"Crank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of streets and of public places burst upon my comprehension. I could see our host looking upward, his strong white teeth flashing in an ingratiating fascinating smile, his right arm revolving with the crank of his organ, his little brown monkey with the red coat ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... were looking the Great Panjandrum Himself, with his little round button-at-the-top on his head, was turning a crank in the side of the wonderful Pantoscopticon, which had a hopper on the top of it like that of an old-fashioned coffee-mill. As he turned he kept ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... loves, of course! My neighbor's a sort of crank and insisted on expressing himself in this way. Come, I want you to see two ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... men make mistakes by steering shy of cranks. The so- called crank is the easiest man to approach, if only you go at ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... up, I never pick any of them out as samples for strangers. But to the question,—well, let's run him over once, if he won't be mad: high cheek bones, showing him enough of the Indian make to be a good hunter; a crank, steady eye, indicating honest motives, and a good resolution, that won't allow a man to rest easy till his object is carried out; and lastly, a well-put-together, wiry frame, to bear fatigues, and do the work which so large a head must ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... either to commercialize it and lose his professional standing, or to abide the convenience of his colleagues and their learned organizations in testing it. Rather than be branded a quack, charlatan, or crank, the physician keeps silent as to convictions which do not conform to the text-books. Many a life-saving, health-promoting discovery which ought to be taken up and incorporated into general practice from one end of the country to the other, and which should be made a part of ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... advantage of this weapon over the steel crossbow (used by the Genoese) lay in the fact that it could be discharged much more rapidly, the latter being a cumbrous affair, which had to be wound up with a crank for each shot. Hence the English long bow was to that age what the revolver is to ours. It sent an arrow with such force that only the best armor could withstand it. The French peasantry at that period had no skill with this weapon, and about the only part they took ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... was promised a subscription of one thousand guineas to this fund, has a history so remarkable as to be worth relating across the Atlantic. Seven years ago he was a journeyman mechanic. Having invented and patented some kind of a crank or spindle used in the cotton manufacture, and needing capital to start himself in the business of making them, he made it a matter of earnest prayer that he might be directed to some one able and willing ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... and many spiders at his command, this officer improved upon my suggestion, by substituting for my quill turned in the fingers a wooden cylinder worked by a crank, and by securing, at a proper distance, (between pins, I think,) one or more spiders, whose threads were guided between pins upon the cylinder. He thus produced more of the silk, winding it upon rings of hard rubber so as to make very pretty ornaments. With ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... Sue could be plainly seen now, for they were exactly in the path of the strong light. There was some laughter in the audience, and then the man who was turning the crank of the moving picture machine began to understand ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope
... news about him," said the doctor. "I hoped he was going to stay. It's always a pity when such a man lets his sympathies use him instead of using them. But we must always judge that kind of crank leniently, if he doesn't involve other people in ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... a tug at his heart strings. He was not a crank, nor a stickler for forms or reforms, yet he had made up his mind never to touch intoxicants. And it gave him a shock to find ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... his engine. The situation, horribly humiliating for Lucas and also for George, provided pleasure for half the chauffeurs and drivers in Piccadilly Circus, and was the origin of much jocularity of a kind then fairly new. Lucas cursed the innocent engine, and George leapt down to wield the crank. But the engine, apparently resenting curses, refused to start again. No, it would not start. Lucas leapt down too. "Get out of the way," he muttered savagely to George, and scowled at the bonnet as if saying to the engine: "I'm not going to stand any of your infernal nonsense!" But still ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... also call attention to the improvements that we have just made in our mill. Last week we put a handle in the upper burr, and we have also engaged one of the best head millers in Pompeii to turn the crank day-times. Our old head miller will oversee the business at night, so that the mill will be in full blast night and day, except when the head miller has gone to his meals or stopped to spit on ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... that even if it did happen, there was no direct proof that it would seriously flood the valley, or at best add more than a spice of excitement to the affair. The "Red Gulch Contingent," who WOULD be there, was quite as capable of taking care of the ladies, in case of any accident, as any lame crank who wouldn't, but could only croak a warning to them from a distance. A few even wished something might happen that they might have an opportunity of showing their superior devotion; indeed, the prospect of carrying the half-submerged sisters, in a condition of helpless loveliness, in their arms ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... out of the question! I'm not strong-minded enough to crank my own motor-car and study woman's suffrage. I prefer to suffer at the hands of some cruel man and trust to beguiling him into doing just as I say. I like men, can't help it, and want one for my own. I don't count poor ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... 14, 1777, that a command was found for him. This was the eighteen-gun ship "Ranger," built to carry a frigate's battery of twenty-six guns. She had been built for the revolutionary government, at Portsmouth, and was a stanch-built, solid craft, though miserably slow and somewhat crank. Jones, though disappointed with the sailing qualities of the craft, was nevertheless vastly delighted to be again in command of a man-of-war, and wasted no time in getting ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the first person who ploughed land in that place. After he had completed his work, he started on his return at sunrise, drowned a yoke of oxen while recrossing the river, and arrived at Haverhill about midnight. The crank of the first saw-mill was manufactured in Haverhill, and carried ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... tell you I'm about ready to pull up stakes and go out West, where there's patriotism and decency still, and where they'd hang one of these foreign anarchists to the nearest lamp-post, yes, sir, and this fellow Frazer, too, if he encouraged them in their crank notions. Got no right in the country, anyway. Better deport 'em if they ain't satisfied with the way we run things. I won't stand for preaching anarchism, and never knew any decent place that would, never since I was a baby in Canada. Yes, sir, I mean it; I'm ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... play the crank. It was evidently written in his stars. When will he turn his last somersault and stand ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... proffered aid from a man he disliked. This boy stated that he remembered each revolution of the lever and the individual injuries that each inflicted. Three years after his injury he was in every respect well. Fraser mentions an instance of a boy of fifteen who was caught in the crank of a balance-wheel in a shingle-mill, and was taken up insensible. His skull was fractured at the parietal eminence and the pericranium stripped off, leaving a bloody tumor near the base of the fracture about ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... wild to get started, and more so than ever after hearing all about the hundreds of fine things scouts can do. I'm a crank on making fires, and I guess I'd qualify right easy for the championship in that tournament!" exclaimed William Carberry, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... But till Watt invented it anew in 1782, by admitting the steam alternately at both ends of the cylinder, it was too awkward and clumsy to become a practical navigator. Moreover, though it could pump admirably, it had not been taught to turn a crank. The French assert, that experiments in steam-propulsion were made on the Seine, by Count Auxiron and Perrier, in 1774, and on the Saone, by De Jouffroy, in 1782; but we know they led to no practical results, and the knowledge of them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the bowline. Then, as we seized the next instant of the rhythm, and hauled her alongside, Peterson made a leap and went aboard her, and Williams scrambled back, once more, across the two huddled forms. I saw him wrench at the engine crank, and heard the spitting chug of the little motor. They fell off in the seaway, Peterson holding her with an oar as he could till the screws caught. Then I saw her answer the helm and they staggered off, passing out of the beam ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... to crank again. Then he drove away, down into the deep valley and up the hill beyond and away; but Florian Hausbaum stood like Siegfried after the battle with ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... the front railing of the car. Another deluge of missiles struck the car. He noticed that his friends were safely aboard. Andy noticed, too, that the crank handle of the motor ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... had placed his other passengers in the tonneau, and was trying to crank the motor. Blount was thankful that the new Italian engine was refusing to take the spark. The delay was giving him an added ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... coughin' up in that old one-lung machine,—to get her expression right, so the boss kept hollerin',—why, I gets sick and tired. If there's anything doin', why, I'm game, but such monkeyin'! There was that picture-machine idiot workin' the crank as if he was shellin' a thicket-full of Injuns with a Gatling, and his fool cap turned round with the lid down the back of his neck, and me and Collie, the only sensible-actin' ones of the lot, because we was actin' natural, jest restin'. I got ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... In this way they passed one night, almost in despair of seeing the morrow. But day came, and they repaired the ship by binding other sails that were carried for that purpose. After this storm the ship was very crank, and even in fair weather its sides were under water, although it had a high freeboard. Consequently, it shipped so much water that the waves washed over the decks with great noise and uproar, and entered the berths where the better-class ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... His hands gripped the wheel. His cheeks had been too ruddily tinted by the Dakota sun to show a blush, but his teeth caught his lower lip. He had no starter on his bug; he had in his embarrassment to get out and crank. He did it quietly, not looking at her. She could see that his hand trembled on the crank. When he did glance at her, as he drove off, it was apologetically, miserably. His foot was shaking on the ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... the place until the Second called me, for there was something to do. There was always something to do in that terrible old ship. I went down, and together we wrestled with the dynamo-engine, a cheap contraption with a closed crank chamber full of muddy oil which was supposed to splash into all the bearings, and didn't. We needed a washer, a special sort of thing. The old one was worn out. We needed screws, too, to fasten it with, small ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... filing motion, take two blocks of wood, and try surfacing them off with a file. When you place the two filed surfaces together after the first trial both will be convex, because the hands, in filing, unless you exert the utmost vigilance, will assume a crank-like movement. The filing test is so to file the two blocks that they will fit tightly together without rolling on each other. Before shaping and planing machines were invented, machinists were compelled to plane down and accurately finish off ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... drawn off by opening a trap door. The newly formed aluminum oxide (alumina) floats as slag on top. The applications of the thermit process are innumerable. If, for instance, it is desired to mend a broken rail or crank shaft without moving it from its place, the two ends are brought together or fixed at the proper distance apart. A crucible filled with the thermit mixture is set up above the joint and the thermit ignited with a priming ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... triumphantly, "we are ready for a nice long talk, that is, if you feel equal to the task of talking. What I have to say will not take long. It is about a little interview between Mr. Allison and—Judge Thorn's daughter, and if I had been less of a 'crank,' I suppose you would have had another son-in-law ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... in no sense a hero to his servants. In their eyes he was not the great artist, whose achievement was to go ringing down the ages; he was simply a crank or madman, who did not know his own mind half the time, from whom abuse was as likely to be predicated as gratuities, who could be ridiculed, neglected, circumvented with impunity. When the dereliction became glaring enough to arrest his attention, he would deliver himself of a volley of abuse ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... was still enigmatic, and I anxiously wondered whether I impressed him as an energetic business man or merely as an adventurer, a crank, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... her an envelope. "And this keep," he added, giving her one addressed to his father. "Don't let him have it till it's all over. You know." Then he took up a pen and a sheet of paper, and got as far, with a shaking hand, as 'Dear Crank—' but there he broke down, and laid his ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I tell you my Captain gave me a letter to an English Lord in Cape Town, and he fixed things so's I could lie up a piece in his house? I was pretty sick, and threw up some blood from where the rib had gouged into the lung—here. This Lord was a crank on guns, and he took charge of the Zigler. He had his knife into the British system as much as any American. He said he wanted revolution, and not reform, in your army. He said the British soldier had failed in every point except courage. He said England needed ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... turning about let himself down to arm's-length and dropped to the ground. "Thank God!" he said again. "The two men who were to have come with me didn't show up. I waited as long as I dared, and then came on with only the chauffeur. He's waiting outside by the car ready to crank up when I give the word. The car's just a few yards away, headed out for the road. How are we to ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... twisted them together with a stick placed between them. A pair of cutting nippers was the next addition to his "kit" of tools. His next means for twisting the two wires together was the grindstone—attaching one end of the wire to shaft and crank, the others being fastened to the wall of the barn. And here, as in most things great and small in this world, woman furnished the motor power. The strong arm of the good helpmeet, Mrs. Glidden, turned the grindstone that twisted the first wire that made the first Glidden barb fence that ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... five hundred acres of land. He had several farms. Little Hill and Creek farms. They had a rock walk from the kitchen to the house. I slept in a little trunnel bed under my mother's mistress' bed. The bed was corded and had a crank. They used no slats in them days. We called Master Bob Young's wife Miss Nippy; her name was Par/nel/i/py. They was good old people. His boys was rough. They drunk and wasted ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... mere instrument to realize them. The story was told to Edmund Garrett by one of Rhodes's old Kimberley associates 'how one day in those scheming years, deep in the sordid details of amalgamation, Rhodes ("always a bit of a crank") suddenly put his hand over a great piece of No Man's Africa on the map and said, "Look here: all that British—that ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Choate arrived at the same hotel on the day I took up my abode there, so that some of the toil he had inspired went on in his proximity, if not in his presence. I carefully kept out of his sight, however, lest he should think me a "crank" on the subject of reform, bent on ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... next week's ration, and camp at the telephone orderly's elbow. After a day or two it will percolate through to the varlet's intelligence that you are a desperate dog in urgent need of something, and he will bestir himself, and mayhap in a further two or three days' time he will wind a crank, pull some strings, and announce that you are "on," and you will find yourself in animated conversation with an inspector of cemeteries, a jam expert at the Base, or the Dalai Lama. If you want to give back-chat to the Staff you had best take it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... the pit, and sticking to the roots that had pulled up a big, cake of dirt with 'em. I don't know what give him the idea that there was money in it, but he did think so from the start. I guess, if they'd had the word in those days, they'd considered him pretty much of a crank about it. He was trying as long as he lived to get that paint introduced; but he couldn't make it go. The country was so poor they couldn't paint their houses with anything; and father hadn't any facilities. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... occupied a modest little home, just below Bordentown, New Jersey. When eighty-eight years old he was as active as a man of half his years. I came upon him one wintry day, when he was of that age, and found him in the barn, shoveling corn into a hopper, of which a sturdy Irishman was turning the crank. The old admiral kept his hired man busy and enjoyed his own work. He was of small figure, always wore an old-fashioned blue swallow-tail with brass buttons, took snuff, and would laugh and shake until his weatherbeaten face was purple ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... surrounding old Sir Joseph. Some of them I couldn't quite make out. He was just a little hard to get at, himself. I got very huffy at the old boy once or twice, I'm sorry to say. It was about ships. I'm a crank on ships. Everybody has at least one mania. That's mine—ships. Sir Joseph and I quarreled about them. He wanted to buy all I could make, but he was in no hurry to have 'em finished. I told him he talked more like a German trying to stop production than like a Britisher trying to speed it up. That ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... is!" cried Bunker Blue. "The auto-van's got a self-starter on. That's the best of all, I think. You don't have to get out to crank up now. It's great. ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... steady mover (without the aid of two or three cylinders, as in the first engines, one to take up the other as the power was given off), by a ratchet on the end of a beam or else a chain. This acted on the shaft which moved the paddles. It is to Watt that we are indebted for the crank and direct action, so as to give a circular motion ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... car, which Larry told Pat to buy for herself as a birthday present from him, is forty horsepower, I believe; whereas I'm much mistaken if Angele isn't about a hundred demon-power. She's geared terribly high, can "crank" herself I should imagine, and has the smartest new type of body, all glittering paint and varnish. Isn't it nice that her name should be Angele? It wasn't the Mother Superior who engaged this guardian angel for Miss Moore, but the dear old Paris friend of Larry's who ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... represents her as a lovely and interesting woman. The truth is that she is fearfully homely, both in face and figure, while her eccentricities are such that in America, for instance, she would be described as a "crank." Thus she distinguishes herself through her inordinate fondness for cats, goats and rabbits; escorted by whole herds of which she is wont to wander through the gloomy streets of Breslau. Her costumes are invariably as queer as the one in which she appeared on the ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... Hollow Tree people heard about Mr. Man's automobile they at first could hardly say anything at all. Then Mr. 'Possum said he supposed what made it go was some kind of clockwork that Mr. Man wound up when he turned that crank; and Mr. Crow thought he must build a fire in it to make the smoke come out behind. Mr. Dog didn't know, himself, just how the machinery went in, but that Mr. Man called it a motor and had ever so many names for different parts of it, and sometimes said strong words when he took one of ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... cry of "ishra ankra" for a "crank," and could give the pencil taps telegraphing from counter to counter that a notorious "pill" or an "I'll-come-back-again" was bearing down on the department. She seemed to know by instinct when she could offer to ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... idea of direct personal interference by agents of Heaven in the ordinary phenomena of Nature: thus, in a noted map of the sixteenth century representing the earth as a sphere, there is at each pole a crank, with an angel laboriously turning the earth by means of it; and, in another map, the hand of the Almighty, thrust forth from the clouds, holds the earth suspended by a rope and spins it with his thumb and fingers. Even as late as the middle of the seventeenth century Heylin, the most authoritative ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... was another canoe capsized, literally rolled over by the second boat, which seemed to those in the first to rise and glide over the crank dug-out, now beginning to float broadside on with her ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... the form of kneading apparatus, shown in Fig. 14, two thick rollers, which move freely on axes at the extremities of arms, projecting on either side of a shaft turned by a crank or belt, are made to act alternately upon each side ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... with which LOUIS NAPOLEON has already commenced to astonish the Prussians, suggests congenial work for the numerous performers on the barrel-organ with which our large cities are at all times infested. It is worked with a crank, exactly after the manner of the too-familiar street instrument; and might easily be fitted with a musical cylinder arranged for the performance of the most inspiriting and patriotic French airs. Should Italy, at present neutral, take side with France hereafter, she should at once withdraw ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... wanted a velocipede With springs of burnished steel; He knew the way to work it— The treadle for the wheel, The brake to turn and twist it, The crank to make it stop, My! hadn't he been riding For ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... Mike and Peter, my Indians, took me to the pool, and I began casting at the place where Kingfisher got his salmon yesterday, while Rodman took the upper end of the pool, which was three or four hundred yards in length. I had fished for trout in a bark canoe, and knew how crank a vessel it is; so I did not attempt to stand up and cast, but seated myself upon the middle cross-bar with my face turned down stream, and began to imitate the casting of Kingfisher as well as I could. I had fished but a few yards of water when the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... of her tiny house, the late morning sun warm about her; one hand supported a book, slanted carefully to avoid the light, the other held the crank of a barrel-churn. As she read, she turned steadily, the monotonous chug! chug! of the tumbling ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... apples," suggested Florence; "it is such fun to put them on that little thing and turn the crank, while the skin comes ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... phrase of his religion he 'turned the wheel of the law.' One of his titles is Chakravartin, which means 'the turner of a wheel.' The doctrines of the Buddha are written out on a wheel, which is set in motion with a crank, though it is sometimes operated by horse-power; and such machines are sometimes seen in front of religious houses in Thibet, and the ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... under Fritz Braun's watchful scrutiny. The disguised criminal trembled lest some ugly-minded detective or crank journalist might entrap him into the meshes of ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... form of activity which will constantly increase in violence. Find some means by which her sum of force which inconveniences you may be carried off, by some occupation which shall entirely absorb her strength. Without setting your wife to work the crank of a machine, there are a thousand ways of tiring her out under ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... the story of his "contracting" at Leavenworth on the corner of Fifth and Shawnee Streets. Out there at Fort Zara, Bill enjoyed himself as only Irishmen can, but his stumbling block was Captain Conkey, who was the biggest crank on earth, "take it from me," for he and I had a little "set-to." Daugherty always sent his "red, white and blue regards to the old merchant" by whosoever went ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... knew that steam could be used as a motive power long before it was so applied; and because he employed a good deal of his time in trying to discover the principle, he was ridiculed by his neighbors and friends, and the more thoughtless among them didn't know whether he was a crank, a half-wit, or a "luny." From all accounts, he was a modest, shy, retiring man, though a merry one. He had but little money to devote to the experiments he wished to make, and in this was not different from the ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... plowman, nothing but the farmer to crank the tractor and start it on its way," Dick exulted, as the uncanny mechanism turned up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever spiraling toward the field's center. "Plow, harrow, roll, seed, fertilize, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... Hiram had a idea as the more the speed the better the paper an' was just wringin' for dear life, an' the first thing he knew the first issue begin to slide a little cornerways an' slid off into a crank as Elijah never knowed was there, an' him an' Mr. Kimball spent the whole of yesterday runnin' around like mad an' no way to fix it. As a consequence Elijah's very much afraid as there'll be no paper this week ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... the completion of the Automatic Company's 7 ohm wire between New York and Washington, it happened that Prof. Moses G. Farmer was in the Washington office when the first message was about to be sent, and upon being requested, he turned the "crank" and transmitted the message to New York, at the rate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... speed plane is a biplane of small wing area, the upper plane overhanging the lower. It is equipped with a new type of Renault-Mercedes eight-cylinder motor, giving 240 horsepower at the highest crank shaft speed. The Morane-Saulnier and the Spad are both monoplanes, but of different shape and construction from the original Morane; it is of the so-called monocoque type, made familiar to Americans by the Duperdessin monocoques which took part ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... chum. "Now, Mr. Alcando, if you want to pick up any points, you can watch us. A little later we'll let you grind the crank yourself." ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... sort of crank (Folks said his learning made him mad,) But this I know, he always drank, And that will make the best ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... sinking, and on this Hawes put him to garden work. The man's life and reason were saved by that little bit of labour. Then for a day or two he was employed in washing the corridors, and in making brushes; after that, came the crank. This was a machine consisting of a vertical post with an iron handle, and it was worked as villagers draw a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... idea so absurd. I merely mentioned poor old Zamorra's crank as an instance of how ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... won't undertake to describe. It adjoins both dining-room and kitchen. John says she never does anything in getting dinner but just sit down in an easy-chair and turn a crank. That's one of John's stories, but she certainly will prepare a meal the quickest and with the fewest steps of any person I ever knew. The funniest thing about it is, that I've known eight people at work in the room all at once without being in each other's way one bit. But that's no ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... some years; and scarce ever seen a ship except in port or close by; I think twice. It was the hurricane season besides, and hurricane waters. Well, our chief engineer got the shaft—it was the middle crank shaft—mended; thrice it was mended, and twice broke down; but now keeps up—only we dare not stop, for it is almost impossible to start again. The captain in the meanwhile crowded her with sail; fifteen sails in all, every stay being gratified with a stay-sail, a boat-boom sent aloft ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wandered here and there, And picked of the bloomy brere, She chanced to espy A shepherd sitting on a bank, Like chanticleer he crowed crank, {94f} ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... costume at the front of the car controls a crank, by means of which he is enabled to bring the car to a sudden stop, or to cause it to plunge violently forward. His aim in so doing is to cause all the standing players to fall over backward. Every ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... when Bartley turned the crank that snapped the gong-bell in its centre; and the young man, who was looking at the street while waiting for some one to come, confronted her with a start. "Oh!" he said, "I thought it was Marcia. Good morning, Mrs. Gaylord. ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... pint of coarse rock salt. You may pack the freezer with a layer of ice three inches thick, then a layer of salt one inch thick, or mix the ice and salt in the tub and shovel it around the freezer. Before beginning to pack the freezer, turn the crank to see that all the machinery is in working order. Then open the can and turn in the mixture that is to be frozen. Turn the crank slowly and steadily until the mixture begins to freeze, then more rapidly until it is completely frozen. If the freezer is properly packed, it will take fifteen ...
— Ice Creams, Water Ices, Frozen Puddings Together with - Refreshments for all Social Affairs • Mrs. S. T. Rorer
... theories, on paper and in text-books, are well-nigh perfect; in actual operation why should they fail? Like a great machine, fed with the material of thought, the crank turns, the wheels go round, and the whole world is a-buzz with the work and the noise, but the creature on whom all this power is expended, is only in rare instances a truly educated man or woman. What, then, is the defect? If ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... valve that admits steam to the engine cylinder; and the other, D, being a cam to cut off the steam supply at the required point in the engine stroke. The positions of these cams with relation to the position of the crank-pin need not be commented upon here, more than to remark that obviously the cam C must operate to open the steam inlet valve in advance of cam D, which operates to close it and cause the steam to act expansively in the cylinder, and that the ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... heartily tired of the country, and the ill usage I had met with, I sailed in the Cadogan, Captain John Hall, in company with the Francis, Captain Newsham; and as the latter ship sailed much better than the Cadogan, she left us immediately after getting out to sea. Finding his ship very tender, or crank, Captain Hill put in at Batavia, to get her into better trim. We continued here about ten days; but I can say little about that place, being all the time unable to stand on my legs, and was only twice out in a coach to take the air, two or three miles out of the city, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... old crank that, after working hard at the problem for nine years, he one day, at nine o'clock on the morning of the ninth day of the ninth month, fell down nine steps, knocked out nine teeth, and expired in nine minutes. It will be remembered that nine was his lucky number. It ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... most mysterious manner," Heneage continued. "You have gathered, I dare say, from your knowledge of me, that these affairs always interest me immensely. I am almost as great a crank as the Colonel. I have been thinking over this case a great deal, but I must confess that up to to-night I have not been able to see a gleam of daylight. I had dismissed the young lady from my mind. Now, however, I ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... inaugurated a more scientific era. In his "Treaty of the Admirable Power of Art and Nature," he puts forth the idea that it is possible "to make flying-machines in which the man, being seated or suspended in the middle, might turn some winch or crank, which would put in motion a suit of wings made to strike the air like those of a bird." In the same treatise he sketches a flying-machine, to which that of Blanchard, who lived in the eighteenth century, bears a ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... to the regatta was M. Forcat, whose peculiar system of propelling boats I have mentioned in the account of a former voyage; and he brought up for exhibition, and for the practical trial by the winner of the canoe chase, a very narrow and crank boat, rowed by oars jointed to a short mast in front of the sitter, and thus obtaining one of the advantages possessed by canoeists, that their faces are turned to the bow, and so they ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... home to England, and the steamer Peace was built on the Thames, Grenfell watching everything being made from the crank to the funnel. She was built, launched, and tried on the Thames; then taken to pieces and packed in 800 packages, weighing 65 lbs. each, and taken to the mouth of the Congo. On the heads and shoulders of a thousand men the whole ship and the ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... singularly close observer. On the whole I think you had better reach her through her father. Do you play croquet?" He replied that he was considered something of an expert in that line. That, then, was surely the best way. John Darrow was known in the neighbourhood as a "crank" on the subject of croquet. He had spent many hundreds of dollars on his grounds. His wickets were fastened to hard pine planks, and these were then carefully buried two feet deep. The surface of the ground, he was wont to descant, must be of a particular sort ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... Mame to give me such a deal, To hand me such a bunch when I was true! You played me double and you knew it, too, Nor cared a wad of gum how I would feel. Can you not see that Murphy's handy spiel Is cheap balloon juice of a Blarney brew, A phonograph where all he has to do Is give the crank a twist and ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... dun'no'! She's an awful crank. She just loves them Injuns, they say. But I, fer one, draw the line at holdin' 'em in my lap. I don't b'lieve in mixin' folks up that way. Preach to 'em if you like, but let 'em keep ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... To crank it and leap to the driver's seat required but a moment. The big car moved smoothly forward. A turn of the steering wheel brought it around headed toward the wide gates. Barney shifted to second speed, stepped on the accelerator and ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... it does not pay to install a power mixer a hand power mixer mounted on a frame carried by two large wheels has been found at least as efficient as hand mixing; more convenient and easier on the men. The machine is turned by a crank driving a sprocket chain; it is charged at the stock piles and then hauled to the forms to be discharged. Local conditions determine the capacity of power mixer to be used. Difficulties in supplying material or in taking away the concrete ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... playing five hand organs all at once. Yes, just as true as I'm telling you, he was. He played one organ with his left paw and he played another organ with his right paw, and he played still another with his left foot and he twisted the crank of another with his right foot. And then, to finish off with, he whirled around the crank of the fifth organ with his long tail. Oh, he was a smart monkey, I ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... floating spars, but only to meet worse hardships than on sea; for the savages on the coast, aided by your gallant Englishmen, fell on us, defenceless as we were, stripped us of all we had, and drove us from the shore in an old crank of a galleon, which, if it carried us thus far, did so only by the grace of God and ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... moment I come out. Thats what I pay my money for. And if I find that the author's simply getting at me the whole time, I consider that hes obtained my money under false pretences. I'm not a morbid crank: I'm a natural man; and, as such, I dont like being got at. If a man in my employment did it, I should sack him. If a member of my club did it, I should cut him. If he went too far with it, I should bring his conduct before the committee. I might even punch his head, if it came to that. Well, who ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... noticed that a private automobile was speeding down the street from the same direction as the taxi had taken. It swung close to the curb, and was pulled up barely a yard short of the waiting cab, whose engine the driver was starting with the crank. ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... the naked trees to withstand the winter's grip. I do not know what his age was but he clearly looked older than his years. Some days in the course of our lessons he would suddenly be at a loss for some word and look vacant and ashamed. His people at home counted him a crank. He had become possessed of a theory. He believed that in each age some one dominant idea is manifested in every human society in all parts of the world; and though it may take different shapes under different ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... said seemingly wrong. I'm for A. S. just one hundred per cent and would prefer to have it as right as possible. I don't like crank letter writing and would never have written this now if it hadn't been for several of the letters in the March issue that gave me a touch of hades under the collar. S'long. Maybe I'll write again sometime when I get some more "ham ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... "All those sails, all that weight! Boxes heaped one on the top of the other—cubes to catch the air—a man sitting inert in a basket, with his hand on a lever and a crank: it's as though one tried to make a stuffed bird fly! And what becomes of the man in all that: the back push, the daring stroke? The man has got to be the backbone of the machine, with his quick balancings, his bendings, which are worth ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... I have witnessed, none has appeared to me more curious than a susceptibility of certain minds to become imbued with a violent antipathy to the theory of gravitation. The anti-gravitation crank, as he is commonly called, is a regular part of the astronomer's experience. He is, however, only one of a large and varied class who occupy themselves with what an architect might consider the drawing up of plans and specifications for a universe. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... broke in the livery-stable keeper. "I'll tell you how 'tis. Oh, it's all right, Sam! Jake knows the most of it; I told him. He can keep his mouth shut, and he don't like old crank Higgins any better'n you and me do. Jake, Sam here and Gertie had fixed it up to run off and git married to-night. He was to pretend to start for Boston this mornin'. Bought a ticket and all, so's to throw Beriah off the scent. He was to get off the train here at Denboro and I was ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a beautiful statue, or comes out strong on the question of woman's bathing dress when some sensible girl has the courage to go into the water with somewhat less than her entire walking costume; or, again, when some crank invokes the blue laws against Sunday golf or tennis; or some spinster association puts itself on record against woman's smoking: all these are merely provincial or parochial exceptions to the onward ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... quacks, political and social, all corrupt officials, all Congress, (except the Right Party,) all torpid fogies and peddlers of red tape, all humbugs of every size and shape, in fact, as will speedily reduce them to ashes. Then, by skilfully manipulating the other crank, he can produce from it strains of such mellifluous harmony that the very telegraph-poles will throng around him, as erstwhile did the trees of the forest around ORPHEUS, and tender their services for the transmission ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... on the other hand, is all inner life. He may indeed act, as I said, but he acts, so to speak, by accident; just as the Red-blood may reflect, but reflects by accident. The Mollycoddle in action is the Crank: it is he who accomplishes reforms; who abolished slavery, for example, and revolutionised prisons and lunatic asylums. Still, primarily, the Mollycoddle is a critic, not a man of action. He challenges all standards and all facts. If an institution ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... as if turned by one crank, and sitting there they looked out into the moonlight where the shining figure flashed to and fro, now so near they could see the smiling face under the crown, now so far away that it glittered like a fire-fly among the dusky green. Lita enjoyed ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... consequently without the incumbrances of condenser and air-pump, occupied much less room than one of ours in a ship of the same tonnage. Every stationary part of the machinery was of polished steel, or bronze, with elaborate castings; a crank indicator and a clock faced each other, and the whole was lighted by two large coloured lamps. These windows were a favourite lounge of the curious and scientific. The carpet was of rich velvet pile, in groups of brilliant flowers, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... right! To grind out a song of cheer I set to the crank my ancient muse. Will somebody kiss that bride for me? I fling with my blessing, both ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... to himself, "what manner of crank is he who would bury himself like this? Of all the crazy ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... that as it may, there is no doubt that I soon wearied and came ashore again, and that it gives me more pleasure to recall the man himself and his simple, happy conversation, so full of gusto and sympathy, than anything possibly connected with his crank, insecure embarkation. In order to avoid seeing him, for I was not a little ashamed of myself for having failed to enjoy this treat sufficiently, I determined to continue up the river, and, at all prices, to find some other way back into ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his ditty-bag, which was hung across his chest under his shirt. "I am nearer to it now than I have been before, and you had better talk to those who have made fun of me all these years. 'Oh, Elam's a crank; let him alone, and when he gets tired looking for the nugget he'll come to his senses and go to herding cattle.' That's what the folks around here have had to say about me ever since I can remember; but I'll get the start of all of them, ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... striking fact that the great mass of Chinese critical scholarship is entirely adverse to the claims put forward on behalf of the treatise,—a man who believes in it as the genuine work of Lao Tzu being generally regarded among educated Chinese as an amiable crank, much as many people now regard any one who credits the plays of Shakespeare to Lord Bacon,—and I think we may safely dismiss the question without ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... 5 minutes, then turn crank slowly until mixture is stiff. When frozen drain off ice water and repack, using four parts ice ...
— For Luncheon and Supper Guests • Alice Bradley
... simply a Gunther rule thirty feet in length wrapped on a cylinder and turned by a crank. Gunther's rule is a measure on which logarithms are represented by spaces, so that by adding and subtracting spaces on this cylinder Mr. Wright could perform the longest sums in multiplication and division in two ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... old man's not fittin' to be runnin' a court any longer," he stated bitterly. "He's too old and peevish—that's what ails him! For one, I'm certainly not never goin' to vote fur him again. Why, it's gettin' to be ez much ez a man's life is worth to stop that there spiteful old crank in the street and put a civil question to him—that's whut's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a hand-organ. An armless beggar was turning the crank of an organ with his bare feet. The plateau was fairly alive with beggars, hopping about in the dust like fleas. Some were armless; others legless. They swung along at our heels on long, muscular arms, with leather on the palms of their ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... save so much time and effort that they should be found in every kitchen. Among them is the rotary egg beater shown in Fig. 1 (a). This is so made that one revolution of the wheel to which the crank is attached does about five times as much work as can be done with a fork or with an egg whip, which is shown in (b). Another inexpensive device that is a real help is the potato ricer. This ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... "Don't crank up till we're ready!" Lite expostulated. "These cayuses of ours are pretty sensible, and they'll stand for a whole lot; but there's a limit. Wait till I get the ropes fixed, before you start the engine. And the rest of you ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... slipping and slithering along the propeller shaft, brought the leaders to the edge of a wider space. Sievers struck a match, and a well-like, vertical opening was revealed. High overhead towered and threatened an enormous steel crank. Before their feet lay a deep pool of ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... places on my astral rounds I'm strong upon tabooing, On anti-alcoholic grounds Grogport and Rum eschewing; But no such painful stigma robs Proud Potto of its lustre, Or rules out Crank and Smeeth and Stobs, A ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... shot a quick look at him. "She's a crank," was the reply. "So are we all cranks, for that matter. But Heaven save me from the crank that won't wash the dishes that he eats off of, and that's what this crowd of ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... drive; get out, crank, get in again, and roll away in fancy, earnestly practising by the hour in ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... her teeth, bash in her ribs, and jump on her head to his heart's content. She will never dare prosecute him, and, if she does, some Humanitarian Society will be sure to see that he is not legally punished. He thus finds safe scope for the indulgence of his crank, and when there is nothing left of his own wife, he turns his unattractive and pusillanimous attentions to ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... my being asked to be President, because I should certainly feel compelled to decline it. I never go, willingly, to London now, and should never attend meetings, so pray say no more about it. Besides, I am so widely known as a "crank" and a "faddist" that my being President would injure the Society, as much as Lord Rayleigh would benefit it, so pray do not put any obstacle in his way, though of course there is no necessity to beg him as a favour to be the successor of ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... imprecations. The clank and roar of machinery. The repeated bellowing of a great liner, blowing off steam as she took up her berth in the outer harbour. The shattering rattle of the chains of a steam crane, when the monster iron-arm swung round seeking or depositing its burden and the crank ran out in harsh anger, as it seemed, and defiance. And through all this, as under-current, the confused clamour of the ever-shifting, ever-present crowd, and the small, steady drip of the rain. Squalid, sordid, brutal even, the coarse actualities of her trade and her poverty alike ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... year Good protections against temptations; but the surest is cowardice Goody-goody puerilities and dreary moralities Habit of assimilating incredibilities Human pride is not worth while Hunger is the handmaid of genius If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank Inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances It is easier to stay out than get out Man is the only animal that blushes—or needs to Meddling philanthropists Melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense Most satisfactory ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... the most thorough books on vivisection yet published is by Dr. Albert Leffingwell, entitled 'An Ethical Problem.' It is not the book of an extremist or a crank. Dr. Leffingwell admits the necessity of vivisection in certain circumstances and for certain purposes. His endeavour is not so much to get rid of vivisection as to prove that the problem connected with ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... ran four sides, seventy-six speeders on a side, her work being regulated by a crank that marked the vibrations. To the lay mind the terms of the speeding-room can mean nothing. This girl made from $1.30 to $1.50 a day. She controlled in all 704 speeders; these she had to replenish and keep running, and to clean all the machinery ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... behind a slight crest, about one hundred and fifty yards N. E. of "In den Kraatenberg Cabaret" and immediately adjacent to a disused communication trench called "Plum Avenue." Now I had been a crank on long range, indirect fire in England, so I had no difficulty in persuading our M. G. officer to turn this job over to me. We improved the position and also established another one, about one hundred yards down the trench for daylight ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... the woman. "My husband, he was a crank for buyin' fine cattle. I used to tell him he was wastin' his money, but he would do it. Same ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart
... had to heave-to at sunset to enable her to keep company; still, the captain continued to declare that the point of sailing on which they happened to be, was the only point in which the Vrow Katerina was deficient. Unfortunately, the vessel had other points quite as bad as her sailing; she was crank, leaky, and did not answer the helm well, but Mynheer Barentz was not to be convinced. He adored his ship and like all men desperately in love he could see no fault in his mistress. But others were not so blind, and the admiral, finding the voyage so much ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... to a long cast-iron crosshead, from which two bent connecting rods extend downward, the one to a crank, and the other to a crank-pin inserted in the flywheel. The connecting-rods now on this engine were supplied by Mr. Webb, the original ones—which they have been made to resemble as closely as possible—having been broken up. In the Crewe engine as it now ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... genius—laugh at him, pity his family—till you learn how the outside world respects him. Then—hurrah! Strike up the band, boys! When I think how that old party has been quietly studying typhoid fever and water supply all these years, with you bunch of hayseeds looking down on him as a crank—I get so blamed sore at the place that I wish I'd chucked your letter into the waste-basket when ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... MACHINE.—The direction in which improvements have been slow is in the starting of the machine. The power is usually so mounted that the pilot has no control over the starting, as he is not in a position to crank it. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... sowing clover seed have been adopted. Sometimes it is sown by hand. In other instances a sower is used which is strapped to the shoulder and turned with a crank. Sometimes the seed is sown by a distributor, which is wheeled over the ground on a frame resembling that of a wheelbarrow. Again, it is sown with a seeder attachment to the ordinary grain drill or to the broadcast seeder, and ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... balancing the boathook, "I'm sorry to stand here making a noise like a crank, but have you any idea at all what orders mean on shipboard? And I'm under the strictest orders not to let ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... riddle, of heavy wire, and afterward be received in a settling vat, of suitable size and construction, to drain off the water and let the clay dry out sufficiently by subsequent evaporation. A machine of this construction may be made of such a size that it may be put in motion by hand, by means of a crank, and yet be capable of mixing, if properly supplied, clay enough to mold 800 or 1000 pieces of ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... in it, not even in the singing-class. Would not have 'Here's a health to King Charles' inside the door. Narrowing, that; as many of the finest classics speak of wine freely. Eastman is useful, but a crank. Now take 'Lochinvar.' We are to have it on strawberry night; but say! Eastman kicked about it. Told the kid to speak something else. Kid ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... diver breathes from his lungs, into the water," Mr. Lacelle replied. "This machine in the case," pointing to a high black-walnut case, "is a three-cylinder air-pump; two men in the vessel, or on the shore, keep the pumps constantly in motion by means of the crank attached to the wheel." ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... satisfactory for speed, strength, and durability are steel-bar carpenter clamps, Fig. 176. They vary in length from 1-1/2 ft. to 8 ft. The separate parts are the steel bar A, the cast-iron frame B, the tip C into which fits the screw D, on the other end of which is the crank E, and the slide F with its dog G, which engages in the notches on the bar. Any part, if broken, can ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... profession. When further told that they have to help themselves by living so that they will not put any obstacles in the way of normal functioning of their bodies, they think that the physician who thinks and talks that way must be a crank, and many seek help where they are told that they can obtain health from pills, powders and potions or from various ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... miniature; That with a hand more swift and sure The greater labor might be brought To answer to his inward thought. And as he labored, his mind ran o'er The various ships that were built of yore, And above them all, and strangest of all Towered the Great Harry, crank and tall, Whose picture was hanging on the wall, With bows and stern raised high in air, And balconies hanging here and there, And signal lanterns and flags afloat, And eight round towers, like those that frown From some old castle, looking down Upon the drawbridge ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... KELLY: (To 'phone.) Some crank tried to shoot him up. Mr. Fallon fired back and killed him. (Pause.) No! Mr. Fallon killed him! (Pause.) Of course, in self-defense, you fool, of course, in self-defense! (KELLY slams back the receiver, and rising quickly, turns to the right and stands ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... we lingered yet a little over that famous breakfast, then rose, and prepared to follow the mechanical old ape. Boy hugged Bessy fondly by way of good-by, and, leaving Beebe on guard, we went forth. The same long, narrow, tall, and very crank boat received us. The sun was hot enough to daunt a sepoy; down the bare backs of the oarsmen flowed miniature Meinams of sweat, as they tugged, grunting, against the strong current. We landed at the familiar (king's) pavilion, the front of which projects into the river by a low portico. The roof, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... for substitution in case the necessity for repairs might arise. The whole vehicle can be dismounted and reassembled in a few hours; so that unfordable streams or impossible bits of country can be crossed piecemeal. Its enormous wheels are set wide apart. The brake is worked by a crank at the rear, like a reversal of the starting mechanism of a motor car. Bolted to the frame on either side between the front and rear wheels are capacious cupboards, and two stout water kegs swing to and fro when the craft is under way. The ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... the party lost no time in re-embarking, and soon the big Ajax, given a new lease on life by reason of a sharp turn of the crank in front, was again speeding ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... by means of a revolving cam. For the process of carding, additions and improvements of great ingenuity were affixed to the carding-cylinder patented by Lewis Paul in 1748, transforming it into an entirely new machine. The most important of these were the crank and comb, said to have been used by Hargreaves, but which it is now known that Hargreaves stole from Arkwright; the perpetual revolving cloth called the feeder, said to have been used by John Lees, a Quaker of Manchester, in 1778, but which Arkwright had undoubtedly used ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... will you?" said Mat quietly to some of his neighbors. "I want to stop those flying women and the man in the crank ship from coming ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... was the only son of Dr. Nancarrow, a man much respected in St. Ia, but whom Admiral Tresize regarded as a crank. For Dr. Nancarrow was a Quaker, and although he did not parade his faith, it was well known that he held fast by those principles for which the Society of Friends is known. For one thing, he hated war. To him it was utterly opposed ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... made it knew his business; therefore he is a student of this type of explosives; therefore a police agent, a—what you call—crank like myself, or a destroying criminal—that is, an anarchist. Therefore he is the last named, since neither of the others would want to blow up a gentleman's yacht. It seems clear to you?" he asked, without raising his eyes; but none ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... "Our crank cuffins had for some time looked upon me with suspicion and coldness: my superior privileges and comforts they had at first forgiven, on account of my birth and my generosity to them; but by degrees they lost respect for the one and gratitude for the other; and as I had in a great measure ceased ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I tell ye, Moses Pennel," said Miss Roxy, who, with her press-board and big flat-iron, was making her autumn sojourn in the brown house, "I tell ye Latin ain't just what you think 'tis, steppin' round so crank; you must remember what the king of Israel said to ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... idea of a Space Platform, for instance, from the moment it was first proposed. Every dictator protested bitterly. Even politicians out of office found it a subject for rabble-rousing harangues. The nationalistic political parties, the peddlers of hate, the entrepreneurs of discord—every crank in the world had something to say against the Platform from the first. When they did not roundly denounce it as impious, they raved that it was a scheme by which the United States would put itself in position to rule all the Earth. As a matter of fact, the United ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... revolving axle, called a crank. This contrivance does not differ in principle from the common winch, or from the key which winds a clock. The motion of the piston-rod backwards and forwards turns such a winch. At each termination of the stroke, the piston, from the peculiar position of the crank, loses all power over it. To remedy this two cylinders and pistons are generally used, which act upon two cranks placed on the axle at right angles to each other; so that at the moment when one of the pistons is at the extremity of its stroke, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... ordinary stage-coach on four wheels. The engine had one horizontal cylinder, which, together with the boiler and the furnace-box, was placed in the rear of the hind axle. The motion of the piston was transmitted to a separate crank-axle, from which, through the medium of spur-gear, the axle of the driving-wheel (which was mounted with a fly-wheel) derived its motion. The steam-cocks and the force-pump, as also the bellows used for the purpose of quickening combustion in the furnace, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... vanadium steel frame with spruce planking, and was capable of carrying a load of a thousand pounds at thirty miles an hour over even the softest snow, as its cylindrical supports did not sink into the snow as ordinary wheels would have done. The motor was a forty-horse power automobile machine with a crank-case enclosed in an outer case in which a vacuum had been created—on the principle of the bottles which keep liquids cold or warm. In this instance the vacuum served to keep the oil in the crank-case, which was poured in warm, at an even temperature. The gasolene tank, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... imagine that, if Christians seriously believe that illness is sent by God to achieve certain salutary modifications of character, they ought strenuously to oppose the modern determination to reduce disease to a minimum. They do not, and would, on the contrary, soon reduce to silence any religious crank who proposed it. They know perfectly well that the cases of "spiritual advantage" from illness bear no proportion whatever to the amount of suffering in the world. Slight but painful illnesses rarely have ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... stand it no longer. He was fuming at the great window overlooking the street, and now burst impetuously into speech. "No power on earth, you absurd lunatic? do you mean that because this State has a crank like you temporarily at the top there's nothing beyond or behind it to save us from pillage and murder and anarchy? Listen to that, you foreign-born fraud!" and far up the street the morning air was ringing with shouts ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... was re-formed. Louis pushed the bicycle on its front wheel, and Rachel tried to help him to support the weight of the suspended part. He had attempted in vain to take the pedal off the crank. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... through valves, the latter closing when the piston had reached the top of its stroke. A partial vacuum was formed, and the atmospheric pressure did work on the piston on its down stroke. A number of cylinders were required in this engine, three being shown in the specification all connected to the same crank-shaft. According to the Mechanic's Magazine, such an engine with a complete gas generating plant was fitted to a boat which ran as an experiment ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... of patient observations, he finally decided to appear before medical bodies to tell them modestly of some facts which always recurred in his dream and his patients' dreams, he was first laughed at and then avoided as a crank. ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... I suppose, out here. Well, you can raise some kind of a light to trot round by, can't you? I'm a crank on ancient houses and furniture. Wish you had some old mahogany—that's what you ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... think only to enforce its teachings. From that moment he is a moral machine. The chief engineer resides at Rome, and he gives his orders through certain assistant engineers until the one is reached who turns the crank, and the machine has nothing to do one way or the other. This machine is paid for giving up his liberty by having machines under him who have also given up theirs. While somebody else turns his crank, he has the pleasure ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... down, and into the street, and around the block, and, lo! Signor Raffaello was the fond magician. He was turning the crank of his heavy organ, and Don Whiskerando, feathered cap in hand, was climbing the balcony of the drawing-room windows, and Signor Raffaello was raising his eyes towards the upper windows to see if haply some child or nurse attended. Eugenio dropped more than a penny into ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... there he did not deign to state; but I had a dim idea that when you went to call on a motor-car in its den, you spent hours on your back bolting nuts, or accelerating silencers, or putting the crank head (and incidentally your own) into an oil bath; and I supposed that Terry had been doing these things. When he returned on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, spending several hours on each occasion, I went on supposing the same; ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... "when he goes to the palace with that box and asks for a permit, they'll think he is either a dynamiter or a crank, and before they are through with him his interest in photography will have ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... common run of yellow dogs and damfools among them is like opening oysters with the hope of finding pearls. It's the common man we want and the uncommon common man when we can find him—never the crank. This ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick |
