam was wheeled by Jeremiah Flintwinch of the cut-down aspect to her tall cabinet. When she had unlocked and opened it, and had settled herself at its desk, Jeremiah withdrew—as it might be, to hang himself ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... chess understood the world's works as some men know clocks and watches. He recognized a fact and based a game on it, with the result that his game endures. And what he clearly recognized was this: That no king matters much as long as your side is playing a winning game. You can leave your king in his corner then to amuse himself ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... cook, and fence, and dance, They're fond of shouting "Long live France!" They make the prettiest hats and frocks, Also French pickles and French clocks. ...
— Little People: An Alphabet • T. W. H. Crosland
... himself on his upright carriage; his stick was so thin that the most malevolent could not insinuate that it was of any possible use in walking; his teeth had put on all the vigour and freshness of a second spring. Hence his look was the slowest of possible clocks in respect of his age, and his manner was equally as much in ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... the household could look at the goods without being aware that the second set was a provision for Fancy, when she should marry and have a house of her own. The most noticeable instance was a pair of green-faced eight-day clocks, ticking alternately, which were severally two and half minutes and three minutes striking the hour of twelve, one proclaiming, in Italian flourishes, Thomas Wood as the name of its maker, and the other—arched at the top, and altogether of more cynical appearance—that of Ezekiel ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... in April there will go off under your window that most delightful of all alarm-clocks — the tiny, friendly house wren, just returned from a long visit south. Like some little mountain spring that, having been imprisoned by winter ice, now bubbles up in the spring sunshine, and goes rippling along over the pebbles, tumbling over itself in merry cascades, so this ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... like to eat with your fingers, and to find creeping creatures everywhere, and to have no books and newspapers, and no letters, and no shops except in great towns, and no way of getting about except on foot or horseback, and no lamps, candles, clocks or watches, china, spectacles, nor carpets on the floor? Yet this was the way in which kings and queens ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... home with papa!" was the ultimatum reached by each chain of mental reasonings, and borne in after each short prayer for guidance, as Ethel tossed about listening to the perpetual striking of all the Oxford clocks, until daylight had begun to shine in; when she fell asleep, and was only waked by Meta, standing over her with a sponge, looking very mischievous, as she reminded her of their appointment with Dr. May, to go to the early service in ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... special manufactures, musical-boxes and clocks being among the chief, it possesses importance; there are also cotton mills, tanneries, foundries, &c. The fabrication of clocks by machinery is a curious process, the precision and apparent intelligence of the machines being as agreeable to contemplate as ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... when we could not get tea, it was very bad and we became short of speech and quick of anger. So we grew to hunger for the things the white men brought in trade. Trade! trade! all the time was it trade! One winter we sold our meat for clocks that would not go, and watches with broken guts, and files worn smooth, and pistols without cartridges and worthless. And then came famine, and we were without meat, and two score died ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks, When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws, And maidens bleach their summer smocks The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men; for thus sings he, Cuckoo! Cuckoo, cuckoo!—O word of fear, Unpleasing to ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... punctual because he is not punctilious. He is impulsive, and has an impulse to stay as well as an impulse to go. For, after all, punctuality belongs to the same order of ideas as punctuation; and there is no punctuation in telegrams. The order of clocks and set hours which English business has always observed is a good thing in its own way; indeed I think that in a larger sense it is better than the other way. But it is better because it is a protection against hustling, not a promotion of it. In other words, it ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... and wandered on, staggering and stumbling like a creature wounded to death; and heard the clocks strike one, and knew that half the night was gone already—the precious night that was so short. Two, three, four, five—by six o'clock the whole town would wake up and there would ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... mysterious affinity is there between these two dissimilar edibles that they are invariably hawked in company?) from door to door. During harvest he rang the morning "leazing bell" to start the gleaners to the fields, and every night he tolled the curfew, by which the villagers set their clocks. He it was who, when the sermon was ended, strode with dignity from his box on the "lower deck" down the aisle to the belfry, and pulled the "dishing-up bell" to let home-keeping mothers know that hungry husbands and sons were set free. Folks in those ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... become of this helpless machine, which has no central spring of independent action? Can we stand by, each minute of each hour of each day, and say to the automata, Go here, or Go there? Can we be sure of living as long as they live? Can we wind them up like seventy-year clocks, and leave them? ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... to do—any number of mechanical contrivances to go on with, notably the one intended to move a boat without oars, sails, or steam, but they were not church clocks, and for the time being nothing interested him but the old clock whose hands were pointing absurdly as to the ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... and progress. Take the watch for instance. Examine the beautiful structure of the little animal, watch the intelligent play of the minute members which compose it; yet this little creature is but a development of the cumbrous clocks of the thirteenth century— it is no deterioration from them. The day may come when clocks, which certainly at the present day are not diminishing in bulk, may be entirely superseded by the universal use of watches, in which case clocks will become extinct like the earlier ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler |
