"Cracked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Industry across the wide ocean and down around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean; and he carried sail until it almost cracked the masts, and his crew were as willing as they could be and nobody skulked. But, all that time, there was no sign of the Augusta Ramsay. And they sailed into the wide river and anchored; and Captain Sol sold the things ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... riotous sense of fierce happiness! I was carrying away Astraea from the whole world! Astraea was giving up the whole world for me! My heart beat loudly, and poured its palpitating blood into my throbbing temples. The postillion cracked his whip, and the panting horses started off with a plunge, as if they would tear up the earth. We turned to each other—our faces were lighted up with a flash of rapture—I clasped her hands in mine, and showered a hundred ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... the sharp, cracked sound of the Elevation bell breaks the silence of the summer's morning. The good Pater Bonifacius is saying Mass; he, at any rate, is astir and busy with his day's work and obligations. Surely it is strange that at so late an hour in mid-September, ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... hard all the day. I have been compelled in early life to go at the bidding of a tyrant through all kinds of weather, hot and cold, wet or dry, and without shoes frequently until the month of December, with my bare feet on the cold frosty ground, cracked open and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... preliminary wrestling with collar, necktie, spectacles, and voice, launched forth on a presentation speech that threatened to close down the works for the day. Emma McChesney heard it, tears in her eyes. T. A. Buck gnawed his mustache. And when Pop Henderson's cracked old voice broke altogether in the passage that touched on his departed employer, old T. A. Buck, and the great happiness that this occasion would have brought him, Emma's hand met young T. A.'s and rested there. Hortense and Henry, standing very close together all through the speech, had, ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... in the parlor, and when he heard her funny, little, cracked voice calling him, he nearly went crazy: "Jimmy, Jimmy, James Augustus!" she said, which ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... had finished reading his paper. Two bright spots in his cheeks showed that he had felt a good deal in writing it, and the flush returned as he listened to his own thoughts. Poor old fellow! The "cracked Teacup" of our younger wits,—not yet come to their full human sensibilities,—the "crank" of vulgar tongues, the eccentric, the seventh son of a seventh son, too often made the butt of thoughtless pleasantry, was, after all, a fellow-creature, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of interest and ridicule in the public prints. A lively picture has lately been set before us of Gallipoli. Take, says the writer, a multitude of the dilapidated outhouses found in farm-yards in England, of the rickety old wooden tenements, the cracked, shutterless structures of planks and tiles, the sheds and stalls, which our bye lanes, or fish-markets, or river-sides can supply; tumble them down on the declivity of a bare bald hill; let the spaces between house and house, thus accidentally determined, be understood ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... by little during five days, and on the sixth day the thunder cracked, the rain poured down, the ocean billows swelled, the land was flooded, the lightning flashed, the mist closed down, the rainbow arched, the colored cloud rose over ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... down to the very branches, and as they burned down they were put out one after the other, and then the children had permission to plunder the Tree. So they fell upon it with such violence that all its branches cracked; if it had not been fixed firmly in the ground, it would ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... A shell cracked overhead, and the shrapnel ripped down along the trench behind them with a storm of bullets thudding into the ground ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... more indolent life of the metropolis to the quieter and more active pursuits of the country, his character had bettered a little—inasmuch as it was a shade more accessible to spiritual influences; the hard soil had in a few places cracked a hair's breadth, and lay thus far open to the search of those sun rays which, when they find the human germ, that is, the conscience, straightway begin to sting it into life. To this betterment the company of his daughter had chiefly contributed; ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... a celebrity on his own road for the preparation of certain dishes, which no one else could do as well, however many markets and refrigerators and kitchen ranges might be at command. One of these dishes was a peculiar form of cracked wheat, made crisp and savory after some mysterious fashion, and eaten with thick cream. Like most chefs, the cook liked to do the things in which he excelled, and finding that it was admired, he gave the party this ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... early formative years of Hugh McVey's life had been spent within sound of the lapping of the waters of the Mississippi River. He had seen it in the hot summer when the water receded and the mud lay baked and cracked along the edge of the water; in the spring when the floods raged and the water went whirling past, bearing tree logs and even parts of houses; in the winter when the water looked deathly cold and ice floated past; and in the fall when it was quiet ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... appears, was occasionally Voltaire's amanuensis there; him he did recommend zealously to the new King of Prussia, who was not deaf on the occasion. This, in the fire of satirical wit, is what we can transiently call "giving alms to a Prussian Excellency;"—not now excellent, but pensioned and cracked; and the reader perceives, Luiscius had probably more than one razor, had not one been enough, when he did the rash act. Friedrich employed Luiscius Junior, with no result that we hear of farther; and seems to have thought Luiscius Senior an absurd fellow, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... recovered my senses after the cracked skull I got from one of your tie-beams," added Lettsome; and Fareham saw that both men had their doublets coated with dust and cobwebs, in a manner which indicated a remorseless searching of places unvisited ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... lords of all. From room to room the wind went shuddering On some vague endless quest; now pausing here To lift an arras, and then hurrying on, To some fresh clue, belike! The sharp-nosed mouse Through joist and floor discreetly gnawed her way, And for her glossy young a lodging made In a cracked corselet that once held a heart. The meditative spider undisturbed Wove his gray tapestry from sill to sill. Over the transom the stone eagle drooped, With one wing gone, in most dejected state Moulting his feathers. A blue poisonous vine, ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... vanished; the twelve-inch armoured conning-tower cracked like an eggshell; the barbette collapsed like the crust of a loaf, and the big 9.2 gun lurched backwards and lay with its muzzle staring helplessly at the clouds. The deck crumpled up as though it had been burnt parchment, ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... bag of gold, and another into the bargain, too high a price to pay for it. What is the use of a house filled with fine furniture when the heart is so full of sorrow? At home we all eat together out of a cracked clay dish across which a tinker had drawn a wire, with rude wooden spoons made by my father, yet how we all relished it!—what ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cases acute inflammation is treated by employing cold applications during the initial stage. Cracked ice when contained in a suitable sack may be held in contact with the affected part and the pack is supported by means of cords or tapes as suggested in the discussion on treatment of scapulohumeral arthritis on page 66. Later, hot applications ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... captain and Charley were talking; flame and smoke continued to burst out from the point in almost a continuous stream, while those in the canoes were not inactive. Where an arm or leg showed to their hawk-like eyes, their rifles cracked sharply, to be generally rewarded with a howl of pain from some cutthroat who had been winged. But there could be but one end to such a battle. The convicts were well protected behind big trees, while the flimsy sides of their canoes afforded the brave little band ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... comparatively light; but when the climbing of the hill began, numbers of Boers who had been waiting ready poured in their fire. All along the ridge, from behind every rock and stone, the smokeless Mausers cracked (it was then the fire rose to that rippling noise we were listening to on the other side of the range), and the sleet of bullets, slanting down the hill, swept our fellows down by scores. But there was never any faltering. They had been told to ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... the sight of the fat bottle peekin' out of the cracked ice; but she gets over that feelin' after Miss ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... negro whose age was supposed by Mrs. M——r to be about one hundred and twenty. He had been in her husband's house, who was an officer in the Spanish service, when she married, and first came here half a century back, and was then considered past labour. The old boy was quite a wag; cracked several jokes, as well as his want of teeth would let him, upon one of the company about to be married; and, on being shown a lump of fine Cavendish tobacco he had asked for, his eye sparkled like a serpent's. Mr. M——r assured me his appetite ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... Young man in the plain' is my name; 'he that never suffereth corruption' is my name. I am the Soul, the creator of the god Nu who maketh his habitation in the underworld: my place of incubation is unseen and my egg is not cracked. I have done away with all my iniquity, and I shall see my divine Father, the lord of eventide, whose body dwelleth in Annu. I travel(?) to the god of night(?), who dwelleth with the god of light, by the western region of the ...
— Egyptian Literature
... were passing through a denser part than ever; so close were they that the large drooping boughs of some of the trees cracked and rustled and snapped as they passed by, to get to what seemed to be quite a lagoon shining clear and silvery, as seen by those on board the steamer through quite a tunnel of ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... me, and I'll—just look at it." She touched the stained old book with shrinking fingertips; the moldering leather cover and the odor of soiled and thumb-marked leaves offended her. The first page was folded over, and when she spread it out, the yellowing paper cracked along its ancient creases; it was a map, with the signs of the Zodiac; in the middle was ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... the stranger's shoulder with a cat-like quickness of motion and cracked with seemingly no interval of aim-taking, and the bird fell as ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... subject before, but it is so important that the reader must excuse repetition. There came an inevitable severance, an inevitable period of strife. The magic mirror of the soul, reflecting nature as heretofore in calm and simple grace, was suddenly cracked across. The new self-conscious man (not all at once but gradually) became alienated from his tribe. He lapsed into strife with his fellows. Ambition, vanity, greed, the love of domination, the desire for property and possessions, set in. The influences of fellowship ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... and stood a moment, shuddering. Then he went straight to the door. He tried to step lightly. The first stair cracked like a shot. He listened. The old woman stirred in her bed. The staircase was dark. There was a slit of light under the stair-foot door, which opened into the kitchen. He stood a moment. Then he went ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... the river about three p.m. on the 16th, at Makaberab, or, as the natives call it, Omdabiya—i.e., the place of hyenas. For over a mile, men and animals had to make their way through halfa-grass scrub, and then over bare alluvial land, deeply sun-cracked and scored in all directions. The ground was cris-crossed like a chessboard, the lines being a foot to two feet apart, and four to six inches wide, and several feet in depth. There were numberless spills through these pitfalls. One camel snapped his leg, and many mules and horses ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... it," I reminded myself. Followed the voice, a voice from the stable, the cracked, whining tenor of a very aged vassal of the Arrowhead, one Jimmie Time. Jimmie, I gathered, was currying a horse as he sang, for each bar of the ballad was measured by the double thud of a currycomb against the side of a stall. Whistle, guitar, and voice now attacked ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... every one of which bore the stamp of the broker's shop—things which had been graceful and pretty in their day, but from which the ormolu-moulding had been knocked off here, and the inlaid-wood chipped away there, and the tortoiseshell cracked in another place, until they seemed the very emblems of decay. It was as if they had been set up as perpetual monitors—monuments of man's fragility. "This is what life comes to," they said in their ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... banquet. The coaches clattered up to the Grandcourt gate; the seventy, with their wraps and coats, were escorted, by their hosts in a body, to the chariots; horns sounded; cheers answered cheers; caps waved; whips cracked, and in five minutes the Grandcourt gate was as silent as if it guarded, not a fortress of hearty schoolboys, but a ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... a third part of the night had passed Grettir heard a loud noise. Something was going up on to the building, riding above the hall and kicking with its heels until the timbers cracked again. This went on for some time, and then it came down towards the door. The door opened and Grettir saw the thrall stretching in an enormously big and ugly head. Glam moved slowly in, and on passing the door stood upright, reaching to the roof. He turned to the hall, resting his arms on the ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... scene, which we reached by the time he had brought the tale to a conclusion. It was certainly a most remarkable chasm, whose existence was only to be accounted for by reference to the volcanic agency of which abundant traces exist in Southern France. The whole side of the mountain was cracked and rent asunder, forming a narrow ravine of vast depth, in the manner of the famous Mexican barrancas. In some places might be traced a sort of correspondence on the opposite sides; a recess on one side into which a projection on the other ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... a good deal of a journey, if I remember rightly, but pleasant. Horsham sits in a plain which is as level as a floor—one of those famous dead levels which Australian books describe so often; gray, bare, sombre, melancholy, baked, cracked, in the tedious long drouths, but a horizonless ocean of vivid green grass the day after a rain. A country town, peaceful, reposeful, inviting, full of snug homes, with garden plots, and plenty of shrubbery ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... equal in number to all the other houses; and that the full character of the place might be evident, several faded, tinselled, and painted females looked boldly at the strangers from their open lattices, or more modestly seemed busied with the cracked flower-pots, filled with mignonette and rosemary, which were disposed in front of the windows, to the great risk of the passengers." It is to a dilapidated tavern in the same foul neighbourhood that the gay Templar, it will be remembered, takes Nigel to be sworn in a brother of Whitefriars by drunken ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... long enough, somebody comes. The brave Courier comes, and gives you admittance. You walk into a seedy little garden, all wild and weedy, from which the vineyard opens; cross it, enter a square hall like a cellar, walk up a cracked marble staircase, and pass into a most enormous room with a vaulted roof and whitewashed walls: not unlike a great Methodist chapel. This is the sala. It has five windows and five doors, and is decorated with pictures which would gladden the heart of one of ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... returned John Grueby, beating down his guard with his whip, and striking him on the head with its butt end. 'Yes, I played a little once. You wear your hair too long; I should have cracked your crown if it had been a ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... exhibit much less simplicity and moderation; or, to speak more properly, slovenliness and penury in their dress than in their furniture.... The distance at which they are from the Cape may, indeed, be some excuse for their having no other earthenware or china in their houses but what was cracked or broken; but this, methinks, should not prevent them being in possession of more than one or two old pewter pots, and some few plates of the same metal; so that two people are frequently obliged to eat out ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... temperature of his hot water, wandered into the garden, looked to see if the shrubs were budding, sat at the edge of the water where he had built himself a kiosk, examined the joinery of his house,—had it sprung? had the walls settled, the panels cracked? or he would come in fretting about a sick hen, and complaining to his sister, who was nagging the servant as she set the table, of the dampness which was coming out in spots upon the plaster. The barometer was Rogron's most useful bit of property. He consulted it at all ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... so careless. I'll pay for the goblet cheerfully," Adah said, not to Asenath, but to Anna, who answered kindly: "No matter; it was already cracked across the bottom—don't mind." ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... a thing most terrible to see and to hear, and fit to make one's hair stand on end. The ship was afterwards in equal danger, when the ice formed beneath, raising her and bearing her up as though she had been lifted by some instrument." Soon the ship cracked to such a degree, that prudence dictated the debarkation of some of the provisions, sails, gunpowder, lead, the arquebuses as well as other arms, and the erection of a tent or hut, in which the men might be sheltered ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... thee, whether thy small headpiece be sound or cracked, my boy. But whether this scurvy ruffian be thy father or no, 'tis all one, he shall not have thee to beat thee and abuse, according to his threat, so thou prefer ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is that of the conservatoire and opera. The Hof Theater, opera, and conservatoire are all under one royal direction. The latter has been recently reorganized with a new director, in accordance with the Wagner notions somewhat. The young king is cracked about Wagner, and appears to care little for other music: he brings out his operas at great expense, and it is the fashion here to like Wagner whether he is understood or not. The opera of the "Meister-Singer ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... head. Never did sailor go aloft more quickly than he swung himself up from branch to branch. Quickly he reached the overhanging bough. At its juncture with the trunk he paused for a second to catch his breath, then swung himself out on it cautiously, hand over hand. The bough creaked and cracked ominously, but did not break. Near the end of the limb he stopped, and throwing a leg over to free his hands, he knotted one end of the rope to the branch and flung the other ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the garden is a vine-covered arbor, with seats and tables, and at the end of it is the opening into a little chapel, a domestic chapel, carpeted like a parlor, and bearing all the emblems of a loving devotion. By the garden gate hang three small bells, from some old mission, all cracked, but serving (each has its office) to summon the workmen or ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... boat, tearing at his oars till all cracked again. It was as though he wished to punish himself by his gigantic efforts. Her form grew smaller and smaller as he rowed out to sea, till at length she was out of sight; but he had deserved it all. "Deuce take the women!" and each time he repeated the words he sprang to his ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... all at sea. He hung up the telephone receiver with a vague feeling that being a reporter on a special assignment was not all it was cracked ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... itself, filled with all these flaming masses, became so heated that it could no longer be breathed. The atmosphere itself was burning, the glass of the windows cracked,' and apartments became untenable. The Emperor stood for a moment immovable, his face crimson, and great drops of perspiration rolling from his brow, while the King of Naples, Prince Eugene, and the Prince de Neuchatel ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... reflections of the stars. The Chinamen swarmed up the hatch-way, voluble and shrill. Again the "Bertha Millner" lifted and sank, the tubs sliding on the deck, the masts quivering like reeds, the timbers groaning aloud with the strain. In the stern something cracked and smashed. Then the trouble died away, the ripples faded into the ocean, and the schooner settled to her keel, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... farewell!... On parting with life, to you alone I stretch out my hands. Would I might once more inhale the fresh, bitter fragrance of the wormwood, the sweet scent of the mown buckwheat in the fields of my native place! Would I might once more hear far away the modest tinkle of the cracked bell of our parish church; once more lie in the cool shade under the oak sapling on the slope of the familiar ravine; once more watch the moving track of the wind, flitting, a dark wave over the golden grass of our ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... lbs. of powder each and 8 of lead. had it not have been for that happy expedient which I devised of securing the powder by means of the lead, we should not have had a single charge of powder at this time. three of the canesters which had been accedentally bruized and cracked, one which was carelessly stoped, and a fifth that had been penetrated with a nail, were a little dammaged; these we gave to the men to make dry; however exclusive of those five we have an abundant stock to last us back; and we always take care to put a proportion of it in ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... with the time fixed and fore-arranged. And evident also that ten is the hour awaited; for, while in the act of examining his dial, the old mission clock, restored to striking, tolls just so many times; and, before the boom of its cracked bell has ceased rolling in broken reverberation through the trees, he thrusts the watch hurriedly into his fob. Then stands in expectant attitude, with eyes upon the embouchure of the upper path, scanning it more eagerly than ever. There is a strange coincidence between ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... was over, and just after he had finished the fence round his tent, one day when Robinson was at work in the cave, all of a sudden the earth began to fall from the roof, and the strong props he had put in cracked in a way which frightened him terribly. At the same time there was a curious moaning, rumbling noise, that he could not understand. He rushed out, and so afraid was he that the roof was falling in, and that he should be buried, that he ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... The people were mad with terror and anguish, and, reeling and staggering, sought refuge in every corner in order to avoid the falling beams and splinters. Joseph and Mary looked for Jesus, and found him quietly asleep on a bench. The storm thundered over his head, the masts cracked, but he slept peacefully. Mary bent over him, and climbed on to the bench so that they might not be hurled apart. She would let him sleep on, what could a mother's love do more? But Joseph thought it time to be prepared, and so they woke him. ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... her so that he could look into her face, and the cry upon his lips was frozen into a grief-stricken horror. Her hair unbound, hanging loose, tangled about her face, dull and soiled with the gray sand-dust, her lips dry, cracked, unnaturally big, her cheeks pinched and stamped at the corners of her mouth with the misery through which she had lived—was ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... had thought to baffle him and who, being present at his preachment and hearing the rare shift employed by him and from how far he had taken it and with what words, had so laughed that they thought to have cracked their jaws. Then, after the common folk had departed, they went up to him and with all the mirth in the world discovered to him that which they had done and after restored him his feather, which next year stood him in as good stead as the coals had ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... this life a man does not become godly, what prospect is there that in the next world, starting with sin, there would be a seraph evoluted? Surely the sculptor has more prospect of making a fine statue out of a block of pure white Parian marble than out of an old black rock seamed and cracked with the storms of a half century. Surely upon a clean, white sheet of paper it is easier to write a deed or a will than upon a sheet of paper all scribbled and blotted and torn from top to bottom. Yet men seem to think that, though the life ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... and thin, and by no means reassuring of aspect. With his low, narrow forehead, sunken nose, and hard mouth, he looked like a Kalmuck Tartar; a pair of small, wide-awake black eyes, the crabbed irregular outline of his countenance, a voice like a cracked bell—the man's whole appearance, in fact, combined to give the impression that this was a consummate rascal. A honeyed tongue compensated for these disadvantages, and he gained his ends by talk. Cavalier, a stout, thick-set young fellow, looked more like the driver of a mail ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... broke into a smile. It did really seem as if it cracked, because her lips had been set in such a tight line. "It ain't very often children like flowers unless they can pick them," she replied. "I can't sleep nights sometimes, wishing my garden wasn't so near ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... public distress did Tom Walker set up as usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needy and adventurous, the gambling speculator, the dreaming land-jobber, the thriftless tradesman, the merchant with cracked credit—in short, everyone driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate sacrifices ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... cracked horn she blows, At which the hounds fall a-bounding; While th' moon in her sphere Peeps trembling for fear, And ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... violently. I aimed low, behind his shoulder, and pulled trigger. At the crack of the rifle all the bison, without the momentary halt of terror-struck surprise so common among game, turned and raced off at headlong speed. The fringe of young pines beyond and below the glade cracked and swayed as if a whirlwind were passing, and in another moment they reached the top of a very steep incline, thickly strewn with boulders and dead timber. Down this they plunged with reckless speed; their surefootedness was a marvel in such seemingly unwieldy beasts. A column ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... squealing, crowding to the fence, where, standing with upturned faces and small covetous eyes, they awaited the feast of golden grain which the old man hastened to scatter amongst them. Then, leaning upon the fence, he noted each greedy grunter as he wriggled his small tail in keenest enjoyment and cracked the sweet corn. ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... had received a strain which was too much for it, and one of the iron wings broke partly across; and this flaw, hidden by leather and padding, had been lurking in the dark and biding its time. When Janet braced her foot in the stirrup and made the horse dodge, it cracked the rest of the way, whereupon the jagged point of metal pressed into his shoulder with her weight upon it. It was nothing less than this ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... and that five dollars for the passenger and his two tin boxes was like doing it for nothing. The money was paid; the boxes were loaded into the wagon, and Robert Louis seated upon one of them, with a horse-blanket around him, in the midst of a pouring rain, the driver cracked his whip and started away. He drove three blocks to the starboard and one to port, and backed up in front of Number Ten West Street, which proved to be almost directly across the street from the place where the "Devonia" was docked. But strangers in a strange country can not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... sit and hear as love hears it grief's heart's cracked grate's screech? Chance lets the gate sway that opens on hate's way and shews on shame's beach Crouched like an imp sly change watch sweet love's shrimps lie, a ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... source of great delight to us when he took a piece of chalk in his hand, sat himself down with us at his round table and began to draw-mills, houses, animals, and all sorts of other things. At the same time he cracked the merriest jokes, which still resound in my ears. Even the chief of his pleasures was not one for him if we did not share it. It consisted in drinking slowly a half jug of brandy, in remembrance of better days, and in smoking a pipe at the same time, on Sunday morning after ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... reddish obelisk of Luxor looked like a column of jet; the fountains were playing in the Place de la Concorde, and in the Tuileries gardens beyond the breeze dreamily stirred the foliage which hid from Lynde's view the gray facade of the gutted palace, still standing there, calcined and cracked by the fires of the Commune. Presently all this began to distract him, and when he returned to the hotel he was in a humor that would have been comparatively tranquil if so many tedious miles had not stretched between Paris ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and a bullet spatted into the yellow clay, two inches from the toe of his boot. Also, a rifle cracked sharply. He took the hint, and put his hands immediately on a level with ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... thee to understand that I have sat for thirty long years at the head of the Friends' meeting in this town and never has it been said that my wits are cracked. Furthermore, this is none of thy affair. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... man was driving wrong, once or twice, and was on the point of cursing him to that effect, from the window. But at last, with an anxious throb at his heart, he recognised the dingy archway, and the cracked brown marble tablet over the keystone, and he recognised ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... morella cherries, and a peck of black hearts. Stone the morellas and crack the stones. Put all the cherries and the cracked stones into a demi-john, with three pounds of loaf-sugar slightly pounded or beaten. Pour in two gallons of double-rectified whiskey. Cork the demi-john, and in six months the cherry-bounce will be fit to pour off and bottle for use; but the older ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... Margaret looked forth with a small, white-pillared face, from a grove of oaks. It had a flowery churchyard, and around it a white paling, keeping in the dead, and keeping out all roaming cattle. There was a small cracked bell, and the swallows forever circled above the eaves and in and out of the belfry. Without the yard, beneath the oaks, were a horserack and a shed for carriages. To-day there were horses at the rack and tied beneath ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... me a tin basin, water, a bit of rag for a towel, and a small, cracked mirror, in which my reflection was scarcely recognizable. He was a man of few words, contenting himself with uttering merely a dry comment on Kennedy, who had dropped back into a convenient chair, and buried his ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... of heating points away from the crack might be found in welding a lattice work with one of the bars cracked through (Figure 25). If the strips parallel and near to the broken bar are heated gradually, the work will be so expanded that the edges of the break are drawn apart and the weld can be successfully made. In this case, the parallel bars next to the broken ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... Shalott," said Rudolph Musgrave, "the mirror is cracked from side to side, isn't it? I am sorry. For life is not so easily disposed of. And there is only life to look at now, and life is a bewilderingly complex business, you will find, because the laws of it are so childishly simple—and implacable. ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... the crazy looking vehicle and found the seats ample and comfortable despite the appearance of dilapidation everywhere prevalent. The driver mounted the box, cracked his whip, and the lean nags ambled away ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... daylight and raspberry-red by candle-light, or by daylight transmitted through the stone. As red and green are the military colours of Russia, the mineral became highly popular as a gem-stone. The dark green crystals are usually cloudy and cracked, and grouped in triplets presenting a pseudo-hexagonal form. Alexandrite was found originally in the emerald- mine of Takovaya, east of Ekaterinburg in the Urals, and afterwards in the gold-bearing sands of the Sanarka ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... wonderful things for the city and the whole surrounding country. He once said that we don't know what a valuable thing we have right in our midst. I guess we've lived here longer than he has, and should know a thing or two. It is not necessary for a half-cracked old man to come and tell us of our possessions. But, say, here he is now, coming along in ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... railroad. It was night, and, with nothing better to do, they were waiting to see the train go by. Some were sitting in little groups up and down the platform of the station, and some were perched upon a pile of cross-ties. They seemed to be in great good-humor, and cracked jokes at each other's expense in the midst of boisterous shouts of laughter. The writer sat next to one of the liveliest talkers in the party; and, after listening and laughing awhile, told the "Tar Baby" ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... under that tree, just as politely," explained Katherine, her cracked voice shattered utterly by the tumble, "feeding Sandhelo long blades of grass, when Slim came up the path, puffing the way he always does when he climbs the hill, and sat down beside me to get his breath before going on to his ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... seemed to have a thousand voices of experiences. A great piece was broken off one corner of the footboard. The wound in the wood looked sinister. Directly opposite the bed stood the black walnut bureau, with its swung glass. The glass was cracked diagonally, and reflected the bed and its occupant with an air of experience. Gordon went directly to his patient. Beside him sat Georgie K. He looked at the two doctors and shook his head gravely. His great blond face was unshaven and ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... snake, which was hidden in the grass, bit that very nurse on her foot, so that she fell down as if dead. The Queen was very much vexed by this accident, but she soon selected another, who was just stepping forward when an eagle flew by and dropped a large tortoise upon her head, which was cracked in pieces like an egg-shell. At this the Queen was much horrified; nevertheless, she chose a third time, but with no better fortune, for the nurse, moving quickly, ran into the branch of a tree and blinded herself with a thorn. Then the Queen in dismay cried that there must be some malignant ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... burning, and feet ran up and down. "Fire!" rang from men's voices. Fire cracked above his head; he sprang up at the window, and dashed his hand through it, and fell back. He sprang again, and caught the woodwork; it gave way, and he fell back, nearly stunning himself. The flames roared fearfully ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... billhook from the woodman's shed, and with a ladder climbed into the lower part of the tree, where he began lopping off—"shrouding," as they called it at Hintock—the lowest boughs. Each of these quivered under his attack, bent, cracked, and fell into the hedge. Having cut away the lowest tier, he stepped off the ladder, climbed a few steps higher, and attacked those at the next level. Thus he ascended with the progress of his work far above the top of the ladder, cutting ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... made a severe attack on Lord George Bentinck, who, he asserted, was the real party in the cause. Witnesses for the plaintiff described the horse at various periods of its career; it was of a bay colour, with black legs, and a little white on the forehead; its heels were cracked, and, in 1842, it broke the skin on one leg, which left a scar. George Hitchcock, a breaker of colts, employed to break Running Rein in October, 1842, was cross-examined to ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... up in my book—you see I could do no less after the handsome way he cracked me up in his—and I cant go back on it now. (Breaking loose from Balsquith.) No: its no use, Balsquith: he can dictate his ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... returned to the dingle. Isopel was seated near the fire, over which the kettle was now hung; she had changed her dress—no signs of the dust and fatigue of her late excursion remained; she had just added to the fire a small billet of wood, two or three of which I had left beside it; the fire cracked, and a sweet ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... my adieus, the postillion cracked his whip, and we started. "There is no danger of bad weather for a month," said the driver, "and when we get up farther you will see what will pay you for the trouble of coming:" a speech that promised well for the day, I argued; and a certain share of ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... the artificial bird was singing its best, and the Emperor lay in bed listening to it, something inside the bird said, "Whizz!" Something cracked. "Whir-r-r!" All the wheels ran round, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... nothing that becomes a pretty woman more than the mere commonplace act of pouring out tea. It was certainly so in this case. When I looked at the white cloth upon the table, the heavy brass tray, and the silver jugs and teapot, and thought of my own cracked earthenware vessel, then reposing in a cupboard in my office, and in which I brewed my cup of tea every afternoon, I smiled to myself. I felt that I should never use it again without recalling this meal. After that I wondered whether ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... o'clock) Oatmeal, hominy or cracked wheat (cooked three hours), served with milk, a little salt but very little sugar. A soft egg, boiled, poached, or coddled. Stale bread and butter. One glass of warm milk. At 10 o'clock, the juice of ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... princesses looking on trumpeters blowing; and all these personages eating, and their veins filled with sweet-scented juices: works of art made to be destroyed. The guests breached a bastion, crunched a crusader and his horse and lance, or cracked a bishop, cope, chasuble, crosier and all, as remorselessly as we do a caraway comfit; sipping meanwhile hippocras and other spiced drinks, and Greek and Corsican wines, while every now and then little Turkish boys, turbaned, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... As he cracked this joke, however, a young page came and announced that Mr. Feng had arrived. Pao-y concluded that the new comer must be Feng Tzu-ying, the son of Feng T'ang, general with the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... gathered around the lamp, putting a new dissected puzzle together. Before he knew how it came about his bashfulness had vanished and he was a part of that circle. When the puzzle was completed Mary brought out a chafing-dish and a bowl of nuts, which she commanded him to "pick out" while Jack cracked them. She was going to try a new kind of candy. Later, when he disclosed the fact that he could play a little on the guitar, Norman brought out his mother's, bidding him "tune up ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... greatly fatigued Rodin, his head fell back upon the pillow, and he wiped his cracked and bleeding lips ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... on wheels then in the vicinity with its two broken-winded horses, and the clown with the cracked voice, and the big woman with the red face, and the thin and hungry ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... talked, at first, of the cloaks being disturbed; but Madame Beck told me afterwards she thought they hung much as usual: and as for the broken pane in the skylight, she affirmed that aperture was rarely without one or more panes broken or cracked: and besides, a heavy hail-storm had fallen a few days ago. Madame questioned me very closely as to what I had seen, but I only described an obscure figure clothed in black: I took care not to breathe the word "nun," certain that this word would at once suggest to her mind an idea of romance ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... and Blind Hal of Bednall Green? Verily, that was the purport of my message. The poor knave hath been sorely sick and more cracked than ever this autumn; insomuch that Father Robert spent whole nights with him; and though he be better now, and as much in his senses as e'er he will be, such another access is like to make an end of him. Now, Father Robert saith that you, Sir Page, know who the poor man is by birth, and that he ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he was a cracked egg," Ross muttered. He looked to where Crowley slouched, his eyes narrow as though considering his chances of rushing the other. Crowley grinned and shook his head. "Don't ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... He cracked his whip, and at the junction of a cross-road fell in with and joined the travelers. My father was well known to his lordship, who expressed much pleasure that the journey to the capital should be ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... discovered a remarkable rock to the north-east, named by the Indians the Rock-nest, and then recollected that the river ran at its base. Our course was immediately changed to that direction, but the traverse we had then to make was more dangerous than the former one. The ice cracked under us at every step and the party were obliged to separate widely to prevent accidents. We landed at the first point we could approach but, having found an open channel close to the shore, were obliged to ferry the goods across on pieces ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... the blazing logs and lay as still as though life no longer animated their tawny bodies. From far away there came the lonely howl of a wolf; a great white man-owl fluttered close to the camp and chortled his crazy, half-human "hello, hello, hello;" the trees cracked with the tightening frost, but neither wolf howl nor frost nor the ghostly visitant's insane voice aroused those who ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... Thursdale to expand with the pressure of fate; but something in him cracked with it, and the rift let in new light. He went up to his friend and ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... the jurisdiction of the Terran Empire. When he'd cracked that safe and made off with a hundred thousand credits, he'd headed here, because the planet was part of something called the Clearchan Confederacy. No extradition treaties or anything. Perfectly safe, if the planet ...
— The Helpful Robots • Robert J. Shea
... cracked with emotion. He stepped aside, and quick as lightning brought the spark ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... brings everything already prepared, in which case the waiters are busy unpacking the big tin boxes and placing the bain-marie (a sort of fireless cooker receptacle in a tank of hot water) from which the hot food is to be served. Huge tubs of cracked ice in which the ice cream containers are buried are already standing in the shade of the areaway or ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... driven many miles with the stream. In the mean time, I sent another party to fetch the guanicoes which our people had shot the night before; but they found nothing left except the bones, the tygers having eaten the flesh, and even cracked the bones of the limbs to come at the marrow. Several of our people had been fifteen miles up the country in search of fresh water, but could not find the least rill: We had sunk several wells to a considerable depth where the ground appeared moist, but upon visiting them, I had the mortification ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... of deeper hue than perse, Was of a calcined and uneven stone, Cracked all asunder ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... slowly on. The few spectators teased the ant-eater in one corner, or the first violin in another. One or two young farmers' boys were a little uproarious with egg-pop, and danced awkward breakdowns at the end of the tent. Then a cracked bell sounded and the curtain rose, showing hardly more of the stage than was plainly ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... an' fetch't, an' fliskit, [plunged, stopped, But thy auld tail thou wad hae whiskit, capered] An' spread abreed thy weel-fill'd brisket, [chest] Wi' pith an' pow'r, [rooty hillocks, Till spritty knowes wad rair't and riskit, roared, cracked] An' slypet owre. ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... utterly desolated by a horde of savage Scythians from the mountains of the north and east, such people as we now call the Kurds. Its palaces had no lofty Greek columns to stand for memorials, as at Palmyra or Persepolis; and when the outer casings of brick and alabaster were cracked away, and the ashes of the upper stories and the clay of the inner constructions, soaked by the rains, covered the ruins of temple and palace, nothing was left to mark the site but the grass-covered hill. No wonder that ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... three men, each in different ways exhibiting how small a thing Absalom's death was to all but the heartbroken father, and each going his own road, heedless of what lay below the heap of stones. The world goes on all the same, though death is busy, and some heart- strings be cracked. The minute details which fill the most part of the story, lead up to, and throw into prominence, David's burst of agony at the close. The three men, Ahimaaz, Joab, and the Cushite (Ethiopian), are types of different kinds of self-engrossment, which is little touched ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... who blunder into saying unpleasant things, there are a few who do so of set intention. And such people ought to be cracked. They can do a great deal of harm,—inflict a great deal of suffering. I believe that human beings in general are more miserable than you think. They are very anxious,—very careworn,—stung by a host of worries,—a good ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... the greatest fire and intensity, assuming sometimes the aspect of a battle. Blows with the formidable sticks were given and received. Brown skins were streaked with blood, heads were cracked, and a Cayuga was killed. Such killings were not unusual in these games, and it was always considered the fault of the man who fell, due to his own awkwardness or unwariness. The body of the dead Cayuga ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... A twig cracked sharply under Pollyanna's foot, and the man turned his head. With a cry of dismay Pollyanna ran ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... become of that dreadful man who had hissed his threats in her ear? He had quite vanished; there was no doubt about that. No one could be more different than this mild old man, who kept on saying kind things in his cracked voice. Elsie, watching him very narrowly, thought she saw something that reminded her of the Uncle William who had so mysteriously disappeared, and wondered whether this might be really his father. Yet that did not make his presence there ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... not a bad-looking young man, for while his horses were drinking he laid over on the broad bare backs and bending down studied his own reflection in the bright water. Then an old woman came out of a cottage close by, and began talking to him in her West Country dialect in a thin high-pitched cracked voice. Their talking was the only sound in the village; so silent was it that all the rest of its inhabitants might have been in bed and fast asleep; then, the conversation ended, the young man rode out with a ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... hands and clasps them, like a child praying. Since, however, the BABY does not stop wailing, he hovers over it in indecision; then, picking it up, sits down again to dandle it, with his face turned toward the open window. Finding that it still wails, he begins to sing to it in a cracked little voice. It is charmed at once. While he is singing, the AMERICAN appears in the corridor. Letting down the passage window, he stands there in the doorway with the draught blowing his hair and the smoke of his cigar all about him. The LITTLE MAN stops singing and shifts ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... just felt as if I had to chew something," she protested. "You know well enough what breakfast was like, Jerry Meredith. I COULDN'T eat scorched porridge and my stomach just felt so queer and empty. The gum helped a lot—and I didn't chew VERY hard. I didn't make any noise and I never cracked the ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... He'd whoop um an sen' um tuh de fiel'. Dey couldn' visit no slaves an no slaves was 'lowed tuh visit em. So mah cousin Sallie watched him hide de key so she moved dem a li'l further back so dat he had tuh lean ovah tuh reach dem. Dat mawnin soon when he come tuh let em out she cracked him in de haid wid de poker an made little Joe help put his haid in de fiuh place. Dat day in de fiel' Little Joe made er song; "If yo don' bleave Aunt Sallie kilt Marse Jim de blood is on huh under dress". He jes hollered hit. "Aunt Sallie kilt Marse Jim." Dey zamined Aunt Sallie's under ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... kinds, with game in huge numbers, and whole tuns of the best liquors, foreign and domestic. Thus the highroads were filled with droves of bullocks, sheep, calves, and hogs, and choked with loaded wains, whose axle-trees cracked under their burdens of wine-casks and hogsheads of ale, and huge hampers of grocery goods, and slaughtered game, and salted provisions, and sacks of flour. Perpetual stoppages took place as these wains became entangled; and their rude drivers, swearing and ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... reminder of Gloria that all existence had become, it was necessary for him to have hope. So he built hope desperately and tenaciously out of the stuff of his dream, a hope flimsy enough, to be sure, a hope that was cracked and dissipated a dozen times a day, a hope mothered by mockery, but, nevertheless, a hope that would be brawn and sinew ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the reins, cracked the whip, shouted a couple of banzais from the Japanese national anthem, and away we rushed like the wind—when it ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... His entwined fingers cracked as he tore his hands apart, flung out his arms, and leaned his forehead on them in a passion of fury. The other two looked at his shaking back—the attenuated Mr. Jones with mingled scorn and a sort of fear, Ricardo with the expression ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... that minute to speak of the matter, and inquire into its magnitude. They be all of them disposed to say that it will burn itself out fast enough like other fires; but I trow some amongst them are aroused to a fear that it may spread far in this dry wind, and with the houses so parched and cracked with heat. Then I came away, having done mine errand, and went back to the fire. It had spread all too fast even in that short time, and the worst thing is that no means seem to be taken to stop it. The people run about ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... turquoise collar till the clasp gave way and thrust the blue stones into the low-cut bodice. The band sounded louder than ever, the light danced and waved. Round and round and round again, while the ring-master's whip cracked monotonously. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... to lay hands on a few of them myself, Master Guy," Tom said earnestly, "say out in that wood there with a quarter-staff, and to deal with four of them at a time. They have burnt my bow, and I shall not get even with them till I have cracked fully a ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... for I cannot kill. And if you, then, had come to Falaise and gone to the market, you might have bought a pennyworth of cherries of me. And all this might have been if I had not, one day, heard an old half-witted blind man play a cracked fiddle on the high road, thirty ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... legs really is broken," said Mother, as she set the Horse upright. And, being a wooden horse with rockers under him, such as some chairs have, the Horse could stand upright, even though one of his legs was cracked clear through. ...
— The Story of a White Rocking Horse • Laura Lee Hope
... and twisted in his weakening bonds. There was a soft snapping as several now thoroughly dried sections of the brown substance cracked loose. The termite team whirled around; the ruler stared, as though in sudden ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... little group of old boatmen sitting at the end of the bridge on a long bench that was their especial property. They moved stiffly and slowly; their white heads were bowed breastward; their voices were cracked with age. Yet they seemed to be cheery together, as they basked in the hot sunshine—that warmed only comfortably their lean old bodies—and talked of ancient victories over sand-bars and rapids: and the while looked southward over the broad Rhone water ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... the bell was cast, and the result was even worse. Still the metals obstinately refused to blend one with the other; and there was no uniformity in the bell, and the sides of it were cracked and fissured, and the lips of it were slagged and split asunder; so that all the labor had to be repeated even a third time, to the great dismay of Kouan-Yu. And when the Son of Heaven heard these things, he was angrier than before; and sent his messenger ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... at the thought of you marryin'. 'Be the hokey O!' he says whenever I go a-near him, an' then he starts laughin' an' tellin' me it's the great news altogether. 'I wish,' says he, 'the oul' lad was alive. He'd be makin' hell's blazes for joy!' Och, he's cracked, that fella. I tell him many's the time it's in the asylum he should be, but sure, you might as well talk to the potstick as talk to him. He'll drive you to the station with a heart an' a han', and the capers of him when ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... speak—waited with a keyed-up intensity of longing that was almost physically painful. At last, unable to bear the continued silence, she spoke again. Her voice cracked a little. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... around the head of the third mate and there was a long scream from Kamasura—but the blacksnake only cracked loudly in the air. Borgson laughed with a hideous delight. Harrigan, sickly white, bowed his head. Again the blacksnake whirled and again it cracked, but this time on naked flesh, and the scream of Kamasura was like the ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... "I have this advantage over some, that I cannot be fooled with the fancy that this poor miserable body of mine is worth thinking of beside the smallest suspicion of duty. What is it but a cracked jug? So down the slope I went, got into the garden, and made my way through the tangled bushes to the house. I knew the place perfectly, for I had often wandered all over it, sometimes ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... name Is "Fortune", spins within the swirl Of waters cold and oceans' ring, Condemned, forsaken for his sin. On earth they plunder'd, robbed and stole From month to month and year to year; There Franchise-stealers cracked with leers As Plebeians stung, groaned with might. Now one and all damn'd on this shoal Yuck addling brains and shriek with fear, Now all shrink at Hell's laughing seers As Remorse storms the ughly night. Here Pat McCarrens filch no vote, A Grady eats no mellow pea, A ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... distinctions of race, but descend into the minuter subdivisions of states and commonwealths, nay, that they honeycomb the town, the village, and even the family, so that the surface of society all over the world is cracked and seamed, sapped and mined with rents and fissures and yawning crevasses opened up by the disintegrating influence of religious dissension. Yet when we have penetrated through these differences, which affect mainly the intelligent and thoughtful part of the community, we shall find underlying ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... wrath rose higher at sight of the steam and smoke. A fire was the very thing he had defied the gipsies again and again to make on his land. He cracked his whip with a vicious snap, and rushed ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... and small measures of water, or of such milk as the camels and goats could yield, were served out to the people; but the portion we obtained was scarcely sufficient to cool our parched tongues. Our very skin felt like leather, and was cracked and scorched all over. A short time only could be given for rest, however; another blast might sweep up clouds of sand and overwhelm us; another fatiguing march during a day and night over the Desert had to be passed. Besides, every drop ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... the ice was there, The ice was all around: It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... speak only "Mex," had got no supper ready. Knight would let Annesley do nothing, but he deftly helped the woman to fry some eggs and make coffee. He tried to find dishes which were not cracked or broken, ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... mind and heart of your own creatures: think of them long, entirely, solely: never of style, never of self, never of critics, cracked or sound. Like the miles of an open country, and of an ignorant population, when they are correctly measured they become smaller. In the loftiest rooms and richest entablatures are suspended the most spider-webs; and the quarry out of which palaces ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... was the proper liberator of Persimmon Sneed, and that the payment of money would encourage crime. The contradictory man's wife was ready to commit crime, if necessary, in this cause, and would have cheerfully cracked the bank in Colbury. And certainly this seemed almost unavoidable at one time, for to possess herself of this sum of her husband's hoard his signature was essential. The poor woman, in her limp sunbonnet and best calico dress, clung to the grating of the teller's window, and presented in futile ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... note was the second explosive point in our conversation. I was too much concerned at the moment to take in all his words implied or to appreciate the fine dexterity with which a difficult situation was being handled. These decisive sentences were cracked off quick, sharp, emphatic, like the snapping of a bunch of firecrackers. I began a "But, Mr. Rogers," when he interrupted, and his words ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Rifles cracked along the line while those sappers and patrols sent out by the enemy—who hardly believed life still possible in the shattered trenches—were shot down or driven back to cover. Henri then, peering over the trench, turned of a sudden and rushed to ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... planted in the earth. Around these holes were then hung blankets, and all the cooking utensils of the deceased, pots, kettles, and pans, each with a hole punched through it, and all her crockery-ware, every piece of which was first cracked or broken, to render it useless; and then, when all was done, they left her to remain for one year, when the bones would be buried in a box in the earth directly under the canoe; but that, with all its appendages, would never be molested, but left ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... cried Cunningham in a high, cracked voice. "To put our heads into hemp at the last moment. If anything happens to young Cleigh, back to Manila you go with the yacht! Clear out! At the last moment!" It was ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... has cost thee a cracked crown?" asked Erling, a little more gently, as he observed the exhausted condition of ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... thy rogue's sconce cracked shall be, Thy base-born bones be-thwacked shall be. I'll deal thee many a dour ding For that thou darest ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol |
