"Crank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... snappy friend had had time enough to transact all the affairs of the Nation I made another attempt but I listened once more, rather than butt in again, listened and heard, 'Just the sweetest shade of green, you know—' Trials of Job, I was getting out of patience, to put it mildly. I gave the crank a vicious turn but the same party was still talking, she said sweetly, 'I guess someone wants the line.' I assured her I did, it was a case of life and death. 'Someone dead, oh dear, is it any ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... who discovers a surgical appliance is forced by the ethics of his profession 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 ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... resolution was passed: "Resolved that the introduction of spinning-jennies, as is practiced in England, into private families is strongly recommended, since one person can manage by hand the operation of a crank ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... has closed the doors of every machine shop, cotton mill, and similar factories to all persons of color. Again, almost every class of labor which once was done by hand is now being turned off by the crank of invention. The old-fashioned washboard has been turned into a steam laundry and the old spinning wheel has given place to the American cotton mills. The same is true along all lines of common labor. The Negro, however, either by contact or in the schools of theory, has learned ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... They lighted two lanterns. "I wish the cows would stop a minute," said Nancy. "I can't seem to think with such a racket going on." Eben turned on the spark of the engine. He had done it before, but it seemed different to do it when his father wasn't standing near. Then he took the crank. "I hope she doesn't kick tonight," he wished fervently. He planted his feet firmly and grasped the handle! Round he swung it, around and around. Only the bellowing of the cows answered. He began again. Round he swung the handle; around and around. "Chug, ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... 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 ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... major-general commandant and a group of officers from headquarters took up posts on the turf of the parkway beside the curb. A sergeant of marines, in khaki, came running across the parade-ground, set up a motion-picture camera, and began to crank. Another sergeant was snapping "stills" as the column came to a halt and faced about toward the group ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... 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!" ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... adjourned he lingered with Dr. Hargrave. "We must not let ourselves be carried away by our young friend's suspicions," said he to his old friend. "Scarborough is a fine fellow. But he lacks your experience and my knowledge of practical business. And he has been made something of a crank by combating the opposition his extreme views have ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... shoulders disdainfully. "That's all right enough, I reckon. There's a hundred thousand dollars in the syndicate. Maw put in twenty thousand, and Custer's bound to make it go—particularly as there's some talk of a compromise. But Malcolm's a crank, and I reckon if it wasn't for the compromise the syndicate wouldn't have much show. Why, he didn't even know that ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... The man with the camera began turning a crank on one side, and a low whirring noise blended softly with the roar of the rushing water. Hiram saw dripping men and women dancing about like maniacs ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... 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, and loses its power upon one crank, the other piston ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... 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 get back ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... boys called to him. He was a genial soul, not in the least like the evil-tempered crank who had held ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... extracting the fibre failed on account of our having no proper machine to bruise the stems. We extemporized a two-roller mill; but as it had no cog-gearing to cause both rollers to turn together, the only one on which the handle or crank was fixed turned, with, the result of grinding the stems to pulp instead ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... 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 ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... is the same as an increase of the excise on whisky—the people get a meaner grade of goods at a higher price. If an ordinary man cooked up such a scheme as that for the benefit of the people, I'd feel justified in calling him a "crank," and I cannot conceive how a man like Dr. Slavin can tack his signature to such tommy-rot. Before we can make the Single Tax "a go" we've got to have government ownership of telegraphs, railways, pipe-lines, etc., etc., and use the taxing power to regulate ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... himself, and now believed he had to do with a crank or some person under the influence of liquor, again barred the way. Trying to push the unwelcome visitor out, ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... days patents could be very easily blocked, as Watt experienced with his improved crank motion. He proceeded therefore in great secrecy to erect the first large engine under his patent, after he had successfully made a very small one for trial. An outhouse near one of Dr. Roebuck's pits was selected as ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... ARE RUNG. The old-fashioned telephones, still often used in the country, have little cranks that you turn to ring for central. The crank turns a coil of wire between the poles of the magnet and generates the electricity for ringing the bell. These little dynamos, like those in ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... A crank boat needs ballast; and of happy fortune is it for a disposition towards natural levity, when educational gravity has helped to steady it. Upon the vivacious, let the reflective supervene: to the gay, suffer in its season the addition of the serious. Amongst ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... such earnestness and success, that in a few months Mrs. Greene had the satisfaction of being able to invite a gathering of gentlemen from different parts of the State to behold with their own eyes the working of the newly invented cotton-gin, with which a negro man turning a crank could clean fifty pounds ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... seemed to be a wheel. The sun and the stars came up and went down over the monotonous sea of grass with frightful regularity, and she could not tell whether there was a God or not. When she thought of God at all, it was as a relentless giant turning the crank that kept the sky going round. The universe was an awful machine. The prayers her mother taught her in infancy died upon her lips, and instead of praying to God she cried out to her mother. Un-protestant as the sentiment is, I can not forbear saying that this talking to the dead is one ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... truth to say that I cannot recall the time when I was not passionately opposed to slavery, a crank on the subject of personal liberty, if I ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Miss Merton," whispered Muriel, comfortingly. "She is the worst crank I ever saw. No one likes her. I don't believe even Miss Archer does. She's been here for ages, so the Board of Education thinks that Sanford High can't run without her, ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... 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 of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... he loves, of course! My neighbor's a sort of crank and insisted on expressing himself in this way. Come, I want you to see ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... this crank?" said Spieghalter to Raphael, pointing to the new press. "Seven turns to it, and a solid steel bar would break ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... Holbrooke, and Beethoven did not loom nearly so large before the eyes of the people as these composers do: the names of Salieri, Marschner, Meyerbeer, Spontini, Spohr and Weber would be much more familiar than his; even in Vienna he was regarded mainly as a deaf, surly old crank who had the support of highly placed personages. So there is the amazing fact: Wagner, who worshipped Weber's operas, had not, when fourteen years old, heard of the existence of a musician a thousand times mightier than Weber. The great ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... "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" ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... protecting the crankshaft took full advantage of this fact. It consisted of having the counterweights flexibly mounted instead of being rigidly bolted, as was common practice. The counterweights were pivoted on the crank cheeks. Powerful compression springs absorbed the maximum impulses by permitting the counterweights to lag slightly, yet forced them to travel precisely with the crank cheeks at all ...
— The First Airplane Diesel Engine: Packard Model DR-980 of 1928 • Robert B. Meyer
... on the wall of this room. Keeping the long table between them, she crossed quickly and turned the little crank. Recognizing the town operator's ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... straightforward are letters of this type: "Greeting—You take the prize as an educated fool. According to reports to me by less stupid and more honest men than you, the matter is...." It is surprising how often the handwriting is pretty, coquettish, or affected, but almost half of my crank correspondence ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... with which they hold to and continually enforce a burning personal conviction. But for that tenacity and the unquestionable influence which his conviction exerted upon men, he would be a rather ridiculous figure, for he was almost every sort of crank—certainly a non-resister, and, I think, a vegetarian and teetotaller as well. But his burning conviction was the immorality of Slavery; and by this he meant something quite other than was meant by Jefferson or later by Lincoln. ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... the morning of January 3—the city of San Francisco awoke to read in one of its daily papers a curious letter, which had been received by Walter Bassett and which had evidently been written by some crank. Walter Bassett was the greatest captain of industry west of the Rockies, and was one of the small group that controlled the nation in everything but name. As such, he was the recipient of lucubrations from countless cranks; but this particular lucubration ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... smoke of the fire into the chimney, rises but about two thirds of the height of the boiler in its passage to the chimney. The boiler should have a socket or pivot in the centre of its bottom to receive the spindle of wrought iron, with a crank in it, above the brim of the boiler, the upper end of which turns on a corresponding pivot in an iron bar fixed across several feet above the boiler, with a transverse iron arm to reach from the crank for some feet over the boiler ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... 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 ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sings too) a tolerable song, and is certainly a deuced clever fellow. What a rise in the world he has made! Do you recollect what a poor sort of way he was in when you introduced him at Gentleman George's? and now he's the Captain Crank of the gang." ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... schoolteacher in English literature dismiss Thoreau (and a half hour lesson, in which time all of Walden,—its surface—was sailed over) by saying that this author (he called everyone "author" from Solomon down to Dr. Parkhurst) "was a kind of a crank who styled himself a hermit-naturalist and who idled about the woods because he didn't want to work." Some such stuff is a common conception, though not as common as it used to be. If this teacher had had more brains, it would have been a lie. The word idled ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... 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
... who adopts "any presentiment, any extravagance as most in nature," is not commonly called a Transcendentalist, but is known colloquially as a "crank." The person who does not thank, by word or look, the friend or stranger who has pulled him out of the fire or water, is fortunate if he gets off with no harder name than ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... has developed into a crank," said Mrs. Derringham. "There's something so underbred about crankiness; and the Harwich family have ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... as they pass from stage to stage of development fills the mind of every sane person with pleasure." One poultry crank insists that each hen must be so carefully studied that she can be understood and managed as an individual, and speaks of his hens having at times ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... ached when she was in a crank, as he called her moods, and he brought her salts, and undid her cloak and bonnet, and kissed her once or twice, while his father, who was hot because she was hot, said it was like an August day all over the house, and opened a window, but shut it almost immediately, for a cloud of ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... applied; but as another arrangement is just possible, this could not be called anything more than a highly probable correlation. If now he went a step further, and asked how the reciprocal movement was given to the lever, he would perhaps conclude that it was given by a crank. But if he knew anything of mechanics, he would know that it might possibly be given by an eccentric. Or again, he would know that the effect could be achieved by a cam. That is to say, he would see that there was no necessary correlation between the shears and the remoter parts of the apparatus. ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... listening while he spoke. "I 'lows you'll git free o' this rope. I mean ye to—after awhiles. Ye'll keep y'r monkey tricks till after we're clear o' here. Then ye'll do best to go dead easy. Fer that crank's comin' right along, an', I 'lows, if I was you I'd as lief lie here and rot, an' feed the gophers wi' my carcass as run up agin him. I tell ye, pard, ther's a cuss hangin' around wher' Nick Westley goes, an' I don't reckon ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... guinea per thousand. This mill, and also that adjoining, were erected by the late Mr. James Pickard, and were the first steam engines that worked by a rotatory motion, he being the person who first applied the crank to those machines, and for which invention he obtained a patent, but I do not know that he ever erected any others; for Messrs. Boulton and Watt, in order to evade the patent, substituted the sun and planet wheels, which they continued to use until ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... of 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 hands, or dragged distorted, paralyzed ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... 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 ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... procuring the vibrations in stringed instruments by means of a bow was, of course, applied to the monochord class of keyed instruments, and was thus the origin of the hurdy-gurdy, which consisted of a wheel covered with resined leather and turned by a crank. ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... thereof which 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 platform of the Socialist ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... letter from Scudder. I knew something of the man, and he did several jobs for me. He was half crank, half genius, but he was wholly honest. The trouble about him was his partiality for playing a lone hand. That made him pretty well useless in any Secret Service—a pity, for he had uncommon gifts. I think he was the bravest man in the ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... or grape-thrower, 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 ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... the "crank in," and the "kiss of the Jack," All—save, as you say, that darned bend in the back— About the old game is delightful. We thank you for "trolling the bowl" once again, Ah! it were a pleasure to play it with PAYN— (By ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... 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 you wrote ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... a thicket of raspberry bushes, and the fruit was so tempting that the boys lost a good deal of time by stopping to gather it. After a tiresome tramp under the mid-day sun they reached the lower end of Schroon Lake, where they hired a crank little row-boat, and rowed up to Schroon. There was a fresh northerly breeze which delayed them; and the spray from the bow of the boat sprinkled them, so that they were uncomfortably wet when they ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 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 drain pipe ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... 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
... lot of the farmer-boy, it is the grindstone. Turning grindstones to grind scythes is one of those heroic but unobtrusive occupations for which one gets no credit. It is a hopeless kind of task, and, however faithfully the crank is turned, it is one that brings little reputation. There is a great deal of poetry about haying—I mean for those not engaged in it. One likes to hear the whetting of the scythes on a fresh morning and the response of the noisy bobolink, who always sits upon the fence and superintends ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... I thought so. I see now why you got mad. Wonder you didn't throw that chap into the river." I am a crank on the happiness one gets from the giving of tips—and a half-penny man is ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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 that race as heartily as she ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... a maintenance case coming on—to the usual well-ventilated disgust of the local religious crank, who was on the jury; but the case differed in no essential point from other cases which were always coming on and going off in my time. It was not at all romantic. The local youth was not even ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... idea," said Harding. "Clarke's known as a crank and takes advantage of it to cover his doings. At first, I thought of the whisky trade, but taking up prohibited liquor would hardly be worth his while, though I daresay he has some with him to be used for gaining his Indian friends' ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... once smilingly told me "I was a crank about my American public." I took his little gibe in good part; for while he knew foreign audiences, he certainly did not know American ones as well as I, who have faced them from ocean to ocean, from British Columbia to Florida. ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... 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 minutes ...
— Ice Creams, Water Ices, Frozen Puddings Together with - Refreshments for all Social Affairs • Mrs. S. T. Rorer
... 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. Isn't ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... relieved when Rachel spoke. He answered quickly: "Oh, it depends on the man. A good many of them think I am a crank. I have kept my membership up and am in good standing in that way. I try to be wise and not provoke any unnecessary criticism. But you would be surprised to know how many of the men have responded ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... He said nothing; but a triumphant smile broke over his countenance. Zonela, the twilight of whose cheeks was still rosy with the setting blush, caught the lazy Furbelow by his little paws; Solon turned the crank of the organ, which wheezed out as merry a polka as its asthma would allow, and the girl and the monkey commenced their fantastic dance. They had taken but a few steps when the door suddenly opened, and the tall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... his mechanical ability. There was a firm of noted gunsmiths in Lancaster, in whose shops he made himself at home and became expert in the use of tools. At the age of fourteen he applied his ingenuity to a heavy fishing boat and equipped it with paddle-wheels, which were turned by a crank, thus greatly lightening ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... Epinal the day after tomorrow,' he said as they left the mill, 'and I'll see if I can get the new crank there.' ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... records, he appears to have been of a professedly religious character, as early as 1721. As his residence was in the neighborhood of Mr. Wheelock's early home, and but little farther removed from Lebanon "Crank," as the north parish in that town was styled, Mr. More had ample opportunities for a thorough acquaintance with the person to whom he now generously extended a helping hand. It is not known that this worthy man left any posterity, to perpetuate ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... 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
... and a coupe can be afforded. Do you suppose it is for the use of the weary breadwinner? Not at all. He walks from his home to the "elevated." The carriage is to take his wife to teas or the park. In a year or two she will go abroad, leaving him alone to turn the crank that produces the income. As it is, she always leaves him for six months each year in a half-closed house, to the tender mercies of a caretaker. Two additional words could be advantageously added to the wedding ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... Our craft was so crank that one of us could not venture to lean over on one side unless we gave notice to balance the boat by inclining on the other. Still we made very good progress, considering the ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... language of that day he was called a "proud and pestilent seducer," or, as the modern newspaper would say, a "crank." It is well to make due allowances for the prejudice so conspicuous in the accounts given by his enemies, who felt obliged to justify their harsh treatment of him. But we have also his own writings from which to form an opinion as to his character and views. Lucidity, indeed, ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... been one of those tragic men whose personalities negate the value of their work. A solitary, cantankerous, opinionated individual—a crank, in short—he withdrew from humanity to develop the hyperspace drive, announcing at periodic intervals that he was ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... is completely covered by a belt 8 inches broad, made of heavy black velvet. This velvet belt moves over two cylinders at the front and the rear ends of the apparatus. In the centre of the belt is a window 4-1/2 inches wide and 2-1/2 inches high. If the front cylinder is turned by a metal crank, the velvet belt passes over the glass plate and the little window opening moves over the card with its track and figures. The whole breadth of the card, with its central track and its 4 units on either side, ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... the day he could have been seen on the slopes of the Palace Hill, hauling these strange-looking, bat-like objects backward and forward in the wind. Reports of his experiments appeared in the Press, but Cody was generally looked upon as a "crank". The War Office, however, saw great possibilities in the kites for scouting purposes in time of war, and they paid ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... letter, marked "Private," was forwarded to me through the editor of The Day After To-morrow. The writer of it was a total stranger to me, even by report, and at first I did not know what to make of it. Was the man a charlatan, or a "crank?" There were no signs of craziness or humbug in his frank and simple sentences. Had he really found out a way of crossing the celestial spaces? In these days it is better not to be too sceptical as to what science will accomplish. It is, in fact, wise to keep the mind ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... people made fun of him. They thought he was a crank, if not downright crazy and said that his father was very foolish indeed to encourage him in wasting so much time and money in a way that every person with common sense could see ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... once in forty years; but to look for an exception to the 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
... 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, cultivate, harvest—all from the front porch. And where the farmer ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... time we 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 ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... man of one idea, and that a false one. He was a gigantic crank,—an arch-Jesuit, indifferent to means so long as he could bring about his end; and he became not merely a casuist, but a dictatorial and arrogant politician. He defied that patriotic burst of public opinion which had compelled ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... could play havoc with the British schooners, at a distance which would render the carronades of the latter useless. But the latter were built for war, possessed quarters and were good cruisers, while Chauncy's schooners were merchant vessels, without quarters, crank, and so loaded down with heavy metal that whenever it blew at all hard they could with difficulty be kept from upsetting, and ceased to be capable even of defending themselves. When Sir James Yeo captured two of them he would not let them cruise with his other vessels at all, but sent them back ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... but peak and dwindle The clank of chain and crane, The whirr of crank and spindle Bewilder heart and brain; The ends of our endeavor Are wealth and fame, Yet in the still Forever We're one ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... instruments. De Gay collects venomous insects from all over the world; no harmless ones need apply. Terriberry has a mania for old railroad tickets. Some are really very curious. I've often wished I had the time to be a crank. It's a happy life." ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... all their work to make it intelligible—a labour which was the more distasteful as it was forced upon them by one who, although expert enough in experimentation, was not a mathematician, and who boasted that the most complicated mathematical work he ever did was to turn the crank of a calculating machine; who did all his work, formed his conclusions, and then said—"The work is done; hand it over to ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... 's 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 ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... author of the alleged protocols, though obviously it would make all the difference in the world whether these are summaries of statements made by a responsible leader of the Jewish people or the wild vaporings of such a crank as infests practically every conference and convention. We do not know who translated the alleged protocols, nor in what language they were written. Moreover, not one word of assurance does Professor Nilus give on his own account that he knows any of these things. He does not appear ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... How would he know the man? How could he be certain, in advance? What had he looked like? What was his name? How had he acted, before he spoke? Would he be an ordinary person, or some strange outlandish crank? ...
— The Skull • Philip K. Dick
... remonstrated against the influence of this second nature, both savage and civilized, on the moral being vegetating in those dreadful pens called bureaus, where the sun seldom penetrates, where thoughts are tied down to occupations like that of horses who turn a crank and who, poor beasts, yawn distressingly and die quickly. Rabourdin was, therefore, fully justified in seeking to reform their present condition, by lessening their numbers and giving to each a larger salary and far heavier work. Men are neither wearied nor bored ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... birth to that. 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
... chance had he for music that's developed by a crank, No chance had he at sculpture, nor a penny in the bank. The pea-nut trade was languid, and for him too full of risk; He thought the work on railways for his blood was rather brisk. The sole profession left him ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... rotatory engines. Single acting engines are engines without a crank, such as are used for pumping water. Rotative engines are engines provided with a crank, by means of which a rotative motion is produced; and in this important class stand marine and mill engines, and all engines, indeed, in which the rectilinear motion of the ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... 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 two inches ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... of three—for Sailor was nearly as heavy as his mistress— the boat proved to be somewhat crank, and Leslie had a momentary spasm of regret that he had not tied up the dog and left him aboard the brig, instead of bringing him with them; but the water was quite smooth, and they all sat still. The passage was consequently accomplished without ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Hal that he was sorry Professor Harmon had asked that old crank to help. Laurie didn't say 'old crank,' but I say it, and I mean it," continued Jerry vindictively. "Don't breathe it to anyone, though. It was a brotherly confidence and Hal would rave if he ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... I, Crank Cuffin, do swear to be a true brother, and that I will in all things obey the commands of the great tawney prince, and keep his council, and not divulge the secrets of ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... worked in a small candy store across the street from Gluck's shop. He used to come in and drink ice-cream sodas and lemon-squashes, and stare at her. It seems the girl did not care for him, and merely played with him. He was "queer," she said; and at another time she called him a crank when describing how he sat at the counter and peered at her through his spectacles, blushing and stammering when she took notice of him, and often leaving the ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... Ludwigsburg, there had been discovered an extraordinary peasant-girl gifted with rare faculties of clairvoyance, thought-reading, ecstatic trances, prophecies, and the rest. An account of her short twenty years of vision-tortured life had been published by the doctor of her village—a crank, and supposed wizard himself. This pamphlet Wilhelmine had read, as she read all books concerning mysterious manifestations. His Highness, however, would never look at anything treating of magic or witchcraft. He honestly disapproved of such things, and feared them; though, in ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... simply let it serve incidentally as a picker-up of unconsidered trifles. A wide-awake, scholarly librarian will like his town, and delight in at least some study of its antecedents. And such a librarian need not be a crank, but must needs be an enterprising, wide-awake, appreciative student, who can scent the tastes and ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... it is!" cried Marjorie. "This is the way it works." And releasing a big wooden button, she let the whole affair slide to the ground, and, then, grasping the handle of a crank, she began to ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... 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 I say, break the law. Let your ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... unthought-of purposes." Now what are the real facts? James Watt, in 1769, patented the double-acting engine, which was the first step by which the steam-engine was made capable of being used to propel a vessel. In 1780, James Pickard patented what is no other than the present connecting rod and crank, and a fly-wheel, the second and last great improvement in the steam-engine, which enabled it to be of service in propelling vessels.[CI] In 1785, William Symington took out a patent, by which he obtained, with economy of fuel, a more perfect method of condensation of ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... a trace of rancor. "There's Mrs. Nelson—everybody knows she's a crank—and Hardie, the Methodist minister. They've been trying to make trouble for the hotels for quite ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... here inactive was not merely to invite destruction for ourselves, but was sure to bring certain failure upon the purpose of the expedition. All of us began instantly to look about in search of the proper handle, seizing every crank and wheel in sight and ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... worthless vagabonds, and nearly all the Italians accused of crime in the city are included in their number. One of these men is to be seen on the Bowery at almost any time. He seats himself on the pavement, with his legs tucked under him, and turns the crank of an instrument which seems to be a doleful compromise between a music box and an accordion. In front of this machine is a tin box for pennies, and by the side of it is a card on which is printed an appeal to the charitable. At night a ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... rested on the parapet whilst the other—in the trench—was packed in a manner to give the required elevation. A cricket ball or jam tin bomb was placed in the pouch and the rubbers were then strained by means of a crank handle winding up a wire attached to the pouch with a trip hook. When the required tension was obtained one man lit the fuse and retired to cover. The other, the expert, allowing the fuse to burn for a certain time—to suit the range, pulled the string which released the trip. If all went well the ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... officers discharge their duties in a perfunctory, sleepy way. No crowd of Pressmen and sightseers is present; there are no delegates and address, and flowers, and cheers as of yore. Only cabby, who expostulates, and who doubtless thinks this Frenchman a bit of a crank to insist upon being driven just ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... that Mr. 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 ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... Dog sot right flat on de groun' en tuck off one er de behime shoes, en loant it ter Brer Rabbit. Brer Rabbit, he lope off down de road en den he come back. He tell Mr. Dog dat de shoe fit mighty nice, but wid des one un um on, hit make 'im trot crank-sided. ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris |
