"Snap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very cold, and the snow fell inches deep. But there was no more shelling on either side for the next week. Apart from sniping, which was assisted by the snow, we were left in peace to bale out the mud and repair the trenches. This cold snap caused a lot of sickness, and it was not improved by our having to hold these trenches for over a week—a long time under such wintry conditions. At last, on March 9, we were relieved and moved back to some dugouts near Bedford House. Here we stayed for some ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... of civilization the privileged classes take as a matter of course. What a remarkable thing it was, when one came to think of it, that a door should swing true upon its hinges, and fit exactly into its frame, and latch with a precise and soul-satisfying snap! And that windows should slide up and down in their frames, and stop at ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... calm pervading her amid the strident activities going forward on every hand. The ship's dog, a curly-haired black retriever, lay on the clean deck in the sunshine stretched on his side, all four legs limp, save when, pestered beyond endurance, he whisked into a sitting position to snap at the all too ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... and batter its own face and body; if by the hind-leg, the clog comes trailing along and must needs impede the action of every limb. Sometimes, too, as it is whirled along it will come in contact with the forked branches of some tree, and then unless the animal can snap the rope in twain, she is fairly caught; there ends the chase. But even so, if caught in this way or overdone with fatigue, it were well not to come too close the quarry, should it chance to be a stag, or he will lunge out with his antlers and his feet; better therefore let fly your javelins ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... expression at the spot where Anisya Fedorovna had just stood. Something seemed to be laughing a little on one side of his face under his gray mustaches, especially as the song grew brisker and the time quicker and when, here and there, as he ran his fingers over the strings, something seemed to snap. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... scarce to know these insults were for him; But never swerved his gaze from Jochanan. Then, in God's language, sealed from these dumb brutes, Swiftly and low he spake: "Be of good cheer, Reverend old man. I deign not treat with these. If one dare offer bodily hurt to thee, By the ineffable Name! I snap my chains Like gossamer, and in his blood, to the hilt, Bathe the prompt knife hid in my girdle's folds. The Duke shall hear me. Patience. Trust in me." Somewhat the authoritative voice abashed, Even ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... by observing the odd and mixed collection of things the poor people brought with them, some of the more bulky articles of which were not admitted on board. The Jew harpies were on the quays ready to snap them up, giving little or nothing in return. I thought that it was a great pity that there were no means to enable these poor people to obtain better information before they left home, to have saved them the expense of dragging so much useless lumber about with them. ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... I follow you up to your attic, and watch you and see you go to sleep, you need not blush or giggle or snap. I would not do you any harm; your eyes would plague me. And besides, I do not entirely fancy you. You are not fresh. You are boxed up too much. But I trust that some lusty careless fellow, regardless of consequences, looking not too far ahead, and following the will of his race—I ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... came the conviction that the baby had been laughing at them for their terror of Mrs. Kant. He was curled up on a chair by the fire, looking at them with his wide eyes over his shoulder, and he seemed to say, "I don't care a snap for the woman—why should you?" The blue ball was on the floor at the foot of the chair, and the firelight leapt upon the frieze that Peter had so carefully chosen—giants and castles, dwarfs and princesses running round the room in ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... like a particularly wakeful one," she returned, mischievously. "I am glad you are not ill. I feared you were when I heard you snap on the light." ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... on his dress suit," said Shem, "and snap the whip when Marjorie rides around the ring. You know just the way they do ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... liberty and that of his companion. It is needless to say that the sole motive of my interference in this matter is to obtain these details. Now, from long experience I know all the trickery and treachery of the Italian nature. Once free, this man might snap his fingers in my face and refuse to speak. After the formalities of the law have been duly complied with, I wish the prisoners remanded to their cells and informed that their liberation will take place only when Peppino has given me the ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... to the taste! how it bites back again! and is there any other sound like the snap and crackle with which it salutes the ear on being plucked from the stems? It is a threat to one sense that the other is soon to verify. It snaps to the ear as it smacks to the tongue. All other berries are ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... A sharp loud snap, and the top of the tree came down, the big leafage hiding Ned; but he was standing up close to the broken-off tree, which was now like a thick pole, and rubbing himself hard, with the sailors about him, when the lookers-on ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... saddle-bow, Two aged pistols he did stow, Among the surplus of such meat As in his hose he cou'd not get. These wou'd inveigle rats with th' scent, 395 To forage when the cocks were bent; And sometimes catch 'em with a snap As cleverly as th' ablest trap. They were upon hard duty still, And ev'ry night stood centinel, 400 To guard the magazine i' th' hose From two-legg'd and from ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Brooks is. She's a far better model of married life for me to contemplate just this moment than you, dear Judy. I think that such a spectacle as you and Jervis is a menace to society. You look so happy and peaceful and companionable that you induce a defenseless onlooker to rush off and snap up the first man she meets—and ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... idyllic," the girl forced herself to say lightly, but her teeth met with a snap, and her fingers gripped the rough surface of the stones, for she remembered how Trenholme had said of her that she "reveled in the sunlight, in the golden air, in the scents of trees ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... round the village you might have some one in who'd murder you. People have been murdered before now for less than this. I shall speak to the vicar about it." And she put it in her purse, shut it with a snap, and took ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... him; he knew this as well as another and cared not the snap of his big, blunt fingers. There was remarkably little of the sentimental about Blenham. He was a capable lieutenant for such as the master of the Packard millions, he earned and received his increase in wages ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... hand on his sword. 'Bah!' he say, coming forward—'bah! I will speak for madame. I will speak. I have been silent long enough.' He come between the two, and, raising his sword, he strike the time-piece and smash it. 'Ha! ha!' he say, wild with drink, 'I have you both here alone.' He snap his fingers under the Intendant's nose. 'It is time I protect my wife's name from you, and by God, I will do it!' At that M'sieu' Doltaire laugh, and Cournal turn to him, and say, 'Batard!' The Intendant have out his sword, and he roar in a hoarse voice, 'Dog, you shall die!' But M'sieu' ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rooms of the bungalow for sake of the fire insurance and as a precaution against thieves, and to keep the lawn watered and clipped and the dust off the furniture. They admitted that they had a snap, for they were seldom disturbed in their leisurely caretaking routine save in the winter. Even Mary V always tired of the place after a month or two in it, and would pack her trunk and "hit the ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... impatiently. "Probably they'd cut me, and all that sort of thing. I understand their point of view, exactly, but I'm not here to play the social game, and I shall talk to whom it pleases me. Do you or Gordon MacRae honestly believe I care a snap ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... o' theirs," said Harry, "so long as they get their own work done? There's scarce one on 'em as hasn't more land already nor he can keep as should be, and for all that they want to snap up every bit as falls vacant, so as no ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... a sharp snap and the knife that Jackson held went flying through the air. Captain Jack's powerful fingers had broken the man's wrist. At the same moment Captain Jack drove his right fist into Jackson's face. Then he got to his feet and faced ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... at heart, Grant went out into the sunshine. He was snap-shotted a dozen times by press photographers. One man, backing impudently in front of him in order to secure a sharp focus, tripped over the raised edge of a cartway into a yard, and sat ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... worst comes to the worst, he can only lead them to the hut; and they won't find much worth taking, there. When we once get out to the blacks, we can snap ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... came, roaring away like a young porpoise, and heaving the foam right over our mast-heads. I knew what would happen, and so it did. Just as easily as the big shark in Port Royal harbour would swallow a nigger boy, she made a snap at the ship and bolted us all, masts and spars and hull, and I felt as how we was all a-being crunched up in her jaws. I woke with a start, which made me almost jump clean out of my hammock, all over in a cold sweat, and right glad I ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... paddock from here, if you follow the belt of the sheoak trees over there. It's a house just like those things in Gabblebabble township. There's a yellow sheep dog, who's very good tempered, and a black one that made a snap at my tail the other day. There is an old grey cart horse, an honest fellow, but rather dull; and a bay mare who is much better company. There is a little red cow who is a great friend of mine, ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... his eyes, and caught a fleeting glimpse of a white flag waving arrogantly on the edge of a wall of rock nearly a mile above his head. Then his eyes closed with a snap, and his face wrinkled spasmodically. Gus threw him the towel, and uncommiseratingly watched him wipe out the offending soap. He felt too blue himself to take stock ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... feet, and often changed a hostile Reichstag or Diet into an assembly of men eager to do his bidding, but that it was his firm grasp on the realities of life and his supreme command of everything which makes for true statesmanship. His policies were not based on snap judgments, they were the result of serious thought. All this showed in his speeches, and made him one of the most powerfully effective speakers ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... "you could photograph the clouds, Pete. Suppose you took a snap-shot of the sky every day, at the same time, for a year, it would make a ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... to this greatness of mind; so that, becoming the slave of her own feelings, she is easily subjugated by those of others. Thus degraded, her reason, her misty reason! is employed rather to burnish than to snap her chains. ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... a wild boar, should charge upon the dog, as it stood about fifteen paces off, and strike him in the side with its head; the dog, leaping dexterously entirely over the badger, awaited a second and third attack, and then made his antagonist chase him all round the garden. If the badger managed to snap the dog's hindquarters, an angry tussle ensued, but never resulted in a real fight. If Caspar, the badger, lost his temper, he drew off without turning round, and got up snorting and shaking and with bristling hair, and strutted about like an inflated turkey-cock. ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... truly, to do what thee thinks of, in open day, is a thing not to be thought on by men that have soft places in their bosoms. Nevertheless, I think, according to thee own opinion, we being strong men that have the wind of the villains, and a good cause to help us, truly, we might snap the poor man they have captivated out of their hands, with considerable much damage to them besides, the murdering rapscallions!—But, friend," he added, seeing Roland give way to his eagerness,—"thee spoke of the ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... closed with a snap, but Tredgold and Chalk made no move. Glued to their seats, they stared blankly at the door, until the rigidity of their pose and the strangeness of their gaze began to affect the ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... look about for something to eat, and they at once snap at a fly or bug which comes in their way. Here we have the picture of three little chickens reaching for a spider that ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... prisoners, was led to a wood and lashed by arms and legs to a couple of hickory trees that had been bent by a prodigious effort and tied together by their tops. The lashing was cut by a rifle-ball, the trees regained their straight position with a snap like whips, and that was the way Gilbert Gates came ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... have received the name tucano from the noise they make, which resembles "tok-kan" very sharply pronounced and with a snap at the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the white man's devil-water" (rum). "You are like dogs in the Hot Moon when they run mad and snap at their own shadows. We are only little herds of buffaloes left scattered; the great herds that once covered the prairies are no more. See!—the white men are like the locusts when they fly so thick that the whole sky ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... told him that a few of us would certainly be present, and thanked him kindly. When he was gone I told the boys, and they wanted to give three cheers, but I got them to keep still, and we talked all the afternoon of the soft snap we had struck, and cleaned up for the party. My intention was to pick out half a dozen of the best dressed, recruits, those that could make a pretty fair showing in society to go with me, but they all wanted to go, and there was no way to prevent it, so all but one Irishman, that ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... low, yelling like demons, and keeping up a continuous volley. They were well armed with white men's guns. Neale worked the lever of his rifle while he looked ahead for an instant to see where his horse was running; then he wheeled quickly and took a snap shot at the nearest Indian, no more than three hundred yards distant now. He saw where his bullet, going wide, struck up the dust. It was desperately hard to shoot from the back of a scared horse. Neale did not ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... scanned the switches, inserted his key into the Security lock, and turned it with a final snap, forcing a bar home through the handles of all of the switches to prevent their unauthorized operation by anyone until the official Security key should again release them. In the meantime, no function could ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... to the kangaroo-hound, who opened and closed its jaws like a steel trap, and gulped the gift with portentous solemnity, and absolutely without visible sign of any emotion whatever. The hound showed only watchfulness. Finn heard its jaws snap, and could almost hear the gulp which disposed of each morsel. The sight and the sound gave an edge to the Wolfhound's already keen appetite, and, almost unconsciously, he drew nearer and yet nearer to the gunyah, crouching low to the ground as he moved, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... eyes, and presently he was nodding. Presumably he dreamed, for once he roused himself to snap at a fly, when there was no fly. Rufe, however, was wide awake, and busily canvassing how to account to Birt for the lack of a message from Nate Griggs, for he would not confess how untrustworthy he had proved himself. As he reflected upon this perplexity, he ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... there was no danger of fire. She opened the outside door and glanced around. There was an autumnal chill in the air, but there were no mysterious shadows creeping about in the yard below that might presage burglars. Then she bolted the door with a snap, and stood a moment in the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... longed to reach it almost as much as did Ned. "Ah, mate," he exclaimed, when I told him that we had little more than one day's journey more on horseback to perform; "let us once get our craft built and afloat, and we may snap our fingers at the Cashibos, and any ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... man, "that sneak will get in ahead of you, and then a snap of your little finger for your chance of getting the job ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... not longer, to go on the way he's been going," said John M. Gibbs, with a vicious snap of ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... came just now. The rope strained as if it would snap; the bows of the nuggar were buried in foam, and the men hauling were forced to take the corporal's hint, and keep their breath for ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... immediately behind me, and turning saw a splendid stag and three does not twenty feet away. They saw us and turned, and I had scarcely caught my breath after the surprise when they were many more than twenty feet away, and there was barely time to snap my shutter on them before they, disappeared over the ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... couple of running bowlines were prepared. Higson dropped the tempting morsel, and let it sink down deep, then rapidly drew it up again. Quick as lightning the shark darted at it, and down his throat it went, his jaws closing with a snap which made Higson draw up his leg. The monster's sharp teeth, however, could not bite ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... recriminations, although he had paid us many thousands of dollars in fees and we had saved him many more in judgments. He still owed us a large sum of money, but Gottlieb had tied up his property in such a fashion that the old fellow was judgment-proof. He was thus able to snap his fingers in our faces, a fact that naturally intensified our hard feelings against him. We cherished our anger until an appropriate occasion should present itself for getting even with him, which occurred sooner than any of us, least of ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... Mameluke—was carefully examined, lest there might be some flaw or crack in the steel. The head-strap was buckled to its proper tightness, and then the reins were minutely scanned. These were of the hair of wild horses' tails closely and neatly plaited. Leather might snap, there was no fear of breaking such ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... sweat running off his face and mingling with the blood from his arm; and then the man rose up, head and shoulders against the sky, and he knew his would-be murderer was Lynch. Wunpost held his gun against the light until the sights were lined up fine, then swung back for a snap-shot at Lynch; and as the rifle belched and kicked he caught a flash of a tumbling form and clutching hands thrown up wildly against the sky. Then he stooped down and ran, helter-skelter down the wash, regardless of what might be in his way; and as he plunged ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... own house he set the shiny acorn on the table. I expect he set it down hard, for all at once, with a little snap, it opened!—exactly like ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... SAILOR. How the three pines shake! Pines are the hardest sort of tree to live when shifted to any other soil, and here there's none but the crew's cursed clay. Steady, helmsman! steady. This is the sort of weather when brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea. Our captain has his birthmark; look yonder, boys, there's another in the sky—lurid-like, ye ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... time these preparations were completed, the sharp-starred winter night had settled down upon the solitude. In all the vast there was no sound but the occasional snap, hollow and startling, of some great tree overstrung by the frost, and the intimate little whisper and hiss of Pete's fire down in the trench. Disposing a good bunch of boughs under his head, Pete lighted his pipe, rolled himself in ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the martyred Stevens these words struck panic. But as he opened his mouth to protest, the catastrophe occurred. There was a snap, and the toboggan shot downward. Bound as he was, the victim could see below him a brick wall right across the path of his descent. He was helpless to move; it was useless to cry out. For all that, as he felt in imagination the crushing shock of his head driven like a battering-ram ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... look greedily toward Transylvania!... From what I can see I'm sure these Bulgars will be first to give up the ghost, although when I talk to Kovalsky and hear the whine of these Wienfloss Kwabins I feel sure that they will be first to snap for peace!... I am writing this in a elaborately furnished dugout that has been abandoned by some German officers—I KNOW this because I found several tubes of Erbswurst tucked in one of the berths. With a little water ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... clothes. She had heard from Nazeby, that I had had on a fresh frock every day. I don't know who could have written to her. She has got to look much older in the two years we have been abroad and the corners of her mouth shut with a snap. Perhaps it is having to spend part of ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... columns were rising to a considerable height above the sea. We stood amazed, thunderstruck, at the presence of such a herd of marine monsters. They were of supernatural dimensions; the smallest of them would have crunched our raft, crew and all, at one snap ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Without the Atlantic and Pacific, right here in St. Louis? And all the work of those men they are prosecuting and fining and trying to put into jail? Why, if the President had his way, he'd lock up every man that had enough sense and snap in him to do things, and he'd make this country like a Methodist camp meeting after the shouting is over! There's no ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... or anybody—who wouldn't?" asked the Guardsman, as the cloud dispelled from his face at hope coming so quickly from this unexpected quarter. "Why, it's as good as the Bank of England. Harker take it?—-he'll snap at it. Only try him and see his greedy eyes glisten. What could Harker get by selling me up?—absolutely nothing. Besides, it would do him harm by letting others know how harshly he served me. Oh, no, Harker will not sell me up if he can find ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... had left him alone. The supreme moment had arrived. He sought to collect his faculties, but could not. It is chiefly at the moment when there is the greatest need for attaching them to the painful realities of life, that the threads of thought snap within the brain. He was in the very place where the judges deliberated and condemned. With stupid tranquillity he surveyed this peaceful and terrible apartment, where so many lives had been broken, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Frenchmen were as busy as bees. We could hear the crackle and snap of wood as they seemed to be tearing it out of the counting-house; and then it was evident what they had been doing, for a torch danced here and there, and stopped in one place and seemed to double in size, to quadruple, and at last there was a leaping flame ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... are always ready to eat," replied his Mother; "you know that they are caught by bait. This bait is a bit of a clam or a little worm, put upon a sharp hook. The fish snap at the bait, and the hook catches them in the mouth. Come, little hungry fish," added his Mother, "and I will give you something to eat; but I will not put it on a hook ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... anything our friends had ever seen. I think that a man's friends often take away the freshness from sights that otherwise might move him. I've never been to Europe but what with magazine pictures and snap shots and Mrs. Grover, who never forgot that before she married Grover she had travelled for a whole year, I haven't any special desire to visit London or Paris. I suppose it would be different if I ever went but even then I don't think there would be the ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... YANK keeps his mocking tone—holds out his hand.] Shake—de secret grip of our order. [Something, the tone of mockery, perhaps, suddenly enrages the animal. With a spring he wraps his huge arms around YANK in a murderous hug. There is a crackling snap of crushed ribs—a gasping cry, still mocking, from YANK.] Hey, I didn't say, kiss me. [The gorilla lets the crushed body slip to the floor; stands over it uncertainly, considering; then picks it up, throws it in the cage, shuts the door, ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... elegance and gentility, that Mr. Chitling, bestowing numerous admiring glances on his legs and boots till they were out of sight, assured the company that he considered his acquaintance cheap at fifteen sixpences an interview, and that he didn't value his losses the snap ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... almost, in Bideford. I should pity the person who dared pick a flaw in the story, in the hearing of a Bideford man, woman, or child. Why, I believe even a Bideford dog would understand the insult, and snap! ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... strong. Hill's plan worked out as he had expected—at least in so far as the state convention was concerned—for delegates pledged to him were chosen. Cleveland's supporters, however, denounced the "snap convention" and a factional quarrel arose between the "snappers" and the "anti-snappers"; outside of New York it was so obvious that the snap convention was a mere political trick that the Hill cause was scarcely benefited ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... and you'll have something of the same sensation as I had. Holding it thus, I could feel its head jerking this way and that, violently, and its tail, long and lithe, lashing at my wrist. The little claws were trying to tear, but they were evidently softish. I could hear, or thought I could, the snap of its little jaws. It was about the nastiest sensation that I ever experienced. I don't know why I thought that it was venomous, but I did. I tried to smash the thing in my hand—tried again and again, and I have a good grip—but might just as well have tried to crush a piece of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Holland's desk squeaked something, and he took time enough to snap, "No. I told you, Miss Mikhail, I was not to ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... hands and shortly afterward the vehicle dashed into a side street. It appeared as likely a place as any for his purpose; John Steele, hardly waiting for the man to draw rein, leaped out as far as he might. He landed without mishap, heard a whip snap furiously, and darted back into a doorway. He had just reached it when the other cab drew near; for an instant he felt certain that he had been seen; but the pursuers' eyes were bent ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... souffre douleur, with vehemence proportioned to his own annoyance. It was a fierce lecture upon general listlessness, want of manliness, spirit, and perseverance, indifference to duties he had assumed. Nonsense about feelings—a fellow was not worth the snap of a finger who ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... proper escort. The gate at the back stairs, which gave on the landing and had been placed there years ago for the protection of little children long since able to take care of themselves, was as strong as ever and shut with as clever a snap, so that there was no danger by that way. There were also guards on all the fires, and an ornamental bar across each window to prevent little rash creatures from ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... can't do us much harm. The only person who might make it disagreeable is Lord Blackadder, and I snap my fingers at him." ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... of a boxer up came the great white forearm, and the spear only glanced along the hair. Like the stroke of a serpent the long neck shot upward, the furious jaws crunched into the shaft, and with a sharp side-shake, snap! snap! in three pieces flew the splintered wood. Now for ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... last season when what is trivially called "the cold snap" came upon us. I had five horses eating themselves silly all the time, and I am not going to speak of it. I don't consider it a subject to be treated lightly. It was in about the thickest of it that I heard from a man I know in Ireland. He is a little old horse-coping sportsman ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Moseby's mounted guerillas attack'd a train of wounded, and the guard of cavalry convoying them. The ambulances contain'd about 60 wounded, quite a number of them officers of rank. The rebels were in strength, and the capture of the train and its partial guard after a short snap was effectually accomplish'd. No sooner had our men surrender'd, the rebels instantly commenced robbing the train and murdering their prisoners, even the wounded. Here is the scene, or a sample of it, ten minutes after. Among the wounded officers in the ambulances were one, a lieutenant ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... heather, before the sudden drop of your staunch companion, and a rigidity in all his limbs, satisfy you that you have at last compelled the bird to squat under that wide holly-bush, from whence you kick him up, and feel some little exultation as you bring him down with a snap-shot, having only caught a glimpse of him through the evergreen boughs, as he endeavoured to escape by a rapid flight at the opposite side ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... our going, to which our little friends were all invited, and a happy, merry band of children played out under the trees, and ate the goodies so generously provided. Just before breaking up, we all joined in playing our favorite game of "snap the whip," and with screams and laughter, one after another of the weakest ones rolled over in the soft grass. The last night at Willow-spring wound up with a grand frolic, ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... home his leg had swollen very much, and was so painful that he could hardly limp along; for Juno had taken no passing snap, but a great strong mouthful. He concealed his condition from his mother for that night; but next morning his leg was so bad, that there was no longer a possibility of hiding the fact. To tell a lie would have been ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... he was through. Grim's finger was on the slide button. It closed with a snap behind him, cutting off ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... b, b, b![69] Very often, however, the designer is satisfied with one surprise, but I never saw a good illuminated border without one at least; and no series of any kind was ever introduced by a great composer in a painting without a snap somewhere. There is a pretty one in Turner's drawing of Rome with the large balustrade for a foreground in the Hakewell's Italy series: the single baluster struck out of the line, and showing the street below through the gap, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... of lap-dog, and among them the tiniest little Italian greyhound,—not more than eight inches long. This last was like a porcelain toy dog, and looked brittle, as if its thin legs would snap if much handled. I did not think it a pretty pet; it seemed ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... honestly say that to live is Christ? If so, our hope is valid, and will not yield when we lean heavily upon it for support in the ford over the black stream. If our hope is built on anything besides, it will snap then like a rotten pole, and leave us to stumble helpless among the slippery stones and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... looked as if we should save them, which had seemed impossible a short time previously, from the ugly way in which the shrouds tightened, and the after-stays sung, as if they were stretched to the last limit, showing that the slightest increase of the strain on them would snap them like pack-thread. ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... weather treated Florence to what Aurora and Estelle called a cold snap. Their surprise and indignation were extreme. That Italy, sunny Italy, should feel herself free to have these alpine ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... Doris. "Keep you health, snap your fingers at care and sorrow, do your duty on work-days and drink till you are jolly in honor of the god on holidays, and then all will be well. Those who do all they are able and enjoy as much as they can get, make good use of their lives ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... muffled voice calling to them. Marjorie flung the doors open, and, save for the dresses, it was empty. She stared in for a moment, still hearing the movements of someone beyond, and at last the sound of a snap; and as she withdrew her head to exclaim to Alice, the young man walked into the room through ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... place. Or if, after due opportunity had been given, his Lordship showed no desire to avail himself of the opening, then the privilege should have fallen to the examining counsel. If he in turn waived it, it should have been open to counsel on the other side to snap up the chance. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... out of the air came a humming sound. It grew louder and louder, and the boys felt a strange suction of wind which made them hold tightly to the rail for fear of being pulled overboard by some uncanny force. There followed a loud snap and a crash, and the mast began ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... the bees' most deadly enemies. They will sit at the mouth of a hive and snap up bees ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... that was snap snapping in the evening breeze not ten feet away. It was no more than an ordinary camp marking-flag; but the regiment, always punctilious in matters of millinery, had charged it with the regimental device, the Red Bull, which is the crest of the Mavericks—the great Red Bull ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... earth, Since Freedom had her birth, Have to their subject nations said, "Stand still;" So, from the Polar Bear, Comes down the freezing air, And stiffens all things with its deadly chill. He who doth God resist— God's old antagonist— Would snap the chain that binds all things to him; And in his godless pride, All peoples would divide, And scatter even the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... manner was, interspersing her narrative with baby nonsense and endearments, and Mr Robins forgot his errand, which was, after all, only a pretext, and stood half-listening, and more than half back in the old days of memory, and once he so far forgot himself as to snap his fingers at the child, and touch one of its warm, little hands, which immediately closed round his finger with a baby's soft, tenacious grasp, from which it required a ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... that one saucer had fallen into a mountain lake. This came to me secondhand. The lone witness was said to have rushed over to his car to get his camera as the disk approached. When it plunged toward the lake, he was so startled that he failed to snap the picture until the moment it struck. This story sounded so flimsy that I didn't bother ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... the common abuse of you is absurd. I have heard grave and industrious persons declare emphatically that any one who allows himself to fall under your sway debars himself utterly from every chance of success. Fiddlesticks! I snap my fingers at such folly. What do these gentlemen say to the case of FIGTREE, the great Q.C.? Everybody knows that FIGTREE is, without exception, the most indolent man in the world. Let any doubter walk down Middle Temple Lane and ask the first young barrister he meets what he thinks of FIGTREE. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... touches the brim of the hat. A hunting guard, fastened at the back of the hat brim and between two habit buttons is better than an elastic caught under the braids of your hair, for when an elastic does not snap outright, it is always trying to do so, and in the effort holds the hat so tightly on the head so as sometimes to give actual pain. The hunting guard is no restraint at all unless the hat flies off, in which case it keeps it from following ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... little afraid of him," she went on, after she had had a little cry, "I'd ask him. But likely as not he'd peck at me—old peckjabber!" and here she laughed through her tears as she thought of the Caravan in their little sunbonnets. "Or p'r'aps he'd snap me up! I've often heard of snapping people up when they asked too many questions, but seems to me it never meant anything so awful as that before"; and she was rambling on in this way, laughing and crying by turns, when at this moment Bob Scarlet ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... hear) that God designedly killed this man? Many or most persons do believe this; I can't and don't. If you believe so, do you believe that when a swallow snaps up a gnat, that God designed that that particular swallow should snap up that particular gnat at that particular instant? I believe that the man and the gnat are in the same predicament. If the death of neither man nor gnat is designed, I see no good reason to believe that their first birth or production should ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... a cold and hungry man; but I at length obtained admission to the house of a German tailor, and, explaining my condition, offered to pay him liberally for the privilege of becoming his guest until the cold snap was over. He examined me closely, and having made, as it were, a mental inventory of my features, dress, &c., exclaimed, "Mine friend, in dese times nobody knows who's which. I say, sar, nobody knows who's ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... man dances he should laugh and crow and snap his fingers and make faces; otherwise, he is not dancing at all, he is taking exercise. No person should be allowed to dance without first swearing that he feels only six years of age. People who admit to feeling more than ten years old should be sent to hospital, and any one ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... waste- paper from the colonel's basket in ord'ly-room whin ut's emptied. Bein' but a shlip av a girl she went pink at seein' me, an' I twisted me moustache an' looked at a picture forninst the wall. Niver show a woman that ye care the snap av a finger for her, an' begad she'll come ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... cakes and puddings they would quarrel. I don't believe that either chapkin E'er thought at lunch to fold his napkin, And if one biscuit graced the platter 'Twas ever less than fighting matter, Or if they'd beans—no doubt they had 'em— They failed to snap a few at Adam. I fear me as they ate their salade They hummed some raw primeval ballad, And when the Serpent came to dinner, They made remarks about the sinner. No doubt they criticised the cooking And hooked the fruit when none ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... at, say f. 6-3, and with a "speed" film (glass plates are utterly out of the question on the trail), it is possible to make a snap-shot at one twenty-fifth of a second on a clear day, around noon, even in the dead of winter, in any part of Alaska that the writer has travelled in. There are those who write that they can always hold a camera still enough to get a sharp negative at even one tenth of a second. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... to put on a new rope," declared Joe. "The act went so well when I seemed about to fall, that I'm going to keep that feature in. I'll rig up a catch on the severed cable. At the proper time I'll snap it loose, seem to fall, swing by the dangling bar as I did before, and land on the platform that way. It will be more effective than if I did ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... did. All I know is that it was an Indian, and that he was watching us. I noticed his tracks some distance back, and also noticed that just before we reached this point they turned abruptly into the underbrush. As we stood looking down that hole, I heard a twig snap, and knew he was close at hand. I thought I might surprise him, but, as I said, he was too quick for me, and I only caught a flying glimpse of ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... a corner a burning taper put a halo about the head of a priest, burnishing his shining bald skull, his white surplice, and the open book before him. "Amen" he chanted; the book was closed with a snap, the light moved up the apse, some dark figures of women rose from their knees and passed quickly towards the door; a man saying his prayers before a chapel also got up, making a great clatter ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... He heard the twigs snap beneath him, a drooping branch struck him hard; and then he gasped with horror. In front there opened up a deep black rift in which appeared the tops of trees. Seeing it was too late to pull up, he shook his feet clear of the stirrups. He felt the horse plunge down, there was a shock, and he ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... like a misunderstood child. "But," he blundered on, "don't you see it's the only thing you can do—anyhow, to marry me? If you won't accept money, why it's a pity and a waste, but I want you enough to snap you up without a franc. You must marry me, dear. Think what I gave up ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Snap, our dog," added Freddie. "The gypsies might take him, 'cause he does tricks and was once in ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... out on the Nicholson pavement in the centre of the pretty square that you will remember if you have ever been in Cleveland. The bags were filled from a wagon-load of sand and hitched with snap-catches about the edges. So they stood about in a circle. Then the aerostat, as the great bag is called, was unrolled and spread evenly over this. An oiled-muslin tube was tied to the neck, and its other extreme to a gas main in a hole which some of ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... archdeacon would have been made to take some other boat or to stay in Calais, or that I myself, by being delayed on my homeward journey, should have been led into some other temptation, though perhaps smaller? Had I not better snap him and have done with it? Is there enough chance of good result to make it worth while to try the experiment? The general consensus of opinion is ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... clearing where the shade of the trees has little effect, stands an old water power mill. It is simply an "average view," and you can safely snap it with ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... and other things. Again she searched by the feeble light of her candle, but could see no exit. Suddenly she saw something else, however, for stepping on what she took to be a rock, to her horror it moved beneath her. She heard a snap as of jaws, a violent blow upon the leg nearly knocked her off her feet, and as she staggered backwards she saw a huge and loathsome shape rushing away into the darkness. The rock that she had trodden on was a crocodile which had its den here! With a little scream she retreated to her stair. ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... gun up to my shoulder, both barrels loaded with Eley's red wire cartridge No. 6, I gave him a snap shot, and had the satisfaction of seeing him keeled well over, not wing-tipped or leg-broken, but fairly riddled by the concentrated charge of something within thirty yards. Turning as quick as light, I caught a fleet sight of the other, which by a rapid zig-zag was now ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... Thompson many a year Ago, commenced his bright career, And took the ebbing of the tide, Which into golden waves did glide; He man'd his craft and steered her well O'er placid calm and tossing swell, And independent of the gale Hath snap'd his oar and furled his sail. 'Twas just above "the whitefish hole," How dear that spot is to my soul! There Allan Cameron and I Together many a day did hie, To haul the silvery shining prey From out the whirling eddy's spray; In July, '32, to land, I drew two barrels with ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... the future, to take much notice of Jim. Mary used to speak to me about it sometimes. 'You never take notice of the child,' she'd say. 'You could surely find a few minutes of an evening. What's the use of always worrying and brooding? Your brain will go with a snap some day, and, if you get over it, it will teach you a lesson. You'll be an old man, and Jim a young one, before you realise that you had a child once. Then ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... said. "And now I don't know how you feel, but I've had about enough of this. My nerves aren't what they were. Something may snap any minute." ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... how many vows, promises, engagements, and resolutions thou madest before God, to turn, if he would release thee from thy affliction, and take off his rod from thy back; and yet, how thou didst, like the man possessed (Mark 5:1-5), break and snap in twain all these chains of iron, with which thou hadst bound thy soul, and that for a very lust and sin. Here also, will be opened before thee, how often thou hath sinned against thy light and knowledge; how often thou hast laid violent hands on ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... snap at my neighbor, nor at his wife, nor his child, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor do harm ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... with my right, and as Smith sprang upright in bed, eyes wildly glaring, I wrenched with all my might. Upward my gaze was set; and I glimpsed a yellow hand, with long, pointed finger nails. There came a loud resounding snap; an electric spark spat venomously from the circular opening above the bed; and, with the cord and lamp still fast in my grip, I went rolling across the carpet—as the other lamp became ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... don't intend to get killed if I can help it. (Still more determinedly.) Do you understand that? (He locks the door with a snap.) ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... how you snap 'er too sudden!" he would exclaim if the little fingers moved too freely. "Look out, I say! Dis ain't none o' yo' pick-me-up-hit-an'-miss banjos, she ain't! An' you mus' learn ter treat 'er wid rispec', caze, when yo' ole gran'dad ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... some brave man—a brother to him who first ate an oyster—put up the window out of bravado to snap thereby his fingers at the forms of darkness, and being found whole and without blemish or mark of witch upon his throat and without catarrhal snuffling in his nose, of a consequence the harsh opinion against the ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... monotonously to her as through dull banks of fog. She made up her mind that if she were asked any questions by either of them she would not reply, and that she would not look at either of them, and then she thought that she would snap and stamp her feet and say that she hated him, that he had looked down on her because she worked for his aunt, that he had meanly been ashamed of and cut her because she was poor, that he had been going with another girl all the time he was going with her and that he only pursued her ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... laugh and scream around that fountain, and snap torpedoes and fire-crackers, and shout with wild delight when the rockets shot up into the sky, or the burning wheels span round and round, scattering showers of real fire right in among the crowds ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... a farce. The King affected not to see him, let him kneel on. Richard did kneel on, as stiff as a rod. The King talked with obscene jocosity, every snap betraying his humour, to Prince John; he scandalised even his bishops, he abashed even his barons. He infinitely degraded himself, yet seemed to wallow in disgrace. So Richard's gorge (a tender organ) rose to hear him. 'God, what wast Thou about, to let such a hog be made?' he ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... one only finds in persons callous to all passions. It is thus that provincial dilatoriness, which is so freely ridiculed in Paris, is full of treachery, secret stabs, hidden victories and defeats. These worthy men, particularly when their interests are at stake, kill at home with a snap of the fingers, as we, the Parisians, kill with cannon ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... and then, almost simultaneously, each began—the process was sub-conscious—to regard this meeting not as an isolated and inexplicable event, but as something resulting from a perfectly logical chain of circumstances. Jill perceived that the presence in the apartment of that snap-shot of herself should have prepared her for the discovery that the place belonged to someone who had known her as a child, and that there was no reason for her to be stunned by the fact that this someone was Wally ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... out his hand ... an' he can have any girl he wants, even if her people are of the best. He might be havin' a very different wife from yourself! Truly, a man's patience can't bear everything! It'll snap sometime! Pride, arrogance, recklessness—that's what it is in you! Either ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... eternal perdition in its most terrible form as the most certain of all possible facts, and of its own imminent danger of hopeless, irreversible doom—seeing itself, to employ his own image, hanging, as it were, over the pit of hell by a thin line, which might snap any moment—been portrayed in more nervous and awe-inspiring language. And its awfulness is enhanced by its self-evident truth. Bunyan was drawing no imaginary picture of what others might feel, but simply telling in plain unadorned language what ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... trees, but at last he gained the mastery, and swung himself down from the saddle. Already several mounted men were clustered about something, while just before he joined them there was another crash, and a little thin smoke drifted among the trees. Then, he saw one of them snap a cartridge out of his rifle, and that a horse lay quivering at his feet. A man stood beside it, and Grant was speaking to him, but Breckenridge scarcely recognized ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... trembles, quivers, and nods her frighted mast-heads to the sky. More and more she leans over to the whale, while every gasping heave of the windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows; till at last, a swift, startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship rolls upwards and backwards from the whale, and the triumphant tackle rises into sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of the first strip ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... seemed to close with a snap around his brain. The next moment, they had receded an immeasurable distance, and in limitless wastes of exhausted being he stood alone. What time had passed when he came to himself he had not an idea; it might have been hours for anything his consciousness was able to tell him. But, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... The Chancellor is now crowded with all the canvas she can carry, and at times her topmasts threaten to snap with the pressure. But Curtis is ever on the alert; he never leaves his post beside the man at the helm, and without compromising the safety of the vessel, he contrives, by tacking to the breeze, to urge her on at her ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... longer than he, Cutler, had worn shoulder-straps, that the next thing to go would probably be his sergeant's bars, whereat Murray went red to the roots of his hair—which "continued the march" of the color,—and said, with a snap of his jaws, that he got those chevrons, as he did his orders, from his troop commander. A court might order them stricken off, but a captain couldn't, other than his own. For which piece of impudence the veteran went straightway ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... you false, what will you do?" Finot ended. "Suppose that some Minister fancies that he has you fast by the halter of your apostasy, and turns the cold shoulder on you? You will be glad to set on a few dogs to snap at his legs, will you not? Very well. But you have made a deadly enemy of Lousteau; he is thirsting for your blood. You and Felicien are not on speaking terms. I only remain to you. It is a rule of the craft to keep a good understanding ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... broad In my discourtesy, nor prudish neither (Since, really, I can hardly quite suppose With all your ghostliness you follow me), I feel no such attraction. Or if one Bows to my sympathy for the briefest space, Snap—it is gone! And, worst of all to tell, What broke it is not in the least dislike But utter ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... specious air of being on the side of the artist. It has the charm of its acquired taste, and it can corrupt because it can speak with an authority unknown in Philistia. Because it pretends to care about art, artists are not indifferent to its judgments. Culture imposes on people who would snap their fingers at vulgarity. With culture itself, even in the low sense in which I have been using the word, we need not pick a quarrel, but we must try to free the artist and the public too from the influence of cultivated opinion. The liberation will not be complete until those who have already ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... Patricia was irresistible as she pleaded and mocked and scolded and coaxed and laughed and cried, all in one bewildering breath. Her plan was simple; it was to slip out of Matocton at dawn, and walk to the near-by station. There they would take the train, and snap their fingers at convention. The scheme sounded preposterous in outline, but she demonstrated its practicability in performance. ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... o' us; twins an' all. When us brung Phyllis down de riveh yo' ma wuz dead ag'in sellin' heh, an' when us git win' dat de Co'teneys want' a nuss yo' pa he dat glad he snap his fingehs. 'Us'll rent Phyllis to 'em!' he say. 'Dey's Hendry Clay Whigs; dey'd ought to treat heh fine.' (Dat wuz his joke.) An' yo' ma make answeh: 'Ef dey don't, us kin take heh back! Betteh dat dan sell heh! Nobody o' de Hayle blood shayn't do ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... fellers is talkin' now? Nix. You go into the village gay with these Schwabs by the sewer line, I guess." Truxton pricked up his ears. "The old man has had a hole chopped in the sewer here, they tell me, and it's a snap to get into the city. Not very clean or neat, but it gets you there. Well, so long! They're ready, I see. They don't monkey long when they've got a thing to do. I'd advise you not to be too stubborn when they get you to headquarters; it may go easier with you. I'm not so ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... branch; the clinched fist was the symbol of a pledge or deposit; the right hand was the gift of faith and confidence. The indenture of covenants was a broken straw; weights and scales were introduced into every payment, and the heir who accepted a testament was sometimes obliged to snap his fingers, to cast away his garments, and to leap or dance with real or affected transport. [50] If a citizen pursued any stolen goods into a neighbor's house, he concealed his nakedness with a linen towel, and hid his face ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... friendships may be broken, yet abide they friends at heart; Snap the stem of Luxmee's lotus, and ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... called melodramatic rant. The House of the Seven Gables would be rejected by a sixpenny magazine, and Jane Eyre would not rise above a common "shocker." Hence the enormous growth of the Kodak school of romance—the snap-shots at everyday realism with a hand camera. We know how it is done. A woman of forty, stout, plain, and dull, sits in an ordinary parlour at a tea-table, near an angular girl with a bad squint. "Some tea?" said Mary, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... went out. Sally switched off the light with a snap as she passed. Out in the hall she stopped and held her husband's arms hard. "Hush!" she whispered. They both listened. They heard this, in the faintest plaint of ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... on the horn of his saddle. Thompson's right hand hung at his side. Racey had told the truth when he spoke of Thompson as a good snap shot. He was all of that. And he was fairly quick on the draw as well. It would seem that, taking into consideration the position of Thompson's right hand, that Thompson had a shade the better of it. Racey thought so. But he hoped, ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... 10th. From Temple Camp to Catskill. Passed a worm also a piece of a ginger snap. Passed a smell like a kitchen. Found a rubber heel in the road. A dead bug was upside down in a puddle. Met a fence. Saw something that looked like a snake but it was a shoe-lace. Had a soda in Catskill. Had another—raspberry. Saw a flat tire as ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... continually moving around among them, on the watch for delinquencies of all kinds. Some of these minor potentates are white and some black. As a rule, Mr. Young gives the blacks the preference and on strictly business principles, too. "The colored men have more snap, and can get more work out of their own people," he says. By means of these sub- overseers, large numbers can be transferred from one part of the farm to ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... now," Cleer answered, with girlish persistence. And her father looked round at her sharply, with an impatient snap of the fingers, while Mrs. Trevennack's eye was fixed on him now more carefully and more ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... fairly on the march, and the camp was abandoned, these starving hangers-on would hasten to the deserted fires, to seize upon the half-picked bones, the offal and garbage that lay about; and, having made a hasty meal, with many a snap and snarl and growl, would follow leisurely on the trail of the caravan. Many attempts were made to coax or catch them, but in vain. Their quick and suspicious eyes caught the slightest sinister movement, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... thoroughly well, that, hang me if I was not completely brought to. And all for escorting my dear one from Lady Maria's house to her own! Well, the walk was worth it—though the old crocodile was on the watch for us, ready to snap; had got wind of the secret, somehow, a secret unspoken even between us two. This first and last interview took place on the flags, in front of No. 17 Camden Place, Bath. Oh! It was a very one-sided affair from the beginning, and ended abruptly in a door being banged in my face. Then I heard ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... set to work. Snap, snap, snap, went the bowstrings on all sides. Then the sharp little teeth began on the feathers that winged the poisoned arrows. Soon the feathers lay in ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... rippled through the body of the rider and came to his head with a snap that jerked his chin down against his breast. The stallion rocked back on his hind legs, whirled, and then flung himself deliberately on his back. A sufficiently cunning maneuver—first stunning the enemy with a blow and then crushing him before his senses returned. But he landed on nothing ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... man; "they're all gone. It's kind of lonely, but we're doing some chopping for the road, and we'll be right here with money saved when work begins in spring. Bought a piece of fruit land, part on mortgage, at a snap, and with good luck we'll have it clear when we ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... year, betrays himself. "Did he come down out of the heaven on that bright March morning when he told us so softly and plaintively that, if we pleased, spring had come?" Sometimes he is here a little earlier, and must keep his courage up until the cold snap is over and the snow is gone. Not long after the Bluebird, comes the Robin, sometimes in March, but in most of the northern states April is the month of his arrival. With his first utterance the spell of winter is broken, and the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... as it should be. But the climax was reached when he unearthed a barking, snarling old Cynic, Menippus by name, and thrust his company upon me; a grim bulldog, if ever there was one; a treacherous brute that will snap at you while his tail is yet wagging. Could any man be more abominably misused? Stripped of my proper attire, I am made to play the buffoon, and to give expression to every whimsical absurdity that his caprice dictates. And, as if that were not preposterous enough, he has forbidden me either ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... of our social circles Mrs. Gore's Dowager, Mrs. Grey's Flirt, Mrs. Trollope's Widow, and Boz's Mrs. Nickleby? Who can help thinking of his lawyer, when he makes acquaintance with those immortal firms Dodson and Fogg, or Quirk, Snap, and Gammon? Is not Wrexhill libellous, and Dr. Hookwell personal? Arise! avenge them both, ye zealous congregations! Why slumber pistols that, should damage Bulwer? Why are the clasp-knives sheathed, which should have drunk the blood of James? ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... blood-stained deck, in a gory uniform trimmed with skulls and cross-bones, and order his enemies to be thrown one by one into the sea. "The shark awaits your car-casses!" spouted the imaginary desperado with a vicious snap of his teeth; and when Aunt Greg interrupted by asking him to bring in an armful of kindling, he glared at her like the Red Rover himself. Poor Aunt Greg! how little she guessed what was ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... the animals made straight for the canoe, and the watchers trembled as they looked, for it was evident that one snap of the creatures' huge jaws would cave in the side of the canoe as if it ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... could not do it. I thought about my poor mother, and wished she was here to lick my sore ears. Though she was so unhappy herself, she never wanted to see me suffer. If I had not disobeyed her, I would not now be suffering so much pain. She had told me again and again not to snap at Jenkins, for it ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... the Stock Yards to do a week's-reporting. That Christmas-week was one of the coldest ever seen in this climate. The young man's unweathered ears and nose were badly frost-bitten. But notwithstanding this great obstacle of a cold snap he made a success of his expedition. His reports demonstrated that the Bible and Plutarch had not been sown on stony places, and that good English could be used in reporting the standing and prospects of a retail firm as well as in a memorial to Congress. When ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern |
